Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte

Sleigh

What is the ‘moral authority of

nature’? How does science claim
it, and how does fiction fight back
through its reconstructions of the
body?
Editors of The Moral Authority of Nature, Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal,
state that the moral authority of nature can be observed being invoked on a
daily basis in the media. This implies that it is a commonly used argument, and
yet the very term “nature” is problematic and can be understood in a number of
ways, for instance as simply ‘the natural physical world’, or as the ‘essential
qualities or characteristics by which something is recognised’1: the authority
which sets the boundaries of normality. Many people will at some point remark
upon a behaviour or invention being natural or unnatural depending on whether
they believe it is moral or not. However, “nature” is also understood as ‘a causal
agent creating and controlling things in the universe’2, and it is in allocating
nature the role of a higher power that it has been imbued with authority.

The concept of the “moral authority of nature” is derived from the philosophical
concept of ethical or moral naturalism. This is based upon the argument that we
should defer ‘to our present background state of general scientific understanding
as the best story we now have about the universe and its furnishings’3 and to use
this understanding to assess what is good. Once, religion derived justification for
morality from nature. Since God was good and the creator of all of nature, nature
must therefore be morally aligned with good. By 20th century Britain, religion was
replaced by science as the source of the best story, but the evidence and

1 “Nature”, Wordnet, Princeton University,

2010,<http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=nature>

2 “Nature”, Wordnet, Princeton University,

2010,<http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=nature>

3 Lenman, James, "Moral Naturalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter

2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/naturalism-moral/>.
Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte
Sleigh

justification for morality remained rooted in observations from nature: it carried

the moral authority of the ‘allegedly neutral judge’4.

We associate what is “natural” with good, and what is “unnatural” with bad, but
whether something is considered natural or unnatural is based on observations,
which are frequently given authority by being confirmed by scientists working
with empirical methodology. Ironically, empirical is simply defined as ‘pertaining
to, or derived from, experience’,5 which can include observation. Scientists
therefore assume a position of authority based on their observations of nature;
these observations are given authority by the scientific methodology. Simplified
thus, one might argue that it is because they are scientists making the
observations rather than anyone else that they are able to assume such
interpretative authority.

Historically, even basing morality on observations has been called into question,
making the concept of the moral authority of nature yet more problematic. In A
Treatise of Human Nature, first published in the 18th Century, David Hume
suggested that frequently, statements move from the descriptive “is” to the
prescriptive “ought”; from the way things have been observed to be frequently
we derive the way things should be. This demonstrates a weak argument
because ‘a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable,
how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely
different from it.’6 Why “ought” things be a certain way simply because they
have been observed to be that way in some cases?

Furthermore, in 1903, G. E. Moore published Principia Ethica, in which he argued

that ethical naturalism involves a ‘naturalistic fallacy’7 because it supposes that
‘goodness, which Moore takes to be the fundamental ethical value, can be
defined in naturalistic terms, in terms, say, of pleasure or desire or the course of
evolution.’8 Moore suggests that nature does not have an inherent morality, but
that philosophers mistakenly attribute morality to it based on observations of

4 Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal, “Doing What Comes Naturally”, The moral
authority of nature, Lorraine Daston, Fernando Vidal (eds.), (University of Chicago Press,
2004) p.7

5 " empirical, a." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. (Oxford
University Press, 2000)
<http://dictionary.oed.com.chain.kent.ac.uk/cgi/entry/00181778>.

6 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (NuVision Publications, LLC, 2007) p. 335
Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte
Sleigh

qualities such as how evolved or pleasure-giving something is, which are not
equal to the definition of “goodness”. Like Moore, authors have questioned
whether more evolved or pleasure-giving is actually an indication of goodness.
Through reconstructing the human body society in the forms which science
suggests they ought to be or have been based on the claim of support from the
moral authority of nature, authors have demonstrated the dangers of following
such thinking.

