For the record I am reproducing some email posts/exchanges at the Teilhard group at yahoo, which started with a positive response to my article on the New Republic piece. http://www.history-and-evolution.com/evodocs/kant_on_design.htm
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The two books reviewed by Lewontin certainly deserve a response/essay from the perspective of the ‘eonic effect’ data, with its associated idea of the ‘eonic evolution of civilization’:
The New York Review of Books has an article by R. Lewontin.
The New York Review of Books
Volume 52, Number 16 · October 20, 2005
The Wars Over Evolution
By Richard C. LewontinThe Evolution-Creation Struggle
by Michael Ruse
Harvard University Press, 327 pp., $25.95Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution
by Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd
University of Chicago Press, 332 pp. $30.00
Here are a few preliminary thoughts: I reviewed Ruse’s book at Amazon, there to protest politely Ruse’s way of isolating Darwin as the sole champion of science, as he threw everyone else (prior to the Synthesis) into ‘evolutionism’ camp.
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The New York Review of Books has an article by R. Lewontin.
This is from Science For The People
The New York Review of Books
Volume 52, Number 16 · October 20, 2005
The Wars Over Evolution
By Richard C. Lewontin
The Evolution-Creation Struggle
by Michael Ruse
Harvard University Press, 327 pp., $25.95
Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution
by Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd
University of Chicago Press, 332 pp. $30.00
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Pennock’s Tower of Babel has an interesting section on the ‘evolution’ of language. The first edition of World History and The Eonic Effect had a section note, withdrawn in second edition, since I am wary of speculations about the Paleolithic, challenging such views of the evolution of language. The argument is essentially recast in the second edition in a different form, using the question of art, in particular the enigma of Greek Tragedy.
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One of the most dangerous charges against anyone these days is that of ‘anti-science’. No kidding. Jobs are at stake, you could be out in the wilderness. Now that the Darwin debate is in its ritual overdrive, the charge of anti-science is being thrown around for those who dissent on Darwin’s theory.
This is misleadingly pegged as a science vs religion debate, but here’s my buffalo nickel betting YOU are guilty of anti-science (unless you keep your mouth shut, or join the groupie chorus for Darwin being orchestrated by the various science orgs).
The list of heresies you should be wary of is stupendous:
most philosophy is suspect. To be sure, they pick on creationists, but the average philosophy department gets special treatment, although they should be included in the dragnet. Kant-studien? Beyond the Pale, should be thrown out of the university system….
Anything but reductionist views on consciousness are suspect. Be wary there. If you still have Cartesian traces in your system you are prone to the dragnet…
New Age beliefs, Buddhist et al. All suspect, totally, red light blinking there.
There are lots of tricky pitfalls here. Darwin’s theory is reductionist and implies that evolution proceeds without meaning in a scheme of blind chance. So if you believe that culture, man, history have meaning, you are in trouble. Be wary of the fact/value distinction. The value domain is mystical bunk.
If you think art arose from anything but an adaptation in a selectionist scenario, Problem, anti-science! The list goes on.
Generally speaking almost any views on divinity, self, soul, free will that contradict Darwin could get you caught in the dragnet.
That’s a shortlist.
Your best option is to simply bluff your way through the whole game, the strategy of most scientists themselves, who don’t really believe in the reductionist charade.
The York Daily Record has an article on Pennock’s testimony at the Dover ‘Scopes II’ trial.
Witness bashes intelligent design
A philosopher of science said the controversial idea rejects science.
By LAURI LEBO
Daily Record/Sunday News
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Pennock said the people behind intelligent design are attacking methodological naturalism, the accepted procedures of science that limit observations and hypotheses to the natural world.
It essentially says to scientists, Pennock said, “We can’t cheat.”
More ‘yuk’ on methodologicl naturalism.
