Scientism exalts the idea of science on its own, causing people to become fixated on the assumptions that seemed scientific to them during their form… - Mary Midgley

Selection does not work by cutthroat competition between individuals, but by favouring whatever behavior is useful to the group. People with crude notions of "Darwinism" make an intriguing blunder here. They refuse the mere fact of competing, that is, of needing to share out a resource with the motive of competitiveness or readiness to quarrel.

People did not proceed, as the theory of evolution really requires by demythologizing their symbolism about animals and the downward direction. Instead they resisted evolution at all costs, or accepted it with the provisio that the future was to lift them out of the degrading company that admittedly contaminated their past. The Future was seen as leading many away from the rest of nature as fast as possible, as giving him the hope of escaping continuity with it after all. Those who felt a sense of pollution at the thought of kinship with other animals could dwell on the hope of becoming less like them.

What do we mean when we speak...of higher and lower animals? ...What too about communication (a respect in which, Wilson says, we much exceed the insects)? What is so good about communicating? How are we sure that it constitutes and excellence? Is it even clear that in respect we do exceed the corals and the colonial jellyfish? With them, there are no internal barriers; information flow freely from unit to unit wherever it is needed. The unrestrictedness of the communication much exceeds that among people. Why does this fail to impress us?