thoughts on this?
Seeing Things Whole: Evolutionary Biology and the Wisdom Tradition
Human behavior is deeply rooted in biological processes which press inexorably, sometimes ruthlessly, toward the goals of survival and replication. Yet we are also capable of remarkable acts of self-sacrifice that transcend the dictates of our biology. How to account for this paradox? The key to this evolutionary puzzle could lie in the concept and fact of wisdom.
by Jeffrey Schloss
Human behavior is deeply rooted in biological processes which press inexorably, sometimes ruthlessly, toward the goals of survival and replication. Yet we are also capable of remarkable acts of self-sacrifice that transcend the dictates of our biology. How to account for this paradox? The key to this evolutionary puzzle could lie in the concept — and fact — of wisdom.
“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
Einstein’s famous aphorism not only expresses the wondrous delight of unbridled scientific exploration, but the dialectic it celebrates (echoing the millennia-old exhortation from Hebrew wisdom literature, “with all your knowledge, get understanding”), points to a unique human characteristic that itself cries out for scientific investigation. The distinction between mere knowledge and understanding, between brute information processing and earnestly reflective attempts to “see through” to its significance, exemplifies the remarkable human capacity for “meta-cognition”: the ability not just to think, but to think evaluatively about our thinking.
Meta-cognition, which gives rise to our proclivity to weave different domains of knowledge into a coherent and meaningful whole — the pursuit of “wisdom” — poses a fascinating question, represented by Shaw’s statue in Man and Superman: “Why should life bother itself about getting a brain? Why should it want to understand itself? Why not be content to enjoy itself?”
There are two facets to the statue’s question. First, why should we even be able to ask questions about life’s meaning? How is it we can conceive of the eternally beautiful and true or, for that matter, of Planck’s constant or quantum theory, or anything beyond the material and social interactions requisite for survival? After all, as Jerry Fodor ironically observes: “It is, no doubt, important to attend to the eternally beautiful and true. But it is more important not to be eaten.”
Second, there is the enigma of why so many humans view the search for wisdom and meaning as crucially important. Socrates went so far as to claim “the unexamined life is not worth living,” while on the Oracle of Delphi, presiding over the civic and domestic life of ancient Greece, was written the exhortation, “Know Thyself.” The biblical wisdom tradition claims that “wisdom is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire compares with her.” Indeed, her favor “is sweeter than life.”
But how could anyone really believe in, much less experience, such a reality? In a telling phrase, Henry Plotkin describes our desires and emotions as “postcards from our genes telling us in a direct and non-symbolic manner, about life and death…[informing] our intelligence what to think about.” If this is true (and I believe it is), then why do so many of us desire to think about things that have no apparent connection to our physical reality, to life and death? And what’s more, why do we approach these things with the conviction that thinking about them rightly may be more important than survival itself?
Moreover, many people go beyond merely thinking or talking about such ideas, and actually sacrifice life or life’s resources on their behalf. A hot topic for the last several decades in evolutionary biology has been the issue of human altruism: actions that help another at the reproductive expense of the actor. But in fact (and an extraordinary fact it is), humans appear to make such sacrifices not only for other people, but for ideas, for convictions of truth or artifacts of beauty. Starving artists, monastic scholars, ascetic seekers, and certainly martyrs for religious or scientific conviction point to the unusual human willingness to orient lives — even at the expense of sustenance or survival — around the pursuit of understanding.
The explanatory tools of evolutionary theory are being applied to these issues in fascinatingly diverse, often contrary, but not wholly irreconcilable ways. I want to allude to two approaches, both of which have distinct strengths and limitations.
Adaptation and Deception
The adaptationist perspective of sociobiology and some evolutionary psychologists views natural selection as a wholly sufficient explanation for the origin and character of our behaviors and mental traits. And these traits are expected to facilitate reproductive success or, at the very least, be constrained by a genetic leash so as not to be counter-reproductive.
