When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown. - Stephen Jay Gould

Darwin grasped the philosophical bleakness with his characteristic courage. He argued that hope and morality cannot, and should not, be passively read in the construction of nature. Aesthetic and moral truths, as human concepts, must be shaped in human terms, not “discovered” in nature. We must formulate these answers for ourselves and then approach nature as a partner who can answer other kinds of questions for us—questions about the factual state of the universe, not about the meaning of human life. If we grant nature the independence of her own domain—her answers unframed in human terms—then we can grasp her exquisite beauty in a free and humble way. For then we become liberated to approach nature without the burden of an inappropriate and impossible quest for moral messages to assuage our hopes and fears. We can pay our proper respect to nature's independence and read her own ways as beauty or inspiration in our different terms.

I am supposed to be a “nurturist” in the great “nature-nurture” debate, but I find nothing upsetting in this notion of biological influence upon human behavior. I suppose I must also emphasize once again, and for the umpteenth time as we all do, that the categories are absurd and that there is no “nature-nurture” debate as such, the pleasant alliteration of the phrase notwithstanding. Every scientist, indeed every intelligent person, knows that human social behavior is a complex and indivisible mix of biological and social influences. The issue is not whether nature or nurture determines human behavior, for these factors are truly inextricable, but the degree, intensity, and nature of the constraint exerted by biology upon the possible forms of social organization.

What then, are the nonscientific reasons that have fostered the resurgence of biological determinism? They range, I believe, from pedestrian pursuits of high royalties for best sellers to pernicious attempts to reintroduce racism as respectable science. Their common denominator must lie in our current malaise. How satisfying it is to fob off the responsibility for war and violence upon our presumably carnivorous ancestors. How convenient to blame the poor and the hungry for their own condition – lest we be forced to blame our economic system or our government for an abject failure to secure a decent life for all people. And how convenient an argument for those who control government and, by the way, provide the money that science requires for its very existence.