EXPeditions

Jim Secord - Darwin's thoughts on human nature

Jim Secord, Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project, University of Cambridge, explains the traits Darwin thought to be fundamental to humans.
About Jim Secord
"I’m the Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project in the University Library at Cambridge University.My research is on public debates about science in the 18th and 19th centuries. I’ve written particularly about Victorian evolution and debates about the problem of species and where we come from. I’ve also written about the reception of evolutionary works before Darwin published his Origin of Species."
A crucial question for Darwin
What it means to be human is a crucial question for Darwin. You get an interesting impression of this from his writings. If you read On the Origin of Species, for example, there’s hardly anything in it about human beings. There is one sentence where he says light will be thrown on the origin of man and its history. And there are a few other examples that involve people.What needs to be emphasized is that the core idea of On the Origin of Species, evolution by natural selection, comes from thinking about humans and what it means to be human. It comes from the work of political economy by Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population. When Darwin was thinking about why some individuals survive in the struggle for existence and others don’t make it, he was thinking about people; he was thinking about you and me.I think it’s really important to realise that throughout Darwin’s theoretical thought, this question about humanity and the idea of what it means to have a mind and be part of the natural world at the same time – this is the core of the question he’s trying to answer. We can see this in his later writings when he publishes The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relationship to Sex in 1871. This is a two-volume work, which argues in the first part that humans come from lower animals. In making this argument, Darwin shows how a whole range of different characteristics – our morals, our belief in God, our love of music – are in various ways present within lower animals.
Key Points
• Darwin developed his theory of evolution by natural selection in large part by thinking about humans and what it means to be human.• Darwin viewed race as a result of sexual selection. He hated slavery, considering it the lowest possible aspect of human nature.• Darwin believed that humans were very much a part of nature. Indeed, our emotional nature is common among other animals.• Darwin was very observant in his approach to inquiry. His meticulous attention to detail and broad thinking helped him to become an exemplary scientist.

Laura Kipnis - Love, coupledom and infidelity

Throughout history, love became incorporated into institutions, which led to societal norms surrounding monogamous marriage and domestic coupledom.
About Laura Kipnis 
"’I'm Professor emerita at Northwestern University, where I taught film.I would call myself a cultural critic. I mostly write about cultural politics, sexual politics, aesthetics. I’m very interested in norms and their violation, transgression, people who get in trouble. I’m also interested in taboos and people who smash norms. So I like troublemakers, I guess."
Against Love
I wrote a book called Against Love. Some noted that it wasn’t so much against love as it was against marriage. It’s actually a very romantic book. However, the people it romanticised were adulterers attempting to escape the confines of domestic monogamy. They were striking out in bands of rebels and insurgents to create new cultures.Throughout history, love became incorporated into institutions, which led to societal norms surrounding monogamous marriage and domestic coupledom. Although people wanted this monogamous norm, they eventually tried to resist and rebel against it.Twenty years ago, when I wrote Against Love, I was interested in the defiance of those norms. I also felt more able to generalise about love than I do now. Sure enough, I think these things play out differently generationally. Over time, those norms have changed to some extent.
Key Points
• Economic factors are affecting marriage and coupledom, especially among younger generations. Many are turning to more alternative cohabiting arrangements.• Activism formerly focused on sexual freedom; however, younger people are more interested in activism regarding gender fluidity, as they consider sexual freedom a given.• Society has historically espoused coupledom for its socialising and disciplinary effects.

Susan James - Spinoza and the importance of living together

Susan James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, London, talks about how and why Spinoza developed a framework for living together.
About Susan James
"I’m a professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College in London.Most of my work is about early modern philosophy, particularly the social and political aspects of philosophy in that period. My most recent book is called Spinoza on Learning to Live Together."
The value of fortitude
Although Spinoza lived in one of the most harmonious parts of Europe at the time, it was nevertheless, by our standards, politically fairly wild. He lived through the public lynching of one of the leaders of the Dutch Republic, de Witt, and his brother. He saw a number of his friends prosecuted for publishing work that offended Church and State. He was extremely familiar with internecine religious and political feuds and he himself complained of being unjustly branded an atheist and being made notorious because of it.So, we see that Spinoza sets great store by this value of fortitude, this philosophical motivation and desire to live together in the light of your understanding and to use your understanding to build relationships with other people and to co-operate with them. One of the questions that Spinoza is particularly interested in is what sort of politics can do that. What sort of State do we need to help us live like that as effectively as possible?
Key Points
• Spinoza’s philosophy of living together better is based on the value of fortitude – a philosophical motivation and desire to live together in the light of our understanding, and to use this understanding to build relationships and co-operate with other people.• He suggests that one of the advantages of a democratic community – a relatively inclusive one – is that people are able to take account of a wider range of interests in working out how to live co-operatively together.• Part of learning to live successfully, not only co-operatively but satisfyingly, may consist of learning to accommodate ourselves to the forces around us, including environmental forces.

Eva Illouz - Why love is more difficult to experience

Anybody living in modern societies has encountered love, or at least knows people who have encountered love.
About Eva Illouz
"I’m a sociologist and I teach in Paris at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.My work is about the sociology of emotions, the sociology of capitalism, the sociology of consumer culture and the interface between all of these. I’m the author of 13 books, and perhaps most recently The End of Love."
What is love?
Anybody living in modern societies has encountered love, or at least knows people who have encountered love. Of course, people encounter love. The question that a sociologist would ask is: what are the conditions in which people encounter love, and are there difficulties? What is the nature of these difficulties?Modern people are preoccupied with love and with the idea of love in a way that their predecessors were not. We have come to view love as a condition for a successful life. And we view love as an essential part of our autobiography. Traditional societies did not view love in this way. One of the reasons why love has acquired such crucial importance for modern people is that it articulates what is perhaps the main public philosophy of modernity: individualism.Individualism is and was the great vector for the making of modern law, as well as modern economy and the family. In the 16th century, for example, Shakespearean lovers make claims against their families, against their communities, in the name of love. Those claims are individualist claims, which cannot be implemented because society has not yet fully moved to an individualist society. But this helps us understand why love has played a fundamental role in the broad history of individualism. It has been the moral foundation for the individual’s revolt against communities and families. This is what some historians have called affective individualism.
Key Points
• Modern utilitarian individualism makes romantic love difficult to sustain.• The separation of sexuality from emotions makes it more difficult to experience love.• Women’s demands for equality challenge the previous stability of accepted gender roles.• There are tensions between modern family structures and the desire for excitement.

