Conclusion

This book gives readers a point of access to Darwin’s writings about psychological matters. This concluding chapter reviews Darwin’s concept of agency: stressing the interrelations that result from agency; the laws that describe its long term effects (evolution by natural selection and sexual selection); and the ways it structures Darwin’s approach to the study of non-verbal expressions and other features of human sociality. I then examine the caution with which Darwin regarded what the Victorians called psychology, as represented by the works of Bain, Spencer, and Lewes—the point of difference upon which Darwin insisted being the priority he gave to observation, as opposed to definitional niceties and deduction. I show that Darwin’s prioritization of observation contrasts with the ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ which has given rise to a flight from reality in psychology, both practically—from the observable world we all know, into the laboratory—and theoretically, toward a rendition of the visible world in terms of invisible inner processes. I suggest that several current moves to reframe psychological research, and evolutionary theory, are converging on the place where Darwin’s treatment of agency has been standing for a hundred and fifty years. If pursued further today, Darwin’s approach to the study of agency would restore significance to the natural world, and the lives of its inhabitants.