Concerning MUTUAL AID: A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION (1902) by Peter Kropotkin; and Kropotkin's influence upon work by Ernest Everett Just, including an unpublished 400-page essay (1940)
MUTUAL AID: A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION (1902) by Peter Kropotkin (b. 1842, d. 1921) influenced the revised evolutionary biology advanced by Ernest Everett Just (b. 1883, d. 1941) in the last two chapters of his second book THE BIOLOGY OF THE CELL SURFACE (Philadelphia: P Blakiston's Son, 1939b) and in his unpublished 400-page essay connecting a revised evolutionary biology to social ethics (1940).
What is not yet appreciated about E. E. Just is that he produced a philosophical theory of life rooted in biology. And in addition to improving upon Darwinian explanations for evolution, Just offered resources for explaining the evolution of human social ethics. Just produced his “philosophy of organism” (Whitehead 1927-28: xi) by drawing upon observations from cellular biology, especially his observations of marine egg cells (Just 1939a), and by drawing upon other observations from zoology.
From zoology, Just drew upon a major supplemental correction to West European Darwinism offered by “the Russian Darwinists” (Kropotkin 1902: 13-14). The Russian Darwinists were influenced by an 1880 lecture “On the Law of Mutual Aid” by “zoologist, Professor Kessler, the then Dean of the St. Petersburg University” (Kropotkin 1902: 2-3, 12-26). Kessler’s ideas were advanced in MUTUAL AID: A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION (1902) by Russian zoologist Peter Kropotkin.
According to Kropotkin, the view held by West European Darwinists—that “the fittest” for survival are those best at competitive “mutual struggle”—is fatally inadequate. This view fails to explain zoological observations, including observations made by Darwin himself. Kropotkin argued that observations show that competitive “mutual struggle” AND cooperative “mutual aid” are both essential factors in evolutionary advances; and that “mutual aid” has “far greater importance” (Kropotkin 1902: 12).
Under “the fresh impression of the Origin of Species” (Darwin 1859), both Kesseler and Kropotkin started their zoological investigations looking for and expecting to see “keen competition between animals of the same species” with survival advantages for the most competitive (Kropotkin 1902: 13). Contrary to expectations, both observed that “those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest,” having “more chances to survive” and “the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization” (Kropotkin 1902: 12). Moreover, Kropotkin predicted that future science will receive evidence favoring the importance of “mutual aid” in evolution from the study of micro-organisms (Kropotkin 1902: 14).
Kropotkin predicted correctly. Evidence favoring the importance of “mutual aid” for evolution generally, and for human social-ethical evolution in particular, was presented in THE BIOLOGY OF THE CELL SURFACE (1939b) by Ernest Everett Just.
Here, invoking Kropotkin, Just says:
"Life is not only a struggle against the surroundings from which life came; it is also a co-operation with them. The Kropotkin theory of mutual aid and co-operation may be a better explanation of the cause of evolution than the prevailing popular conception of Darwin’s idea of the struggle for existence. …"
(Just 1939b: 367)
For Kropotkin and for Just, the importance of “mutual aid” for evolution in zoology—and the importance of “mutual aid” for evolution in micro-biology—indicate that mutual aid/ethics is important for explaining evolution in human societies.
From cellular biology to ethics: Finding an unpublished work by E. E. Just –
From cellular biology to ethics: Finding an unpublished work by E. E. Just –
Near the end of THE BIOLOGY OF THE CELL SURFACE (1939b), Just argues that “philosophical theories of life” should have “a biological basis” (1939b: 367). And, by studying biology, we may “seek the roots of man’s ethical behavior2” (Just 1939b: 367). His footnote says: “In a forthcoming essay, I deal with this point at greater length” (Just 1939b: 367 footnote 2 [originally in italics]).
What “forthcoming essay?”
Just’s “forthcoming essay”—on the biological roots of social ethical behavior—has not yet been published. What became this unpublished work? Where is it?
The first clue came from the biography—BLACK APOLLO OF SCIENCE: THE LIFE OF ERNEST EVERETT JUST (Oxford University Press, 1984 [c1983]) by MIT historian of science Kenneth R. Manning. Here Manning says that Just “worked hard on what was to be his last manuscript, ‘Ethics and the Struggle for Existence12’” (1984: 327). And Manning’s endnote refers to a letter about this last manuscript: “See Just to J. W. Buchanan, 15 April 1941, EEJ(H), box 125-2, folder 39. Drafts of this ms., later titled ‘The Origin of Man’s Ethical Behavior,’ are preserved in the Howard collection: EEJ(H), box 125-21, folder 396” (Manning 1984: 385, note 12). Accordingly, this first clue led me and co-investigator Lillie R. Jenkins to Howard University.
