Evolution of intelligence

"Today is not 1968," chided Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at Russia, which recently came to the "rescue" of South Ossetia, as she came to the rescue of Czechoslovakia's "counterrevolutionary forces" four decades ago.

Rice didn't feel the need to fill in the ellipsis of her moral argument because all her hearers understood it: Such aggression as Russia exhibited isn't countenanced "in our day and age"; our species has evolved morally and intellectually since that brutish time.

But even Disney's Sleeping Beauty couldn't resist poking a little fun at that notion. Prince Philip was smitten with a peasant girl, but the King was aghast. "Now father, you're living in the past. This is the 14th century. Nowadays. …" "Nowadays I'm still the king, and I command you to come to your sense."

It's a funny scene because we look back on the 14th century-and on Philip's pride in it-as hopelessly passé and backward. It's a funny scene because we are trapped in the same smug delusion that Prince Philip labored under-the unproved cultural assumption of the steady progress of humanity and of history.

"What I want to point out is the illegitimate transition from the Darwinian theorem in biology to the modern myth of evolutionism or developmentalism or progress in general. … The modern conception of Progress or Evolution (as popularly imagined) is simply a myth, supported by no evidence whatever" (The World's Last Night and other Essays, by C.S.Lewis).