Each member of the small groups should briefly indicate what they found most striking in the reading; the group as a whole should ultimately formulate a question for the full seminar discussion.
Q1 Review the mechanisms that Lamarck and Darwin proposed for evolutionary changes in a species. How would they each explain the transformation of, say, an antelope into a giraffe? What mechanism would likely produce faster evolutionary changes?
Q2 Suppose that you could choose between a world governed by
Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characters or Darwinian natural selection?
Which world would you choose to live in? Why?
Q3 What strategies did Darwin use to make his theory of evolution by
natural selection palatable and persuasive to a highly skeptical audience?
Q4 How do the following three classes of observations provide evidence
that humans descended from lower animals: a) homological structures, b)
embryological development, c) rudimentary organs? How does Darwin explain the
existence of the human appendix, given the fact that it sometimes causes death?
How does he explain the existence of male mammary glands and nipples?
Q5 In Chapters 1 and 2, Darwin focuses on similarities between humans
and other species, both in terms of structure and function and in terms of
evolutionary mechanism. Summarize the main points of this argument. What would
you add if you were making Darwin’s argument today?
Q6 How, if at all, does Darwin employ Herschel’s notion of analogical
reasoning or Whewell’s notion of consilience apply to the mechanism of human
evolution?
Q7 Darwin states that his purpose in Chapter 3 is “to shew that there
is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental
faculties” (p. 21). In the second part of the chapter, Darwin discusses a
number of traits that have been proposed to distinguish humans from other
species (pp. 29-40). How does Darwin come down on each putative distinction?
How does he think that humans and animals are different? How does he reconcile
these differences in terms of his overall conclusion in this chapter?
Q8 According to Darwin, how could a moral impulse arise
in humans or other animals? Consider the problem of altruism. Prairie dogs emit
an alarm call when predators approach the colony, which increases the overall
safety but also brings attention to the caller and increases its chance of
becoming the chosen prey and decreases its chance of successful reproduction.
Darwin describes a similar predicament on p. 60. How would Darwin explain the
origin and persistence of altruism as a trait in animal populations?
Q9 What role, if any, does
Darwin think that natural selection plays in what he calls “civilized nations”?
How does he think that society should deal with “weak members of civilized
societies” that would likely not survive in nature? How would you approach this
issue?
Q10 Darwin’s discussion of human evolution is
infused with many biases of an upper-class Victorian gentleman. What are the
most prominent biases that you observe? How do they influence a) his account of
human evolution, and b) the social applications of his account?
Q11 How does Darwin’s theory of ethics differ
from accounts offered by other moral philosophers? You might consider his
remarks on love and sympathy (p. 46), moral impulses (p. 54), ethical motives
and ethical standards (p. 54), and the historical expansion of moral community
(p. 56) as passages for thinking about these differences.