Had Reverend Jenyns said yes: A small decision with a big impact on biology

Finding a moral compass . . . without a compass

“…Wallace became a spiritualist, suggesting that humans had an innate moral sense of right and wrong . He had a more group‐oriented view than Darwin did and was a socialist who worked for the ethic of a more equitable, and hence, cooperative society. Unlike Darwin, his ethics were derived at least in part by excepting humans from the pure competitive biological process of evolution.…”

“…Alfred Russel Wallace discovered evolution independently at about the same time as Darwin did, but he reacted quite differently. 2 He did not think that natural selection could have produced human traits like mathematical and musical abilities. After all, hunter-gatherers didn't compose piano sonatas or work out differential equations.…”

Are you a “darwinian”?

“…Historically, Darwinian principles have been reviewed from accepting or skeptical points of view in various ways . But even with the assumption that selection is the pervasive force, there is the ever‐cycling debate about whether group rather than individual‐based selection is important or, indeed, even exists . In any case, the various reservations are often if not typically elided, perhaps because they discomfit tidy “Darwinian” explanation.…”