However, this perspective points out that behavior which appears to be counter-reproductive may in fact contribute to fitness (reproductive success) in connection with sexual selection and/or reciprocal altruism — that is, by the attraction of mates or the facilitation of social exchange. For example, sexual selection may favor the display of resources or social status by costly investment in traits or behaviors with no direct adaptive benefit. Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker suggest that the acquisition of art, for example, reflects just this phenomenon.
No doubt many people do collect art (or learning) in pursuit of social status, but Steven Mithen points out this doesn’t explain why art (or religion or wisdom) is created and treasured — often privately — in the first place. Reciprocity is then invoked to help solve this problem, in two ways. First, membership in a cooperative guild and the willingness to reciprocate may be demonstrated through distinctions of belief, language, ornamentation, even humor. Thus appreciating Socrates (or South Park) may confirm an individual’s group membership and guarantee access to life-sustaining resources. In fact, cross-cultural studies indicate that group-specific nuances of proverbial wisdom and humor are almost never assimilated by outsiders, even after many years.
Second, adaptationists assert that the best reproductive strategy amongst cooperators is undetected cheating; that is, exploiting others by deceptively signaling a greater willingness to relinquish your resources in repayment for their cooperation than really exists. And the best strategy of deceiving someone without getting caught is to be self-deceived, to conceal from your own consciousness that your primary motive is maximizing personal gain. The best liar is a sincere one. And what better way to accomplish this deception than to give internal, rhetorical (but only rhetorical) assent to the primacy of truth-seeking? Underneath the pretense (albeit an unconscious one) to do good, is the drive to do well: the sage is a pose for the sycophant. As Shaw’s Don Juan confesses: “Ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer: ‘Make me a healthy animal.’”
This perspective is undoubtedly true of much human behavior, and it has the power to unmask the self-serving roots of behaviors justified by pretenses of transcendence. As Pascal observed, “Man is neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is, he who would play the angel, plays the brute.” We are most dangerously base when we are most smug about our loftiness.
Defined by Sacrifice
But there are two problems with the blanket application of self-deception theory to explain our pursuit of wisdom and self-understanding. One is that it exchanges smugness for cynicism about our seeking “the true and the beautiful.” As Franz de Waal asks: “How on earth could a group of scientists come up with such a pale view of the natural universe, of the human race, of the people close to them, and of themselves?”
Still, a scientific theory is not false just because we don’t like its implications. However, the second problem with the self-deception theory is empirical, for it plainly fails to make adequate sense of the fact that the self-relinquishing pursuit of understanding is not just a rhetorical posture, but often a demonstrable, biologically sacrificial behavior, indeed a defining one, in the human species.
Thus many researchers have concluded that the influence of natural selection is necessary but not sufficient to explain the uniqueness of human higher cognition, which, as evolutionary psychologist Henry Plotkin points out, “entails causal mechanisms that are somehow decoupled from the causal mechanisms of our biological evolution.”
Plotkin points out that living beings exhibit both adaptation and the ability to devise new adaptations through dynamic learning mechanisms, or “heuristics.” A heuristic is not an adaptation per se, but a way of learning new adaptations. He argues that genetic, cognitive, and cultural systems represent primary, secondary, and tertiary heuristics capable of devising new adaptations at respectively higher rates. Each level is “nested” in the other, like the unfolding levels of a Russian matryushka doll, with one doll contained within another. Each heuristic is constrained by — but not wholly reducible to — the prior heuristic. Evolution occurs slowly at the level of the primary heuristic — the biological level — but cultural systems are able to respond much more rapidly to new environmental challenges. Thus, at the cultural level, “some partial decoupling (from) the mechanisms of our biological evolution” has taken place, says Plotkin.
This nuanced, careful, yet imaginative proposal raises several significant questions for both scientific and religious views of human self-understanding in general, and wisdom traditions in particular.
First, what does it mean to be “partially decoupled” — to be nested in (or constrained by) certain biological processes, yet also be able to transcend their constraint? Is this nonsense, or a real but profound paradox, such as those encountered in quantum mechanics?