First an important quibble. Pennock is styled a ‘philosopher of science’. Snce ‘philosophy’ is not considered science, and since it is considered that science has superceded philosophy, the testimony of a philosopher of science should be suspect, n’est-ce-pas? It would be of interest to review the credentials, education, general views of these ‘philosophers of science’ on the general issues Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Spinoza (Newton!! a design theorist) plus any others they wish to include from their camp with explicit statements in public as to whether science has superceded these and other philosophers. (This thought could be posed in any number of ways)
Check mate right there.
This is a trial about science, but is there a science of evolution that can decide the classic issues of philosophy under the rubric of the philosophy of science?
Let’s get down to the punch line: what view of the ‘free will’ question is implied by Darwin’s theory of natural selection and is the public required by scientific evidence to accept that view?
There is no way a theory of evolution can be science without legistlating these questions, but there is no way for science to do so.
More generally, one must protest the supine silence of the academic community that sits by and lets this double whammy fraud, ID vs. Science, get away with moonshine in the courts, no less.
My favorite is E. O. Wilson in Consilience where he takes an extreme view of the fact/value duality, in part because of the assumption natural selection is established:
If the empiricist world view is correct, ought is just shorthand for one kind of factual statement, a word that denotes what society first chose (or was coerced) to do, and then codified. The naturalistic fallacy is thereby reduced to the naturalistic problem. The solution of the problem is not difficult: ought is the product of a material process. The solution points the way to an objective grasp of the origin of ethics.
Are we required to accept such a view as ’science’, and what about the rest of the holdouts in the philosophy department?
Better watch how you answer, since Pennock claims scientists don’t cheat.
The first day of the Dover trail summoned Dr. Kenneth Miller as an expert witness.
The ACLU’s first expert witness, Dr. Kenneth Miller, testified that the scientific theory of intelligent design is untestable
True, but Darwin’s theory of natural selection is only marginally testable itself. Darwinists constantly indulge in ‘bait and switch’ tactics, the ‘dishes of bacteria’ syndrome, whereby easy cases of microevolution are made into the proof for all cases.
To test natural selection in key cases would be a tremendous task:
See my The Hurricane Argument
Darwinists have neutralized Popper, but his original insight about the metaphysical character of evolutionary theory ought to be brought back out of mothballs, minus the type of sophistical fire extenguisher foam it gets in most scientific citations.
So the question of the science of evolution is tabled next to that of intelligent design.
Dr. Miller’s testimony is disturbing because it demands that the Court rule on the nature of science and the validity of scientific theories — matters which should be left to scientific experts and not be decided by courts
Leaving it to lawyers could be a problem, but leaving it to scientists at this point is surely worse. Darwinists have so confused themselves and others that scientists don’t know what they are talking about anymore, at least on evolution.
Grim realization: Modern society has no institute, organization or body that can pass proper judgment on the issue of what constitutes science.
Along with testability, we often hear the Popper criterion of falsifiability. But few of these scientists are Popperians at all, Popper’s methodology being brilliantly original but many times challenged, and certainly not that of mainstream science. The irony is that Popper is ambiguously caught up in the postmodern and other challenges to standard science.
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Article in Washington Post
New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory
Pa. Trial Will Ask Whether ‘Alternatives’ Can Pass as Science
By Rick Weiss and David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 26, 2005;
Update: This blog entry now also a webpage
As the Dover trial gets under way, the Hype campaign starts, and the Darwin blogosphere starts cheering. I hold no brief for the ID contingent who will probably lose their incompetent case. But the Darwinists don’t deserve to win. Enough’s enough. If half-educated religionists from the Bible Belt are our only protection against Darwin propaganda, heaven help us.
Thus an otherwise fascinating article in the Washington Post appears suspiciously on Day One of the Dover trial promoting new proofs of Darwin’s theory.
The History and Evolution site now has a new Introduction webpage, as a Site Guide and traffic directory.
The Site now has seven tutorials/study series, among them, on the Eonic Effect, the Axial Age, Kant and Philosophy of History, the Eonic Model, Theory and Ideology, and an Outline of World History.
