Man is the product of biological and cultural evolution, and man 

 has developed the explanation of evolutionary processes put forth 

 in this book. It is therefore inevitable that our view of evolution 

 has been colored by the biological and cultural history of Homo 

 sapiens in general and by that of western science in particular. To 

 ask What is the true ( or objective ) explanation of organic diversity? 

 is to fall into the error of assuming the existence of absolutes. It is 

 not possible temporarily to renounce our membership in the human 

 race and view the available data with Jovian detachment. It is pos- 

 sible, however, to point out some of the obvious sources of bias, 

 some of the weak points in the story, some current points of contro- 

 versy, and some possible ways of increasing our understanding. 

 Complete objectivity may be unattainable, but perhaps we can hope 

 to approach it asymptotically. 



ANTHROPOCENTRISM 



Perhaps the most obvious effect of being human observers is the 

 nearly ubiquitous tendency to use Homo sapiens as a standard. 

 This species chauvinism is manifest in many ways. It is easily recog- 

 nized in its most naive form when the assumption is made that evo- 

 lution has always worked toward man as its ultimate goal. Thus 

 Lecompte du Noiiy states, "Evolution begins with amorphous liv- 

 ing matter or beings such as the Coenocytes, still without cell 

 structure, and ends in thinking Man, endowed with a conscience. It 

 is concerned only with the principal lines thus defined. It represents 

 only those living beings which constitute this unique line zigzagging 

 intelligently through the colossal number of living forms." (Du 

 Noiiy, p. 66; emphasis his. ) 



In more subtle forms, such ideas persist in diverse ways in mod- 

 ern evolutionary literature. Often the term "higher animals" is used 

 to refer to those more like Homo sapiens than "lower animals"; the 

 implications of the "higher" and "lower" are quite clear. When 

 standards of "success" in evolution are selected, by some odd coinci- 

 dence the winning characteristic usually seems to be one in which 

 man excels: ability to control the environment, intelligence, possession 

 of culture, retention of "generalized" characteristics, etc. Some other 

 rather obvious standards are often glossed over, for example, per- 

 sistence through time (cockroaches excel here), total numbers of 

 individuals (the forte of microorganisms), and reproductive po- 

 tential (many candidates, such as the house fly and beef tapeworm). | 295 



