THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
June 21, 2020 at 15:50 JST
Academics say the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's cartoonish attempt to use Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to justify the need to amend the Constitution is irresponsible and not fit to survive.
A four-frame comic strip tweeted by the LDP’s public relations department on Twitter on June 19, featuring a fictionalized character called Moyawin, gave birth to the controversy.
Referring to Darwin’s theory of evolution, Moyawin says, “Individuals that survive aren’t always the strongest or smartest.”
He goes on to say, “They are those that can change,” and drives home the need for amending the 1947 Constitution for the first time, a project pushed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The cartoon led to a flurry of tweets calling on the LDP to stop pitching the party’s pet project by butchering Darwin's theory.
Nobuhiro Minaka, a visiting professor of evolutionary biology at Tokyo University of Agriculture, denounced the comic strip as “fake news intended to mislead readers.”
“Illustrated in this cartoon, changing something deliberately to steer things to a certain direction has nothing to do with evolution based on accidental changes,” he said.
Darwin’s idea of natural selection, the core of the theory of evolution, is that the existence of diverse populations with variations in the traits of a species allows some of the species to survive even if environmental changes occur.
The theory of natural selection is applicable to group levels, not to individual levels, and certainly not to a question of amending the Constitution, according to experts.
What Moyawin says in the comic strip is known as a notorious example of misinterpreting Darwin’s theory, according to the Darwin Correspondence Project, a group of scientists researching Darwin’s correspondences, including those from the University of Cambridge.
The misquotation dates to the writings of Leon Megginson, professor of management and marketing at Louisiana State University, in 1963.
“People should be extremely careful about discussing a social issue in the context of evolution as the theory of evolution has a history of being used for improper purposes, such as in eugenics and other disciplines,” said Osamu Sakura, professor of evolutionary biology and science communication at the University of Tokyo.
“This time, the theory was irresponsibly applied to the proposal for constitutional revision, which has nothing to do with evolution. It is deeply concerning.”
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The Liberal Democratic Party’s tweet pitching constitutional revision:
1st frame: “I am Moyawin. According to Darwin’s theory of evolution,”
2nd frame: “Individuals that survive aren’t always the strongest or smartest.”
3rd frame: “They are those that can change themselves.”
4th frame: “I believe that to help Japan further prosper, it needs to revise the Constitution now.”
(From the LDP’s Twitter account)
