Darwin and species differences

[Robert Charleston <rc3673@student.open.ac.uk>]

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This is a bit of an aside.

Just noticed in one of Alice's last emails:

'darwin rebuted the claim that there is a dichotomy between humans and 
other animals'

Darwin in not a good theorist to quote for equality between mankind and 
animals. Darwin did argue that there is a continuity between man and other 
animals, but the detail of his view was also that white, 'civilised' 
westerners were a superior type of human to racially inferior black, 
'uncivilised' Africans. He believed in inequality all the way through the 
animal kingdom, with no particular duties of respect of 'superior' 
creatures to 'inferior' ones.

It was Darwin's collegue Wallace who thought that all mankind were morally 
and intelligently equal, but interestingly he held that evolution was 
evolution of the body only, and that true intelligence and self-awareness 
could only have originated from an external force - that some animals were 
given this, and that the rest were basically machines. Darwin's world view 
did not blow away this kind of distinction - in fact the exhibition of 
Wallace's work now being mounted (after extensive rehabilitation of his 
reputation by the OU over the last decade or so) has a section on how most 
modern people tend to believe Wallace's view rather than Darwin's.

Not an objection, just thought it was interesting...

Rab.


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