Written by The Prometheus Staff | 18 January 2010

The flaw revolves around the concept of evolution. The philosophic import of evolution cannot be underestimated. As Peter Bowler explains in his masterful Evolution: The History of an Idea, the philosophic impact of evolution may be even greater than its scientific impact. The concept of a changing universe, one whose development is governed by random, independent and decentralized action, stood at fundamental odds with the vast majority of mainstream philosophies. Not only did Darwin's theory defenestrate William Paley's concept of a grand Deity designing a static universe in perfect detail, but it obliterated a line of philosophic thought dating back to Plato and Aristotle.

Unfortunately for Miss Rand, the impact of evolutionary thought is not kind to the tenets of Objectivism, either. Objectivism's fundamental axioms of Aristotlelian logic, the nearly unlimited power of human reason, and the concept of human psychology as a tabula rasa, crumble upon exposure to what Daniel Dennett calls the "universal acid" of evolutionary theory.

As well-informed students of Ayn Rand's work should know, Miss Rand's conscious ignorance of evolutionary theory is nearly legendary.

As Nathaniel Branden related:

"I remember being astonished to hear [Rand] say one day, 'After all, the theory of evolution is only a hypothesis.' I asked her, 'You mean you seriously doubt that more complex life forms — including humans — evolved from less complex life forms?' She shrugged and responded, 'I'm really not prepared to say,' or words to that effect. I do not mean to imply that she wanted to substitute for the theory of evolution the religious belief that we are all God's creation; but there was definitely something about the concept of evolution that made her uncomfortable."

There was, of course, good reason for her discomfort. The dynamism of evolution is fundamentally incompatible with the static logic that underpins Objectivist metaphysics.

One of Objectivism's fundamental axioms is that "existence is identity," which Rand derived from Aristotle's law of identity. But as the famed evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr put it in his magnum opus The Growth of Biological Thought, "Aristotle was opposed to evolution of any kind." The proverbial acorn does not fall far from the tree.

In fact, the theory of evolution shows us that existence is a process of evolving identity, and that despite the apparent fixity of species and organisms, all life is the temporary product of an evolutionary process. The law of identity might be a useful heuristic for limited human rationality, but it is nothing close to an objective law of the natural world. Far from the "A is A" certainty of Aristotlelian-Randian thought, evolution holds that change is the only true constant. Time's arrow specializes in contradiction.

One of the most fundamental forms of identity in the natural world - the species - is in fact the temporary outcome of a continuous process of change and adaptation. Even on the highest level of complexity, the building blocks of biological life are continually regenerated, mutated, and modified on an evolutionary timescale. 98% of the atoms in our bodies were not there a year ago. The pancreas, for example, replaces most of its cells every 24 hours. We get new skin every month and a new skeleton ever three months. Even in the brain, 98% of the protein is recycled every month, and 100% of the atoms are replaced within a year. "Physiologically," the theoretical physicist F. David Peat wrote, "we get a totally new self every seven years."

Rand missed all of this because she never understood evolution. In typical fashion, Rand wrote, "I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent."

The problem with that is evolution is not just some high school debate team resolution on which one takes a side. It is a fundamental aspect of the natural world that has a profound impact on the very universe which produced Man, his rationality, and comprises the matter with which he interacts.

The bigger problem is that Rand's ignorance of evolution encouraged the flaws of Objectivism. A related error involves Rand's concept of human nature. She explicitly denies that man has a tendency to evil, and claims, "Man’s emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to program—and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses."

Evolutionary psychology exposes this hopeful philosophizing as pure hogwash. Human psychology is far from a tabula rasa, and is hard-wired with various biases, heuristic tendencies, and social instincts which mitigate against all attempts to employ pure rationality. The incredible social and technological achievements of mankind are indeed in large part thanks to our ability to transcend these evolutionary handicaps, but to gainsay their existence is sheer misrepresentation of scientific reality.

While all of this repudiates the fundamental premises of Objectivism, the good news is that much of Rand's eloquent arguments for freedom and capitalism are in fact confirmed by evolutionary theory as well. In fact, many scholars believe Darwin got his ideas for evolution from reading Adam Smith. Darwin's fundamental insight that complex designs don't need a central Designer, but rather can occur through competition, individual action, and goal-directed activity, is as powerful an argument for capitalism as Atlas Shrugged. Had Rand concerned herself with scientific fact rather than self-confident rhetoric, she might have seen the opportunity to improve her philosophic tenets on the strength of what Dennett aphoristically called "Darwin's dangerous idea."

Atlas Shrugged is successful because it demonstrates the terrible empirical consequences of government interference in the economy. It demonstrates that when government interferes with free choice, the evolution of society ceases, and entropic stagnation takes hold. In this, she is wholly consonant with the fact and reality of evolution, and her work is grounded in metaphysical truth. It is only when she extrapolates this insight into her static, rigid, and artificial philosophic edifice of Objectivism that the truth absconds from her side.

In the end, evolution teaches us that Miss Rand was about 80% correct. Her powerful defenses of capitalism and freedom are alluringly simple yet frustratingly incomplete. But evolution also gives us another cause for optimism. Rand's work constitutes a form of evolution in itself: an incomplete but profound step forward, that serves a useful purpose until it is replaced by something more fit for its time.

What will replace it? Only time will tell. But in the meantime, give Darwin the posthumous prize for finding the logical error in her theory.