Getting it right,
and wrong,
reter Medawar
Th Th k e Heel of Achilles. Essays 1968-1973. Arthur 'eestler (Hutchinson £3.00) Aa„rthilr Koestler is a brilliantly clever man, this collection of essays, lectures and eviews is compulsively readable. Among the arrnaettejs upon which he expresses opinions ,tern",e human Predicament, education, conpsn'„1),°raty art, the reductionist concept of life, olinguistics, national differences in Oehiatric diagnosis, the medicicracy that is '.,Parently to be our future ruling class, the 0110gical timebomb" and the shortcomings wht.11ose simpler-minded forms of zoologism uleh see us as naked apes or as animals ce 11)elled to make war for sexual territories. whql,e main piece and that which colours the k"°le book, is 'The Urge to Self-destruction '. 4 estler believes that something has gone te "g in human evolution and that some • Itrrible evolutionary misadventure has made bel?1°ssible for human beings to indulge in the ; the.avioural enormity of killing members of • ,.11!' own species. 1 su he crisis of our time," he says, "can be I thi:lirlied up in a single sentence" — in effect, : w,Saxe Hiroshima mankind has had to live 1 bi 'iotin the prospect of its extinction as a I et'ogical species. It is as if, he says, the first N.,c),Inic bombs had produced a kind of p"rhoactive fall-out, creating "such bizarre ; ,enornena " as hippies, drop-outs, flower ro..ple and barefoot crusaders without a cross. 01,1inink it intolerably glib to interpret the ser,3,i,os of such people as if they were irlogical mutants analogous to genetic azi 'ants. The figure of speech is a brilliant — thoeXcellent example of the aberration of tlanught I have described as " poetism." Its hzeer is to create an illusion of serious diranatory significance which is not wholly lied by an excusatory "it is as if " itil:.1InPly that this consciousness of our i,;11,ding end dates from the bomb kil "sinns is surely to do less than justice to pre those earnest chiliasts who so insistently lcted the end of all things — human be(14 nature generally, the world itself — intive the lot. What became of the psychoacee fall-out from their doomladen pronounrents? I havnlYself do not believe that human beings tlaue.anY 'innate characteristics' — have any tie„'es in their genetic programmes — that °...eYs t ltehr em the possibility of improvement. makes much of the coexistence in the'llan beings of an ancient, reptilian brain. evelLrchipallium and the more recently het 'yti brain, the neopallium, but he does seern to me to draw the right conclusion tie(;`it the capabilities with which the aboDallium has endowed man. What has been ve titr. all else important in the changes unthe?rie by man in the past five or ten tx0,,f and years is that non-genetic or the 'uniatic' evolution which is founded upon 1r0 Propagation of knowledge and know-how SS to generation. For this lltinZ4s imitativeness and teachability are allkli'rtant. From our point of view (as Prof. S. the arnett has pointed out) 'aping' is probably llieniost significant behavioural trait of apes. ftlak!tyle of evolution which these faculties Possible is one in which learning by IL_ throhrle,oce is possible. By contrast, the is Ned,:'`go which ordinary genetic evolution s i %D'eted is unteachable: it does not change n °Ilse to our inclinations or even to our
real needs.
In spite of pollution and of all their abominable disfigurements of character and spirit, human beings, considered generally, have improved during the past few millennia and have made the world a better place to live in. Koestler believes that there is an intrinsic biological limit to this melioration, but I do ,not.
The passages that make one grateful to Koestler are those in which he combines a good biological understanding with his own clear insight as a writer:
The theory that wars are caused by pent-up aggressive drives which can find no other outlet has no foundation either in history or in psychology. Anybody who has served in the ranks of an army can testify that aggressive feelings towards the so-called enemy hardly play a part in the dreary routine of waging war: boredom and discomfort, not hatred; homesickness, sex-starvation and longing for peace dominate the mind of the anonymous soldier. The invisible enemy is not an individual on whom aggression could focus; he is not a person but an abstract entity, a common denominator, a collective portrait. Soldiers fight the invisible, impersonal enemy either because they have no other choice, or out of loyalty to king and country, the true religion, the righteous cause. The are motivated not by aggression, but by devotion. When he writes like this Koestler carries complete conviction, but when later on he writes "the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression but an excess of devotion," we again feel uneasy.
Sir Peter Medawar, who has won the Nobel Prize for Medicine, has most recently published The Hope of Progress.
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