Following the First World War, many people sought a new model for society,
believing in the light of the recent bloodshed that the current one was no longer
suitable. Scientists such as H. G. Wells in The Open Conspiracy (1928) have
suggested that scientists are the ones who should dictate where the future of
humanity lies in order for the best results to be achieved. One of the places that
scientist sought guidance for how to pursue this new model for society was in
etymology, and more specifically the study of the so-called “social insects” such
as ants and termites.

Entymologists such as Auguste Forel and William Morton Wheeler saw parallels in
insect and human society, and provided suggestions as to how humanity could
save itself from the decline which they predicted would come if society
proceeded along the course it was currently on. Forel voiced concerns about
‘striking examples of progressive degeneration’9 and suggested that one reason
for this degeneration might be that modern warfare ‘picks out for sacrifice the
men who are best in every way, and is entirely and immediately cacogenic.’10
The idea that humanity had become enfeebled was also suggested in The

7 A debated term because ‘not only is it not especially a problem for naturalists, it is also
not really a fallacy even if Moore is right that it embodies a mistake of some kind. For it is
highly uncharitable to charge anyone who advances the sorts of arguments to which
Moore alludes as having committed a logical fallacy. Rather, charity demands that we
interpret such arguments as enthymatic, and usually this is easy enough.’ from Michael
Ridge, “Moral Non-Naturalism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/moral-non-naturalism/>.

8 Baldwin, Tom, "George Edward Moore", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Winter 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/moore/>.

9 Auguste Forel, The Social World of the Ants Compared with that of Man, (G. P. Putnam’s
Sons Ltd., 1928) p.345

10 Auguste Forel, The Social World of the Ants Compared with that of Man, (G. P.
Putnam’s Sons Ltd., 1928) p.347
Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte
Sleigh

Termitodoxa, where Wheeler created the character Wee-Wee 43rd Neotenic King
of the 8,429th Dynasty of the Bellicose Termites, whom he used to voice
recommendations of how to improve human society by modelling it upon the
termites.

Fears of degeneration were also evident in twentieth century research into

human evolution. Following the emergence of evolutionary theories such as
Darwin presented in his On the Origin of Species, humanity was understood to be
a product of natural selection. In realising this, paleoanthropologists argued that
‘[b]ecause the human mind and behaviour are products of evolution, we must
reconstruct the selective pressures that shaped our lineage in order to
understand ourselves today.’11 For instance, in 1955, M. A. MacConail wrote that
‘it is accepted that Neanderthal Man is an aberrant form of the human genus.’12
This implied that the Neanderthal was an example of where degeneration could
lead: to humans who were abnormal and ‘deviating from any moral standard’.13

Despite scientists concerns and assertions that they could lead the way to a
better society, some writers fought their claim to the moral authority of nature
and suggested that actually their ideas for the future of humanity were
inherently flawed. One such writer was Aldous Huxley, who stated that Brave
New World, published in 1932, was a ‘picture of society in which the attempt to
re-create human beings in the likeness of termites has been pushed almost to
the limits of the possible’.14 In the novel, he portrayed a world where scientists’
recommendations for society based upon the moral authority of nature within
entomology have been carried through.

Wheeler based his suggestions on thinking of society as a superorganism, and

began from the issues of providing nutrition, reproduction and protection,
‘problems [that] could not be solved without a physiological division of labour

11 Carol Ward, “The Evolution of Human Origins”, American Anthropologist, Volume 105,
(Blackwell Publishing, 2003) p.77

12 M. A. MacConail, “Review: 182”, Man, (Royal Anthropological Institute, 1955) p. 171

13 From “aberrant, a.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. (Oxford
University Press. 4 Apr. 2000)
<http://dictionary.oed.com.chain.kent.ac.uk/cgi/entry/00181778>.

