Ask Wednesday: What did Darwin say to read monkeys for?

...a modern continuation
of Darwin’s “M” project
[About  Frans de Waal²]

Edited by Morris Dean

On page 128 of Charles Darwin’s notebook “M” [of “metaphysical” considerations], Darwin wrote in the summer of 1838, when he had already formulated the thesis of common descent but not yet the mechanism of natural selection¹:

Plato says in Phaedo that our “necessary ideas” arise from the preexistence of the soul, [they] are not derivable from experience — read monkeys for preexistence.

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1. P. 130 of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, by Daniel C. Dennett, and Raphael Scholl’s March 12, 2014 blog article, “Primates and Philosophers: Read monkeys for preexistence.”
2. Quote from Frans de Waal: "To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us."

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean