An evolutionary perspective, which is currently enjoying a revival in the social sciences, raises the possibility of a major transformation in the study of political development and modernization. It may be desirable to supplement (and in some instances replace) the concept of “political development” with the concept of “political evolution.” Political development may be likened to the biological process of ontogeny. It involves the construction of a viable set of political qua cybernetic processes and structures at any level of social organization, from wolf packs to human families to empires. Political evolution is an aspect of phylogeny. It involves the invention, elaboration, and diffusion of novel political forms of all kinds, only some of which may be more effective, or inclusive, or democratic, etc. Nor are all evolutionary changes necessarily “better” (i.e., more adaptive). Political development is concerned with problems of social engineering, while political evolution is concerned with architectonics—with the emergence of functionally significant political innovations. Political development is always situation-specific, while political evolution is also historical and may include changes that diffuse and become “species-wide.” Political evolution is thus a dimension of the larger process of biological evolution. The emergence of political systems, which long predates the evolution of humankind, constitutes a set of adaptive strategies with significant evolutionary consequences. Political development and political evolution may go hand in hand, but this is not always the case. A particular polity may develop or decay independently of the larger process of political evolution. Among the many theoretical implications of this conceptual reformulation, we briefly address the impact on functionalist theory, modernization theory, social mobilization theory, political economy (positive theory), world systems theory, dependency theory, and contemporary Marxist views.

The plea of Corning and Hines to replace the concept of political development with that of political evolution addresses the conceptual obfuscation engendered by the plethora of definitions that pervade the literature on development. In a cogently argued paper they review the mainstream literature and briefly refer to alternative perspectives now wellentrenched in the mainstream of social science. They recast these perspectives through synthesis of abstract ideas and set forth the parameters in which a theory of political evolution might be utilized. Their push for interdisciplinary inquiry attempts to undermine ethnocentric and value-laden notions of political science. All these advances, however, merit critical assessment.

Corning and Hines' assertions at the beginning of their article are correct. The political development literature is in “disarray.” There is dissensus on definitions and measures. The term ‘political evolution’ is seldom used in any technical or precise sense. Political scientists are mostly “unaware of the burgeoning literature… on the causal dynamics underlying the evolution of society in general and of politics and the state in particular,” and their “knowledge of pre-modern politics” does tend to be “sketchy.” The time is “ripe” (as always?) for “fresh approaches.” The introduction or reintroduction of “an evolutionary perspective” could be, depending on how it is defined, a “radical departure” from dominant frames of reference in political science.

Corning and Hines make a useful contribution to the study of politics by distinguishing sharply between “political development” and “political evolution.” Their emphasis on the multidisciplinary dimensions of real life changes as they occur (and have occurred) throughout the world is also needed. We must, assuredly, go beyond political science, both to the other social sciences (including economics) and also, notably, to the life sciences.

Although I will respond to each commentator separately, some of my responses will be applicable more generally.

Let me begin by saying that I do appreciate several of the commentators' observations and I shall respond to those below. Before doing so, however, I must add that there are a number of suggestions in the commentaries that seem to me useful only to the extent they reveal the failure of the commentators to read our article carefully, to do a little homework, to grasp some of the points we were making, or all three. I am mindful of the fact that all three commentators are recognized scholars in the more traditional field of comparative politics who may have had little or no contact with the literature of politics and the life sciences. Nor should I assume they would have any familiarity with the substantial literature in anthropology, archaeology, history, and social biology dealing with the evolution of social systems and the origins of the state upon which we have drawn and which has become so familiar to Corning and me that we are sometimes forgetful of the need to provide more examples and references, depending upon the reading audience.

Modern Darwinian biology seems to promote nihilism, for it seems to teach that there is no rationally discoverable standard in nature for giving meaning to life. The purpose of this article is to argue for a revival of Aristotle's biological teleology as a reasonable alternative to biological nihilism. The article begins with Edward Wilson's vain struggle against nihilism. Then it is argued that a teleological understanding of nature is assumed in the practice of medicine, as illustrated by one case from Oliver Sacks' neurological practice. The article then considers the importance of biological teleology for Aristotle's moral and political philosophy, and attention is given to some points of agreement and disagreement with contemporary sociobiologists. The main part of the article is then devoted to a defense of Aristotle's biology against the five objections that might be made by a Darwinian biologist. Finally, the article illustrates the practical implications of this issue for bioethics by considering the recent work of Engelhardt.

In a time of nihilism, power determines political purpose-the power of a passion or of a pressure group. The American political community is suffering from nihilism. It is manifest in the erosion of our moral tradition and in the reduction of our political system to a weakly umpired struggle of interest groups for control of public policy. More frequently than not, policy represents simply the lowest common denominator of group demands, a compromise among the passions. The incipient erosion of civil liberties in the face of the long-term decay of the tradition signals the approach of the master passion.

Arnhart's timely and provocative article attempts to resolve the value crisis of the modern biological and sociobiological sciences by reconciling these sciences with Aristotle's biological teleology. The idea that modern biology, like modern science in general, will engender a value crisis is hardly new. By engaging in ostensibly objective, quantitative, valuefree inquiry into the character of human and nonhuman organic life, scientific biology strips these forms of life of their traditional values. Biological science itself has failed to generate a new set of qualitative values to replace the discredited notions of myth, religion, and philosophy. This value nihilism has become particularly ominous in the contemporary period as military, ecological, and biomedical developments undermine our traditional assumptions about the character of organic life-and indeed may threaten the existence of that organic life. Perhaps it is an inevitable twist in the history of ideas that Aristotle's biological teleology, the bete noire of modern biological science, should be offered as a possible source for a new biological value system. Arnhart contends that Aristotle's biological teleology-i.e., the notion that species have their own ends and purposes-is both compatible with the most up-to-date biological research and can serve as a source for qualitative biological values. By adopting a teleological perspective, the ends and purposes of species not only describe essential elements of these species, but also prescribe an inherent, biological foundation for value judgments about them.