14 Course Booklet, p.12

Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte
Sleigh

among the individuals composing the society’.15 Wee-Wee suggested that ‘rigid
eugenics combined with rigid enforcement of the regulations requiring all
antisocial, diseased and superannuated individuals promptly to join the choir
invisible’16 aided the creation of a perfect society constructed of castes
manufactured in order to best fit the task assigned to them. Forel also endorsed
the use of a eugenically manufactured society ‘to grow closer to the ants and yet
remain men’17. A. J. Lustig suggests that Forel’s perfect society echoed that of
the Nazis in Germany after his death in that it ‘must be achieved – in fact, could
be achieved – only through total social control.’18 Forel himself presided over
involuntary eugenic sterilization,19 which he stated ‘if well applied, will even be
able to improve by small degrees the quality of our higher races’.20

Huxley used an insect simile to describe the lower castes in the novel: ‘like
aphides and ants, the leaf-green Gamma girls, the black Semi-Morons
swarmed’.21 Although scientists suggested that being predisposed towards a role
was desirable, in such descriptions of the unthinking lower castes, Huxley
demonstrated the risk of dehumanisation which can occur in genetic tampering.
In the reconstruction of the lower castes of humanity as insects, Huxley causes
the reader to question whether the result is still human, and what it is to be
human. He was perhaps positing that individual quirks and the search for one’s
role in society is part of what it is to be human.

In his novel The Inheritors, first published in 1955, William Golding also
challenged the claim by scientists to be capable of interpreting the moral
authority of nature. He suggested that their assumptions about early man and

15 William Morton Wheeler, Foibles of Insects and Men, (A.A. Knopf, 1928) p. 211

16 William Morton Wheeler, Foibles of Insects and Men, (A.A. Knopf, 1928) p. 213

17 Auguste Forel, The Social World of the Ants Compared with that of Man, (G. P.
Putnam’s Sons Ltd., 1928) p.339

18 A. J. Lustig, “Ants and the Nature of Nature in Forel, Wasmann, and Wheeler”, The
moral authority of nature, Lorraine Daston, Fernando Vidal (eds.), (University of Chicago
Press, 2004) p.290

19 A. J. Lustig, “Ants and the Nature of Nature in Forel, Wasmann, and Wheeler”, The
moral authority of nature, Lorraine Daston, Fernando Vidal (eds.), (University of Chicago
Press, 2004) p.290

20 Auguste Forel, The Social World of the Ants Compared with that of Man, (G. P.
Putnam’s Sons Ltd., 1928) p.350

21 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, (Penguin Books, 1967) p.59

Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte
Sleigh

other branches of the human evolutionary tree were flawed, which had been
demonstrated two years before publication of the novel in the debunking (1953)
of the Piltdown Man find. Piltdown man had been constructed to manipulate
scientific expectations of what the intermediate species would be like because of
scientists’ assumptions about what it was to be human. Many considered that
intelligence (which coincidentally was one of the characteristics most associated
with scientists) was the defining feature, and therefore that the large brain and
skull associated with higher mental capacity evolved prior to the smaller jaw and
teeth evolved through a dietary change. Misia Landau suggests, for instance,
that for Elliot Smith ‘the brain comes first so absolutely that his book The
Evolution of Man (1924) almost gives the impression that our ancestors had no
bodies. As with the hero of a fairy tale who fights a battle or slays a dragon to
the same end, the human ancestor as seen by Elliot Smith develops a large
brain’.22 Such expectations were noted by Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, who had
helped to identify the fraudulent find, when he claimed that the ‘apparent
paradox of the association of a simian jaw with a human brain is not surprising to
anyone familiar with recent research upon the evolution of man.’23

Although some scientists ‘dogmatically assumed that only one hominid species
could exist at any given time’24 perhaps tied to the re-evaluation of race in the
1950 UNESCO Statement on Race, one of the commonly believed theories of
human evolution in the twentieth century was that of the multi-regional origin of
modern humans, which suggested that different races evolved separately from
scattered groups of a common ancestor, and therefore that some races had
become “human” earlier, and so were more highly evolved or “more human”.
Some advocates of this thesis, such as Carleton S. Coon, used this model to
justify racial discrimination. Sir Arthur Smith Woodward asked his readership to:

22 Misia Landau, “Human Evolution as Narrative” originally published in American

Scientist, 72: 262-268, (1984)
<http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/2141/Landau.pdf> p.4

23 Charles Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward, "On the Discovery of a Palæolithic
Human Skull and Mandible", Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (1913)
<http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_report_finds/discov_paleolith.html>

24Robert N. Proctor, “Three Roots of Human Recency”, The moral authority of nature,
Lorraine Daston, Fernando Vidal (eds.), (University of Chicago Press, 2004) p.470
Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte
Sleigh

remember that when a superior animal arises it is likely to displace a less

well-equipped predecessor, and crowd it out to some distant place of
refuge where it can survive for a time without interference. When the
Anglo-Saxons invaded England they found it occupied by small dark
people known as Celts, who were less powerful than themselves. These
25
earlier occupants, therefore, were pushed into the hills of the West.

The moral authority of nature is invoked in this statement to suggest that not
only are aggression, dominance, and colonialism acceptable, they are actually
the natural behaviour of superior animal.

Like Huxley, one of the ways in which Golding called into question the ideas of
scientists was to make his reader question what it was to be human. Woodward
implied that the above traits are evidence of humanity and superiority, but
Golding appears to suggest the more cynical idea that it is violence and fear
which primarily separated homo sapiens from the supposedly inferior
Neanderthal. Lok, the Neanderthal protagonist of The Inheritors suggests that
some places are not desirous to travel to, and that ‘only some creature more
agile and frightened would dare that leap’26, perhaps alluding to the evolutionary
“great leap forward”27.

Invoking the moral authority of nature from their observations, Darwin and other
evolutionary theorists such as paleoanthropologists proposed that sexual
intercourse existed purely as a means to facilitate this “great leap” by advancing
species via sexual selection and reproduction. Golding demonstrates a resistance
to this suggestion in portraying the sexual act between homo sapiens as violent
act where ‘they wrestled, gasping without speech’28 compared with the
Neanderthals who ‘make love’29. He reconstructs the “human” as something
borne out of cruelty and aggression, compared with the gentle Neanderthal,

25 Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, The Earliest Englishman x, (WATTS & Co., 1948)
<http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_report_finds/earliest_english.html>

26 William Golding, The Inheritors, (Faber and Faber Limited, 1983) p.41

27 Robert N. Proctor, “Three Roots of Human Recency”, The moral authority of nature,
Lorraine Daston, Fernando Vidal (eds.), (University of Chicago Press, 2004) p.471

28 William Golding, The Inheritors, (Faber and Faber Limited, 1983) p.174

29 William Golding, The Inheritors, (Faber and Faber Limited, 1983) p.26
Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte
Sleigh

further causing the reader to question what humanity is and who is more
“human”.

Entomologists suggested that breeding be regulated as a form of quality control,

and Huxley depicted this carried to such extremes that sex no longer played a
role in reproduction. Just as the comparison of the lower castes with ants is
dehumanising, so is the suggestion that the species has become a manufactured
product rather than a natural creation. Life is devalued, as seen by the ‘maggoty’
children who ‘swarmed’ over the dying.30 Like Golding, Huxley forces his reader
to assess whether such a reconstruction of humanity based upon scientific
observations or recommendations is actually “human” at all.

