Historical accounts of human rights in the West readily acknowledge a deep indebtedness to the conceptions of human dignity found in religious traditions – particularly Christianity and Judaism. Modern conceptions of human rights, however, usually avoid religious justifications and implicitly or explicitly rely on a secular justification. For example, most scholars mark the beginning of modern human rights law with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the UDHR) in 1948. The UDHR sets forth an extensive list of rights including the “right to life, liberty and the security of person,” the “right to marry and to found a family,” the “right to own property,” and “freedom of thought, conscience and association.” While the Preamble of the UDHR maintains that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,” the UDHR does not posit a justification for its claim of inherent human dignity or for its list of rights.

Several high-profile evolutionary biologists in the twentieth century were committed organicists. Conrad H. Waddington, the British geneticist was one, trying to simulate Lamarckian processes through orthodox genetical approaches. Another was the well-known American paleontologist and scientific popularizer Stephen Jay Gould, who promoted morphology over adaptation. And a third was the founding populational geneticist, American Sewall Wright. He argued that random processes, genetic drift, could and would lead to major adaptive breakthroughs. Philosophers likewise embrace organicism, including the British John Dupré and the American philosophers Jerry Fodor and Thomas Nagel. Nagel in particular has been highly critical of Darwinian theory, thinking it to be crude materialism masquerading as science. Expectedly, the Darwinian mechanists have struck back, confirming the suspicion that we have paradigm differences at stake. The two sides, mechanism and organicism, defend their positions with alternative reasons. For the mechanists, the triumphs of their approach trumps all. The double helix is a popular example in support of mechanism. For the organicists, the special place of humans trumps all. We are superior and no further argument is needed.