There is a reasonable urgency today about clarifying the relationship between biology and human affairs. A growing genetic technology is an obvious reason for concern. But behind that is the real crisis, at once ethical and educational. The “moral” teachings that descend from the new scho~ls of biology - of which sociobiology may be considered representative - are easy deductions from rigid reductionist theories, requiring no inquiry about the limits of theory, and thus ready for popular consumption. Arnhart clearly recognizes the philosophical dimensions of our situation in his article “Aristotle's Biopolitics”. His suggestion that we begin our rethinking of bioethics with serious study of one of the greatest biologists and ethical thinkers seems to me a timely one. Modern scientific methods engender ceaseless advances and ceaseless controversies, but they ‘appear impotent to give us, as Aristotle did, a reasonable view of our own species’ place and purpose.

As Arnhart acknowledges, the major intellectual challenge of the 20th century is to justify moral judgments rationally and to provide moral authority for political action when individuals meet as moral strangers who do not share common moral assumptions. This is the task of a secular morality that aspires to transcend particular religious or ideological commitments. The arguments for nihilism suggest that such a task cannot be successfully completed. There are three ways one might attempt to escape the threat of nihilism. First, one might endeavor to show that the Aristotelian project to read human moral goals and the lineaments of proper political structure from the characteristics of human biology can be successful, despite the skepticism of authors who have articulated the naturalistic fallacy: from what is the case, one cannot conclude what ought to be the case. A neo-Aristotelian approach would need to derive from the biological nature of humans a proper code for human conduct and morally justified guidelines for human political action. Second, one might attempt to discover, as Kant had hoped, content in the very nature of reason. Here the “nature” at stake is not an external biological nature, but the characteristics of reason or reasoning itself. A contemporary example of the Kantian undertaking is found in Rawls' Theory of Justice (1971). The Aristotelian and Kantian traditions provide two quite different senses of “natural,” from which Western thinkers have attempted (in different ways) to establish the content of natural law and to justify moral and political rules.

Being neither a biologist nor an expert on biopolitics, it is with considerable reluctance that I venture into the vast and intimidating domain mapped out in Arnhart's learned article. My own knowledge of the field is limited to what an interested observer is likely to have absorbed, admittedly in more or less random fashion, by reading the popular journals and engaging in occasional debate with scientists, some of them sociobiologists. Here as elsewhere, one cannot help being struck by the enormous difficulties that the growth of scientific specialization and the revelation of hitherto unsuspected links between disciplines once thought to be relatively independent of each other have created, not only for the amateur but for scientists themselves. It says something about our present situation that many of the terms employed as a matter of course by Arnhart and others-sociobiology, bioethics, biopolitics, biomedics, and the like-are not to be found in any dictionary that is more than ten or fifteen years old.

“The philosophic attitude is a resolute attempt to enlarge the understanding of the scope of application of every notion which enters into our current thought” (Whitehead, 1938:233-34). There is probably no parallel in the history of thought either to Aristotle's breadth of scholarly attainment or to the historical reach of his intellectual influence. Sociobiologists, therefore, can only be enthusiastic about any attempt, such as Arnhart's, to bring such resources to bear on their still young endeavors.

I strongly agree with what I take to be Arnhart's basic claims: that Aristotle's teleological biology is plausible in the light of what we now think about good scientific practice, and that it provides a kind of basis or vocabulary for moral and practical deliberation that is lacking in nonteleological or reductionist biology. Arnhart's defense of these claims is important both because he suggests a more expansive notion of what counts as biological science and because he in effect challenges Macintyre's (1981) claim that Aristotle's biology is “metaphysical” and so cannot serve as a basis for theorizing about moral and political matters. Arnhart makes his case well, and I was especially instructed by his discussion of Sacks' work as an example of a teleological vocabulary applied to moral and psychiatric questions.

Arnhart's “Aristotle's Biopolitics: A Defense of Biological Teleology against Biological Nihilism” is both a valuable and yet at the same time a problematic study. Its value for political science lies in Arnhart's reminder that for many of the most important thinkers in the history of Western political thought their efforts to discover and articulate the principles of a political order necessarily presupposed a specific understanding of the order of nature itself. Given this, the fundamental political challenge of the modern scientific and industrial revolutions not only includes the new instruments and techniques of organization and manipulation made possible by the discoveries of modern science, but also those cultural and intellectual assumptions which create that very environment within which such instruments and techniques first became possible. In illustrating this intimate relationship between modern natural science and modern political science, Grant (1976:124) has written: “What calls out for recognition here is that the same apprehension of what it is to be ‘reasonable’ leads men to build computers and to conceive the universal and homogenous society as the highest political goal. The ways such machines can be used must be at one with certain conceptions of political purposes because the same kind of ‘reasoning’ made the machines and formulated the purposes. To put the matter extremely simply, the modern physical sciences and the modern political sciences have developed in mutual interpenetration, and we can only begin to understand that interpenetration in terms of some common source from which both forms of science found their sustenance.”

“In the theatre,” Giuseppe Verdi once explained, “long is synonymous with boring. And boring is the worst of all styles.” Those who read scholarly journals must be more patient than opera audiences, and this surely must be true of those who have just read my long article and the nine commentaries. I will not test the limits of that patience, however, by responding at length to all the comments. I am grateful to all the commentators for their instructive remarks, which I will be pondering for a long time. But now I can only answer briefly some of the most prominent objections.