31 January 2011 by Mary Midgley
Magazine issue 2797.
Many people dismiss metaphors and imagery as surface polish. But just look at the way they have hijacked our thinking on evolution
SELFISH genes, survival of the fittest, competition, hawk and dove strategies. Like all theories, Darwinism has its own distinct vocabulary. So distinct, in fact, that we end up asking how else we can talk about evolution? After all, isn't competitive evolution the only possible context for explaining the biological facts? The drama implied by competition, war and selfishness passes unnoticed because people are used to this rather hyped-up way of talking even about current scientific beliefs.
The trouble with metaphors is that they don't just mirror scientific beliefs, they also shape them. Our imagery is never just surface paint, it expresses, advertises and strengthens our preferred interpretations. It also usually carries unconscious bias from the age we live in - and this can be tricky to ditch no matter how faulty, unless we ask ourselves how and why things go wrong, and start to talk publicly about how we should understand metaphor.
Perfect harmony: the Fibonacci spiral shapes evolutionary change (Image: Jo Ingate/Alamy)
Evolution has been the most glaring example of the thoughtless use of metaphor over the past 30 years, with the selfish/war metaphors dominating and defining the landscape so completely it becomes hard to admit there are other ways of conceiving it. In How The Leopard Changed Its Spots, biologist and complexity theorist Brian Goodwin suggested the kind of correction needed, remarking mildly that humans are "every bit as co-operative as we are competitive; as altruistic as we are selfish... These are not romantic yearnings and Utopian ideals, they arise from a rethinking of our nature that is emerging from the sciences of complexity". But that was in 1991 - and few were listening.
From the merest glance at a wider context, it becomes clear that competition cannot be the ultimate human reality, still less (as philosopher Daniel Dennett argued) the central creative force behind the universe. Entities complex enough to compete cannot exist at all without much internal cooperation. To create cells, organelles must combine; to create armies, soldiers must organise. Even the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins pointed out on the 30th anniversary of publication of his iconic book, The Selfish Gene, that genes are actually cooperative rather than egoistic.
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