Philosophy and Darwinism

Heidegger is often credited for the novelty of his notion 'Being-in-the-World'. The latter portrays humans as essentially implicated in an envirnoment, as opposed to traditional construals that have us, at least in principle, isolable and self-contained entities. However, this heterodoxy is not as unprecedented as some of Heidegger's advocates seem to maintain. For, Dewey precedes him in this respect by at least years, if not decades, with a less cumbersome, better fleshed-out portrayal of the environed human organism. His conception is an expressed elaboration of the Darwinian notion of adaptation, that human life is fundamentally a rhythmic drama of an organism's disequilibrium and re-harmonization with its environment, and nothing more. Dewey's theories of Psychology, Ethics, Logic, and Aesthetics all take this notion as their basic context. Likewise, one weak spot is his picture also exposes a central flaw in Darwinism. He notes that moments of interactive harmony with one's environment fail to persist, and that destabilization is inevitable, but he never explains why that must be the case. This explanatory gap is inherited from one of the basic premises of Darwinism, that adaptation, as well as the evolutionary drive in general, is a means to survival. That would imply that if that end were achieved, then the evolutionary process would cease. Hence, an organism would never of its own accord initiate a disintegration of a successful adaptation, and, so, destabilization can come only from without, from its environment. In other words, on the Darwinian account that Dewey is appropriating, destabilization is contingent and not inevitable. Nor does it explain such familiar facts as boredom and restlessness. In contrast, these latter are entailed in a concept of Evolution as an end-in-itself, as an incessant drive to higher levels. On basis of that concept, Dewey could more justifiably propose that adaptation is itself, in essence, not a termination, but a point of departure for further developments. More generally, if some of the attention to Heidegger were re-directed towards Dewey, the philosophical potential of Darwinism might be more fruitfully developed.