The result is a complete theoretical self-defense toolkit for the Darwin debate, historical theory, and the study of history.
A new website on Stephen J. Gould seems to be taking a cue from my approach, ditching natural selection hype. About time! “It is called the Stephen Jay Gould Initiative, named for the late, great exponent of non-Darwinian Evolution. ”
The purpose of this website is to urgently organize opposition to the forces of creationism and intelligent design by providing sound scientific refutation to the argument that God is the only alternative to random evolution.
Panda’s Thumb has a timeline and links for the coming court case re: the Dover school system.
As of September 13, 2005, the Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District case was headed for trial in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania starting on September 26, 2005. Judge John E. Jones III denied the Thomas More Law Center motion for summary judgement in an order delivered on September 13, clearing the way for the full trial. This post will provide a convenient place for links to articles and commentary on the Kitzmiller v. DASD proceedings.
The Times has an article about the steps natural history museums are taking to deal with aggressive creationists:
The last question/answer shows the way science has bungled its own defense via crypto-Cartesianism. “Science deals only with material reality; religion deals with the spiritual, the moral and the ethical”
This leads straight back to the first question, What is evolution? If science tosses in the towel on questions of the ethical and the moral, how can they have a theory of evolution?
That, taken away from design distractions, is the crux of the problem science/Darwinism has dealt itself.
These are such ancient questions, what of Spinoza, Kant?
What caused the nineteenth century decline into positivism that makes such idiocy science dogma?
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The Intelligent Design claims have allowed biologists to disguise their
weak reasoning behind refutations of design. The point was never that the
eye didn’t evolve! Simply that the regime of natural selection was
inadequate to account for it. Actually this article makes obvious the fact science is racing to fill the lacuna in their complete bluff they know how complex structures evolved.
Innings in the propaganda wars, Discovry Institute press release.
They have a point, ACLU wishes to make discussion of Intelligent Design in class rooms illegal.
Dover Intelligent Design Trial Showcases ACLU’s ‘Orwellian Efforts’ to Stifle Scientific Inquiry, Says Discovery Institute
Thursday September 22, 2:55 pm ET
HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ — “While Discovery Institute opposes efforts to mandate the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, it even more strongly objects to the ACLU’s Orwellian efforts to shut down classroom discussions of intelligent design through government-imposed censorship,” said Dr. John West, Associate Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, the nation’s leading think tank sponsoring research on intelligent design.
Leiter Reports, "Why The Intelligent Design Con Plays So Well", cites an article from the New York times on the alarming lack of science education. While the point in general is well taken, the question of evolution is not so simple. While undoubtedly it is true that creationism is correlated with a lower degree of education, that correlation breaks down at the top end. Some of the smartest
people have been Darwin doubters. While it requires intelligence to
do the Darwin belief system, it evidently takes more than that, more than geekish smarts to see through Darwinism and bad evolutionary theory. Part of the problem is the specialization of scientists, and their tendency to defer to boilerplate out of their field. Also predominant is the widget focus problem. Take a man with a high IQ and focus him on the Widget, and he will perform brilliantly withing range, but beyond that he will be as rote minded as the rest of us.
There is a strange myth afoot of the ‘Brights’, promoted by Dawkins and Dennett, whereby the boneheaded character of Darwinists gets rewritten as evidence of ’smarter than thou’ syndrome in the ritual ridicule of Bible Belt sods who don’t buy Darwin.
This kind of self-delusion leaves Darwinists paralyzed, they don’t even suspect a problem.
The Universe in a Single Atom : The Convergence of Science and Spirituality
by Dalai Lama
Amazon:
Buddhism, Science and Darwinism, September 21, 2005
Reviewer: John Landon “nemonemini”
This is a compelling discussion of Buddhism and Science by the Dalai Lama, with some cogent insights on quantum mechanics, cosmology, and evolution. Although under suspicion of being a PR front for stealth Lamaism and its hidden agendas, making it problematical whether he says what he means, or means what he says, the Dalai Lama presents an engaging appreciation of modern science, and his encounters with figures like David Bohm, and Karl Popper.
