Jonah:

I don’t actually find much to disagree with in your last, so — thank

God! — I can go on calling myself a conservative with a clear

conscience.

Perhaps I was reading Himmelfarb’s remarks too narrowly, as referring

to facts about human nature — which, I think you’ll agree, are hard

to come by, and not in much better supply at present than in the time

of Pericles. Sent back in a time machine to that time, with fluent

Greek, a tunic, and a decent pair of sandals, do you think you would

be at any advantage to the people you found yourself among, other than

in understanding of the natural world?

You perhaps were taking Himmelfarb more broadly, as making statements

about the human condition. I was reading “our individual human

nature.”

That our society is a much better one than Periclean Athens I will

certainly agree; and that the improvement is thanks in part to

philosophers (I’ll pass on theologians) I have no doubt. Most

certainly we have come to a better way of organizing our affairs.

That the improvement in our understanding of our human nature has been

correspondingly great, I flatly and vigorously deny.

That we shall soon enjoy a great increment in that understanding as a

result of the efforts of biologists, seems to me a very good bet.

We have found out more about the Solar System in the past 40 years

than we did in the preceding 4,000. That a similar jump in our

understanding of the springs of human thought and behavior will soon

(next few decades) be upon us is, I think, nearly certain. And just

as Newton stands behind all those pictures of Martian rocks, so Darwin

will stand behind the coming understandings of our human nature. His

were the crucial insights; all flowed from them; and if Himmelfarb

wants to try to pin “scientism” on him, I say Himmelfarb can go boil

her head.