Field Museum Spring Systematics Symposium; Chicago, IllinoisMay 1990

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The understanding and meaning of ethical judgements are of greatest importance to all citizens. Questions of particular interest to the scientific community, however are whether there is a relation between ethics and evolution and whether a system of evolutionary ethics is a legitimate subject of analysis. These questions, initiated by Herber Spencer's work in the 1870's, have been answered in the past either in the positive, or vehemently opposed. Evolutionary ethics blossomed as Social Darwinism in the later part of the nineteenth and the beginnings of the twentieth centuries. Now, probably strengthened by sociobiology and the associated controversies, there is a renewed interest in, and a reexamination of, the possibilities of evolutionary ethics. Presently a rigorous (and emotional) rethinking of evolutionary ethics cuts across political and feminist positions. On the one hand there exists an evolutionary, conservative political view based on evolutionary biology which lends itself to support the conservative views of sociobiology, and on the other hand sociologists and even communists have claimed an evolutionary moral ground. The symposium will analyze the position taken on evolutionary ethics, point out the difficulties with all interpretations, and argue for and against the legitimacy of ethical analysis of evolutionary ethics.