Second, because the cultural heuristic is both partially decoupled and rapidly changing, it can generate consequences that are damaging to our physical and mental health, to which our genetic and cognitive levels cannot quickly adapt. Is it thus possible that we will, “blithely destroy the world that we evolved upon and then take happily to living science fiction lives as some kind of semi-robotic creatures?” His answer is no; the “tertiary heuristic of science” has already detected damaging cultural effects — such as ozone depletion, for example. And since this heuristic is not totally detached from our biology, we will employ it “to maintain the earth in a state fit for the primary and secondary [levels of adaptation].”
Whether or not the history of technology and environmental decay justifies such confidence is open to dispute. But more important, the emphasis on maintaining the earth, while certainly legitimate, may overlook culture itself as a crucial life-sustaining aspect of the human environment. Is there some kind of “control device” to keep the cultural heuristic itself from becoming, in Plotkin’s words, “unnatural and deeply damaging” in an intrinsic way?
It may be that wisdom is precisely just such a “control,” that it is yet another heuristic level of adaptation, one which is both contained within culture yet partly free to transcend — or even oppose — its limitations. A capability perhaps reflected in the Pauline exhortation to “be not conformed to this world, but be transformed from within by the renewing of your minds.”
The Sublime Paradox
Lest this imply an infinite regress of the heuristic hierarchy, I would suggest two final comments about wisdom. First, it may be appropriate to think of these heuristics as constituting a “control loop” rather than a linear hierarchy of levels, with wisdom providing the connection between the transcendent cultural level of adaptation and the primary level of biological development. What does this mean? Simply that the way we understand life and our role in the human cultural enterprise relate to biological needs and directly influence our physical and mental health. As the biblical proverb says, wisdom “is a tree of life to all those who take hold of her, and happy are all who hold her fast.”
The wisdom of the body, for example, has given rise to various ascetic traditions which understood — ages before science discovered the effects of ozone depletion — that a life of materialistic consumption was detrimental to personal well-being (not to mention the survival of the species). In this regard, consider again the Delphic Oracle, which in addition to its adjuration “Know Thyself” bore this inscription as well: “In all things moderation.”
Last, tradition teaches the paradox that wisdom is more desirable than wealth or status, yet “long life is in her right hand, in her left hand are riches and honor.” Ruthlessly pragmatic, wisdom makes its appeal not through moral dogmatism but through reasoned self-interest. The wise person understands how things work, and adapts. Thus wisdom ironically confirms — but deepens — the sociobiological premise that the best way to “win” the contest of life is to care about something larger than your own survival. This may be because both social interactions and internal equilibrium benefit from such a posture. But wisdom’s pragmatism is not cynicism; it is a sublime paradox rooted in the confidence that all of reality supports this self-relinquishing approach to life, that “by wisdom God founded the earth.”
Moreover, while the way of wisdom assures us of “winning,” it also redefines the terms of victory as including the “sublime bond of love between a seeker and the divine mystery of creation,” reflected in the Wisdom of Solomon:
"I fell in love with her and sought her from my youth
and sought to take her as my bride
and became a lover of her beauty.
When I enter my house, I shall rest beside her
for there is nothing sad about companionship with her,
only gladness and joy."
Further Reading
de Waal, Franz. 1996. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Harvard University Press.
Fodor, J. 1985. “Precis of 'The Modularity of Mind.” Behavioral And Brain Sciences. 8:1-42.
Honeck, Richard P. 1997. A Proverb in Mind: The Cognitive Science of Proverbial Wit and Wisdom. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Mithen, Steven. 1996. The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science. Thames and Hudon.
Murphy, Roland E. The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature. 1997. Wm. B. Eerdmans.
Pinker, Steven. 1999. How the Mind Works. WW Norton.
Plotkin, Henry. 1993. Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge. Harvard University Press.
Plotkin, Henry. 1998. Evolution in Mind: An Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology. Harvard University Press.
Sternberg, R.J. ed. 1990. Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development. Cambridge University Press.
von Rad, Gerhard. 1975. Wisdom in Israel. Fletcher & Son, Norwich.
Jeff Schloss is professor of Biology at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, director of Biological Programs for the Christian Environmental Association, and a fellow of the Discovery Institute. He is serving as consulting editor for this issue of Science & Spirit.