Peter Singer, A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, And Cooperation (Book Review‪)‬

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), ix + 70 pp. The term "Darwinism" is used today to refer both to the main theoretical framework of the biological sciences and also to the typically racist, teleological view of culture and social history associated with the Victorian era. This ambivalence is worth noting whenever the subject of human nature arises in the context of Darwinian theory. It is a paradoxical ambivalence, since these two senses of the word are essentially exclusive. Despite the fact that racist and sexist doctrines have been entertained and in some cases endorsed on the basis of purported scientific proof, wherever such theories have been carefully scrutinized, science has tended to repudiate them. (1)