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Times Review of
The Universe in a Single Atom’: Reason and Faith
By GEORGE JOHNSON
Published: September 18, 2005
Johnson chides the Dalai Lama for showing reservations on ‘natural selection’ and randomness??
Johnson is credited at the beginning of S. Kauffman’s At Home in the Universe, surely he is well aware of the problems here!
It’s been a brutal season in the culture wars with both the White House and a prominent Catholic cardinal speaking out in favor of creationist superstition, while public schools and even natural history museums shy away from teaching evolutionary science. When I picked up the Dalai Lama’s new book, “The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality,” I feared that His Holiness, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, was adding to the confusion between reason and faith.
The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney
Amazon:
This is an eloquent but flawed indictment of the ways in which
conservatives are doing an endrun around science to promote their various agendas. But as a science supporter, but a Darwin critic, I was a little alarmed by the bad advice the author received from the very peer review bodies he promotes. The problem is that, for example, global warming, about which the book is excellent, and evolution, the most confusing of the issues, are not really in the same category. We can demand science on the issue of global warming, and expose conservative fraud, but if we demand science on evolution, then we should subject the current reign of Darwinian theory to scrutiny, there to find that, as theory, its scientific status is open to question. The behavior of creationists is a very distracting noise here, because it drives science defenders further into dogma, and into a hole. The author shows how relying on the standard sources of science advice, like the NCSE, will simply fill your head with the Darwinian boilerplate syndrome, which, whatever else their failings, the rightwing critics are well aware of. Having studied Darwinian theory carefully from the suppressed science critics they realize that they can trump the wrongly educated Dawkins/science generation. It seemed impossible ten
years ago, now it’s happening. Time to wake up on Darwin’s theory, which means accepting the reality of evolution, but looking critically on the theory of natural selection. Science journalists ought to learn to be skeptical of the failed peer review system in biology and evolution. It’s going to be the undoing of science, and one dreads to think what the next ten years will bring.
Beyond that, many of the other issues raised make for an insightful expose, it is a pity the author is suckered into the Darwin trap.
The Lawrence
Journal World has an article on a letter by a group of Nobel Prize winners defending Darwinism in the schools on the eve of the court case. As usual they bungled their case, and the confusion over evolution versus natural selection reigns.
Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection. As the foundation of modern biology, its indispensable role has been further strengthened by the capacity to study DNA. In contrast, intelligent design is fundamentally
unscientific; it cannot be tested as scientific theory because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent.
Intelligent Design may be unscientific, but so is Darwin’s theory of
natural selection, a metaphysical proposition as starkly vulnerable as the claims of their opponents. There is no way to test the claims of Darwin on the descent of man. The assertion that evolution is the result of random variation and natural selection in an unguided and unplanned process is ambiguous, and poses the false antithesis guided/unguided. Evolution could show directionality, falsifying Darwin’s theory, but affirming evolution.
Then science and religious faith are held to be not mutually exclusive. The major monotheisms are based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent. It seems they ought to teach gymnastics in biology classes, since backflips at this point are going to essential. The letter is incoherent. As long as these Darwinian claims are made the foundation of biology this kind of outside dissent is inevitable. It should be the job of the scientific community to be promoting openness, and criticism, self-criticism.
The confusion is almost hopeless, since it is indefensible to disallow
criticism of a theory such as Darwin’s, or any other, but in the dynamics of the situation this openness wished for by the Bible Belt would result in its opposite, suppression of any criticism of ID if it ever gained a foothold. The claims of guided history in the Old and New Testament are evidently compatible with insistence on unguided evolution.