Edith Hall - Aristotle's ethics: the journey towards happiness

Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at Durham University, discusses Aristotle and why his ideas are still relevant.
 
About Edith Hall
"Professor of Classics at Durham University and Fellow of the British Academy. I’m a classicist, originally focused on Ancient Greek theatre. I’ve spent most of my career blending data from ancient Greek literature with sociology, history, political theory and philosophy. I like to write about the ancient world in its holistic form, relating individuals and their ideas to important cultural, historical and political moments."
 
Aristotle and ethics
Aristotle was one of the two great founders of the entire Western philosophical tradition. He was taught by Plato – who was really the founder – absorbed everything Plato had told him and then developed it in numerous fascinating and subtle ways, also in ways that I think are much more relevant to the 21st century.
He was the greatest intellectual of all time because he was as equally interested in natural science as in what we call the humanities and philosophical subjects, but what interests me most is that he founded ethics. That is the fully developed philosophical inquiry into how we should behave and how our behaviour will affect our psychological state. Plato only thought about that from the point of view of the top down, so he invented an ideal republic. The actual well-being and behaviour of the citizens as individuals is very much secondary to the total organism. Aristotle took it the other way around and started with the human being, the individual, and worked outwards and upwards to how the whole community would look.
 
Key Points
• Aristotle founded ethics, a philosophical inquiry to guide people on how to live and interact with others, but with no divine element.
• He believed that humans are animals with the capacity to reason, plan and deliberate, which therefore gives us a moral imperative to protect the Earth and its inhabitants.
• Aristotle encouraged continually re-examining individually and commonly held beliefs in order to improve, and believed doing what we love would lead us to achieve our telos.

Barry Smith - The philosophy of wine

Barry Smith, Director of the Institute of Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study, talks about the philosophy of wine.
About Barry Smith
"I'm a professor of philosophy and Director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London School of Advanced Study. I'm a philosopher of mind and language, and I'm interested in how these systems help put us in touch with the world around us and with ourselves, and I'm especially interested in the senses and our sense of taste and smell."
 
The power of smell
When we understand that our knowledge of the world first comes to us through our senses, we tend to think of the senses of sight and hearing, perhaps touch, as the higher senses – the ones that are most important and relied on. Taste and smell tend to receive much less attention in philosophy. People tend to think of the sense of smell as relatively unimportant, and many people will imagine that the experience of smelling is just a mere modification of our consciousness, as philosopher Bill Lycan notes; they think it’s not telling us anything. Yet the sense of smell is very important to connect us to the world around us. Our sense of smell is there to tell us about smoke, or fire, or danger, or even the presence of food. A sense of smell is often used to give us a sense of somebody’s emotional state. We can smell fear, although that’s very unconsciously processed. The sense of smell is also used in tasting food. What we call “tasting” is not mainly coming from the tongue. The tongue just gives us salt, sweet, sour, bitter, perhaps savoury. But think of all the flavours we can taste: mango, melon, strawberry, pineapple. We don’t have pineapple receptors on our tongues. All of that is coming from smell.
Key Points
• Smell and taste are often considered less important, but these senses are key to connecting us to the world around us.
• Wine tasting opens up philosophical questions about subjectivity and objectivity. Is taste a matter of subjective experience? Or can we perceive the objective quality of a wine?
• Through prompts and guiding questions, we can use our senses to discover not just what we like, but why we like it.

Emanuele Coccia - The importance of beauty in the selection of species

Emanuele Coccia, Associate Professor of Historical Anthropology at EHESS, examines nature and beauty.
 
About Emanuele Coccia
"I am Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. I’m working on art, fashion and ecology. I published The Life of Plants four years ago, and this year I published a book called Metamorphoses."
 
How species modify other species
We normally think of nature as a pre-existing set of elements or space. This is because we fail to recognise that every living being has exactly the same agency that we have towards not-living space. Every living being modifies the environment, just as we do. Plants, for example, shape the world through their very existence and every living species modifies other living species – again, just as we do. In this sense, flowers are a very interesting part of the plant.
We often forget that flowers are mainly sexual organs. In a way, that makes our practice of giving flowers to our partner very strange because every time that we do so, we are essentially offering a bunch of penises and vaginas. But flowers are also strange and interesting because they are ephemeral sexual organs. They are sexual organs which are built and rebuilt every spring. Moreover, they are normally hermaphrodites, containing both masculine and feminine parts, but self-fertilisation is impossible.
Therefore, the task of flowers is to attract an individual from not just a different species but an entirely different kingdom to enter the sexual encounter of vegetal individuals and to decide who is mating with whom. In this way, flowers are putting their own biological and genetic destiny into the hands of a different organism, a third organism belonging to a totally different kingdom.
 
Key Points
• Every living being modifies the environment, and every living species modifies other living species.
• Many morphological variations cannot be explained by natural selection; aesthetic criteria also shape the evolution of species.
• If evolution is influenced by arbitrary choices of an aesthetic nature, then we can think of every species as biotic art.