As can be seen in documents such as The Open Conspiracy, scientists believed

that they were the ideal figures to lead the way to an improved society via their
objective methods such as eugenics, because their intelligence overruled their
irrational instincts: their minds dominated their bodies. Huxley and Golding
question this through their depiction of the leaders of their futuristic and
primitivistic societies. The homo sapien Tuami thinks disparagingly of his leader
whom he believes is foolish for being irrational enough to bow to a woman ‘for
her great heart and wit, her laughter and her white, incredible body’31,
undermining the suggestion by scientists that man is a rational being and it is
this rational intelligence which defines humanity, and instead suggesting that
any leader is flawed by irrational temptations. Huxley, by contrast, presents a
reconstruction of a leader who is so rational and intelligent that his arguments
about the society science has constructed for the greater good cannot be
countered by John the Savage, who can only rebel by ‘claiming the right to be
unhappy’32, a seemingly irrational argument but one which the reader can
empathise with. Huxley suggests that whilst society is superficially happy, they
do not know any other emotion and therefore their happiness is meaningless; the
rational arguments of Mustapha Mond are therefore negated because he fails to
achieve what he sets out to.

Not only were the proposed leaders questioned in literature, they even
undermine the significance of the constructs of civilisation which were lauded by

30 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, (Penguin Books, 1967) p.159

31 William Golding, The Inheritors, (Faber and Faber Limited, 1983) p.226

32 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, (Penguin Books, 1967) p.187

Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte
Sleigh

scientists as evidence of one of the highest forms of evolution. Forel and Wheeler
both seem to conclude that whilst society appeared to be a natural product of
evolution, ‘civil behaviour could be the product only of the most agonising
struggle against nature’33 towards civilisation. The Inheritors demonstrates homo
sapiens’ civilisation through sophisticated tools, weapons and boats for instance,
as well as the patriarchal structure recognisable in contemporary times. In the
symbolic dawn of man, Golding describes how they do not achieve a ‘return to
sanity and the manhood that seemed to have left them... they were what they
had been in the gap, haunted, bedevilled, full of strange irrational grief... or
emptied, collapsed and helplessly asleep’34. This description of insanity and lost
manhood suggests that civilisation, inventions and intelligence (in a form
recognisable to us) do not make for superiority. Additionally, in reconstructing
the world through Neanderthal senses which can perform ‘miracles of
perception’35 and in presenting the thoughts and confusions of Lok, Golding
allows the reader to empathise with the Neanderthals in the way that one would
to another “human”.

Similarly, in Brave New World, the characters the reader is most able to relate to
are Bernard, Helmholtz Watson and John the Savage, all of whom cannot fit into
society because of their unique ways of thinking about the world. The arts,
through Helmholtz love of poetry and John’s love of Shakespeare, are particularly
qualities which Huxley portrays as humanising.

In the essay “Human Evolution as Narrative”, Misia Landau suggests that

students of literature ‘are so conscious of narrative that some have argued it is
storytelling which makes us human’, citing the example of E. M. Forster’s belief
that Neanderthal’s told and listened to stories. 36 It would make sense, therefore,
that whilst scientists claim organisation and intelligence to be the qualities which
define humanity and can lead to a utopian society, writers such as Huxley and
Golding would claim storytelling and empathy as more important. Narrative is
the thing which they believe makes us recognisable as human and not the

33 A. J. Lustig, “Ants and the Nature of Nature in Forel, Wasmann, and Wheeler”, The
moral authority of nature, Lorraine Daston, Fernando Vidal (eds.), (University of Chicago
Press, 2004) p.307

34 William Golding, The Inheritors, (Faber and Faber Limited, 1983) p.224 - 225

35 William Golding, The Inheritors, (Faber and Faber Limited, 1983) p. 50

36 Misia Landau, “Human Evolution as Narrative” originally published in American

Scientist, 72: 262-268, (1984)
<http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/2141/Landau.pdf> p.1
Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte
Sleigh

unimaginative drones of the lower castes in Brave New World. Reconstructions of

a future where the human body is lacking in imagination and narrative or a past
where another species has the ability to describe “a picture” in their head allow
authors to fight back against scientific beliefs that society should advance at the
expense of individuals or that race, aggression, dominance, and colonialism
makes some more human than others.
Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte
Sleigh

Bibliography
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Alice White – HI776: Literature & Science in the C20 – Seminar Leader: Charlotte
Sleigh