Mr. Wiesel should know by now that Darwin’s theory is a dangerous dogma and its place in the history of the Holocaust is the generally untold scandal of evolutionary biology.
What is the hangup over Darwin’s theory? If they just dropped it, and taught the facts of evolution in class, along with the debates over theory, a full history of those theories stretching backwards to sources of modern biology, plus including the historical debriefing of biblical history using modern Biblical Criticism as a challenge to false faith in religious historical myths equal to the similar challenge to Darwin, they might actually have classrooms worth their students’ time and effort.
The End of Faith
Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
by Sam Harris
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Northwest
Area mulls adding ‘intelligent design‘ to curriculum
Citizens Voice, PA -
hours ago
At a table at Curry Donuts in Shickshinny, three men said they
hadn’t heard of "intelligent design," a theory the
Northwest Area School Board is considering …
Request
to dismiss intelligent design challenge rejected
Lawsuit over intelligent
design moves forward
Record
Salon has an article on Chris Mooney’s The Republican War on Science exposing the tactics of the right on such issues as global warming, and the issue of evolution slips into the discussion, with the alarming suggestion that the Darwin debate and issues such as global warming are on the same footing. That’s a recipe for confusion, if not failure, and it is time to be clear that criticizing Darwin’s theory is not anti-science, but science exposing bad science.
Books
The know-nothings
Pro-business Republicans and the religious right have joined in a
frighteningly successful campaign to undermine the claims of science.- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Andrew O’HehirSept. 14, 2005 | It took almost no time for the devastation of New
Orleans, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to become the newest beachhead in the science wars. On the evening of Sept. 1, when the waters were still rising and we had no idea how much worse things were still going to get, Brit Hume devoted an extended segment of his Fox News program to interviewing Patrick J. Michaels, an environmental scientist at the University of Virginia.Michaels’ purpose, and Hume’s, was to rebut a widely circulated Op-Ed
article by Ross Gelbspan in the Boston Globe arguing that Katrina, and a
host of other natural disasters, had been caused or exacerbated by the
effects of global warming.
The article reiterates the usual nonsense for ’science groupies’ that there is no controversy over evolution and that the right is alone in this critique of Darwin.
C’mon. I don’t want to see science lose the battle over global warming. The issue of Darwinism should be cashiered out of the discussion and put on the sidelines where it won’t create debate disaster for those trying to fight Big Oil on the environment.
Darwin’s theory of natural selection is BAD SCIENCE, and pointing that out is a step toware serious science on the subject of evolution.
Comments in article on evolution.
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Below is a passage from the Second Edition of World History and The Eonic Effect which might induce a sense of deja vu all over again on the design/Darwinism pseudo-debate, a high stakes legitimation struggle.
With any luck both sides will kill each other off, and people will laugh at the pretenses of the theologians (and rightwingers who could care less about evolution) and scientists.
There is a simple self-defense tactic here: PROOF BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT. NOTHING LESS, since the claims of proof will grant legitimation powers to a bunch of slimy ‘ID’ politicians and/or Social Darwinist ’scientists’ with their priestly pretensions to control and legislate human thought.
So relax, noone will produce the proof, but maybe the ID people will, as they self-destruct, demolish the Big Science HYPE.
A quite compelling ‘must read’ My Conversation With A Cell Biologist About Evolution at Dawntreader, with ambiguous hints of dreaded post-Darwinian heresies afoot in the groves (of academe).
What is the status of evolutionary theory from the perspective of a cell biologist? Is dissent of evolutionary theory allowed? Has Behe been debunked? Is evolution a theory in crisis?
An article The Mousetrap, by the economist Paulos, ties together Behe’s black box and mousetrap argument (which requires another web page), and the self-organization question of modern market economy, in the process expressing the peculiar ideological affinity of Darwinism and classical liberalism.
New webpage commenting on evolution, design, and classical political economy at the History and Evolution site:
Evolution and Economics