There, with help from Joellen ElBashir, chief librarian and curator at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, and Lillie R. Jenkins, MSIS; in July 2016 we discovered another relevant letter: a hardcopy of a typed 15 October 1940 letter from E. E. Just to W. C. Allee at the University of Chicago. In this letter, after making brief mention of his dramatic escape from Nazi occupied France, Just continues a discussion about publishing research on the social and ethical implications of biology. This letter says:
[]-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------[]
October 15, 1940
Dr. W. C. Allee
The University of Chicago
Chicago, Ill.
Dear Allee:
Your letter of October 11 has just reached me. Thanks!
To the last possible moment I stayed on in France but it would have been stupid to remain. When I realized the complete collapse, moral and spiritual, of all the people to whom I talked, I came to the decision that what I wished to accomplish over there was no longer attainable. Until the end of May I worked, always with increasing difficulties: these became so great that the previous bad time since September last seemed in retrospect a fairy tale. My escape was plenty dramatic enough, I can tell you. This too seems now a pretty tale; at the time it was all to strong stuff.
Sorry that my query disturbed you. My thought was that if you by chance had space available for a research paper, I should like to fill in. Far from my thought was to make a request which would in any wise cut in on your file of papers on hand. Am terribly glad that the journal is so far filled. As to the special paper: my thought was that you might not have got all such papers that you wish to have. I may send you yet the research thing, taking my chance as to date of publication. The other I can make use of in another direction.
(By the way, don’t forget to send me the reprint from Scientia on animal societies).
Have much to talk about when we meet. As you may have gathered, I am taking a shot at the problem of social instincts. In fact, I have a manuscript of some 400 typed pages which I soon shall begin to try to get into print. [Italics added.] Seems a bad time with the world what it now is to have such foolish idea. May be I can’t get it out. The fact that I worked as never before on this manuscript and read an almost unbelievable number of French and German books and papers is no reason that the publishing people will look at the thing with the same enthusiasm that I had in working up the stuff. This writing and thinking together with some very nice work on my eggs kept me going and enjoying life in the last year as never before.
With the most cordial greetings to you and to Mrs. Allee,
Yours,
[]----------------------------------------------------------------------------------[]
In this 15 October 1940 correspondence, Just reports having “a manuscript of some 400 typed pages” that he would soon “try to get into print.” Before Just could get this manuscript into print, he became very ill and died on 27 October 1941.
This 15 October 1940 letter indicates that Just’s “forthcoming essay” is “some 400 typed pages.”
[I am reminded of another 413-page “philosophy of organism” described as an “essay” by the author-- PROCESS AND REALITY: AN ESSAY IN COSMOLOGY (1927-28 Gifford Lectures) by Alfred North Whitehead.]
Given evidence from Kenneth R. Manning, and from Just's 15 October 1940 letter, we are now fully confident that Just wrote said 400-page unpublished essay. And, we are now looking for it.
So far, it appears to be NOT at the Howard University Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (specifically not in EEJ(H) boxes 125-21, -22, and -23). Nevertheless, the early search focuses on the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center because tantalizing clues are clustered there.
Theodore Walker Jr.
[][][][] 08 November 2016, updated 10 November 2016
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Look for this book elsewhere (one suggestion being Barnes and Noble's website)
This review is specifically for the edition of "Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution" edited by Will Jonson with the Anarchist flag on the cover - it is very poorly executed. I have ordered one of many other editions available on Barnes and Noble's website, so I cannot speak with full confidence with regard to the text as of yet; however this edition appears to have been translated through Google with no attention to awkward phrasing or spelling errors. As the essays this book is comprised of were initially published in an English literary journal ("The Nineteenth Century"), it is surprising that this version has so clearly been translated (or possibly transferred) from an alternative source. The material used for the cover is very quick to capture the oil from your fingers, giving the book a stained appearance; and the dimensions of the pages coupled with weird margins give your hands a workout as you stretch to hold the book open. Very disappointing, especially considering that with the exception of two other editions it appears Amazon has very few alternatives to this version. I include a picture of a page to better show the small margins and a strange spelling error (the word circled).
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