09.30.05
Teilhardian bumper cars
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
In the preface to the second edition I said I would extend the discussion of directionality to some discussion of teleology, but with the warning that issues of teleology are destined to be picked up by ‘interested parties’. I mentioned ‘Teilhardian’ parties, for one, just as a passing thought.
I was amused therefore to find a sudden response at the Teilhard group. The interaction speaks for itself.
If you try to use my eonic model for teleological metaphysics you will skid down the pike, and that’s the end of it.
The eonic model is designed to both summon up and discipline teleological thinking.
The second edition is slightly more explicit on the issue of teleology. The original discussion was in terms of directionality, and remains so, but since some claim natural selection can generate direction, we need to be explicit that directionality tokens a possible teleological process, but one that we can only detect in a contrast of levels of direction. Still, this is a dangerous subject. We are not indulging in some resurgence of Hegelian nature philosophy applied to ideas of evolution. Our type of model gives us a safe, but tricky, way to approach the issue. The result seems at first to be not so user-friendly. But the question of teleology is not simple, and there is no ‘Make a nice speech’ version. We need to batten down the hatches on this issue of teleology, and the author shares the scientists’ skepticism here, but the issue must be faced, and the propagandists preempted. There is no simple path through this question.One reason Darwinists become rigid, and, at the same time, have our sympathy, is that powerful factions always leverage a change of opinion to their advantage against science. On the question of, say, purposive evolution, for example, the danger of being upstaged by more potent media derivatives, usually religious, makes life difficult. The author has already discovered several books echoing the argument without citation. So I hope you happen upon the original version!
If you say evolution shows purpose, the book mill is ready, and many will exploit a change of viewpoint. We have an innovation in our two-level model that none of these hucksters can match. Some, any, intimation of purpose in the universe is grounds for ten new rehashes of Old Testament history, rhetorical gushes, sentimental discourse in the vein of Teilhardism, and a recount on ‘belief in god’ statistics, and some well-funded opinion-chaser careful to re-muddy the science/religion divide. We are not indulging in religious Trojan horse tactics. At one and the same time we must embark on a minimal study of world religion, and a brief detour through some of the issues of the New Age movement is provided. Current scientific discourse refuses to even examine the legacy of humanity in these areas.If we do nothing else we can convince the reader of the sheer size and complexity of the problem to be solved and the inability of standard theories, leastwise one such as that of natural selection, to account for the emergence of complexity. But history gives us one free gift of data taken as ‘evolution’ at close range. We follow the contours of nature’s answer using periodization to construct a ‘tracker-approximator’, which breaks the problem down into a series of intervals joined by transitions. Scientists talk a lot about Newton’s laws but in practice they are forced mostly to use a ‘tracker-approximator’. Like the Kantian noumenon, the historical black box is locked and sealed, and beyond knowledge. Too bad for theories then, they have been used to torment people long enough. We can at least seize high ground with our simple model, there to be philosophic snipers picking off the schemes of propaganda elites need to keep the public under control. The age of Postdarwinism is here, all we have to do is realize it.
Reply to New Republic article at Teilhard group at yahoo, with two replies from me.
My reply first:
Thanks a lot for your fascinating response to my essay, and I find your formulation very good on its own terms, although I take a slightly more cautious approach to questions of teleology. But I think in the main your response stands in its own right as a provocative interpretation of my essay absorbed into your Teilhardian perspective. Good show. But in general I only refer to directionality, and never draw any conclusions that are final. The reason is that we have no sound way to approach teleology beyond the empirical perception of a short range. Further we must differentiate the different contexts, one the nature of organisms, and the other the nature of history or evolution. There’s a big difference in these cases! In Kant we have distinction of natural teleology as opposed to some higher unknown teleological process that is very difficult for us to assess short of the metaphysical.There Kant in his developing methodology provokes a paradox, that while his foundation is the (now surpassed, but always relevant) world of Newtonian causality, there is nonetheless a teleological aspect to the organism. He then distinguishes the forms of judgment that can apply to these two types, constitutive and regulative. Thus there are limits on our abilities to assess teleological judgments, and yet we can using regulative judgments to at least approach the issues. We are restricted to assessing directionality as evidence of teleology.
You can pursue a summary of this line of thinking athttp://www.history-and-evolution.com/evodocs/teleology.htm in a scanned chapter from Korner’s book Kant.Kant’s fussy ambivalence here, to me, is the right approach, but many starting with Hegel thought this equivocation a problem, and tried to surpass those limits. The value of Kant’s approach is that it corresponds to what we see in science, the obsession with strict causality that leads to more and more insights, yes, but always misses some aspect of the problem.
Look at any book on biochemistry. They are exotic, beautiful, exact, and show the causal mechanics of the most wonderful molecules. But nowhere in such texts is there any mention of the key issue, which is that these chemical structures operate like directed processes or computer programs, proceeding past their functionalities toward a series of preprogramed ends. The Big Enchilada they have banished from the kingdom.
One aspect of this is to proceed to the search for the historical/temporal form that teleology might take in the natural world, since all we can do is see indirect indications. In my view that issue is answered in terms of ‘intermittent directionality’, and I further claim that world history shows evidence of just this, if we look at it in the right way. You can pursue that in terms of my ‘eonic model’, at my website, if you wish. This amounts to saying teleology is seen indirectly expressed in, e.g. cycles of approximation, shaping processes, that mould things. We see the incremental steps approximating some end result.That would make much sense of biological data, since we often expect ‘teleology’ to produce perfection, but what we often see are incomplete stages frozen in time, as if shunted off the mainline. The mainline picks up a strain and passes incrementally to a new stage. If you look at the various hominids before man, it is suddenly obvious that that would be one interpretation.
Another way to consider this is to take the basic evolutionary theory of Lamarck as presented by Gould in his Structures of Evolutionary Theory. Lamarck, the victim of an immense injustice, is often taken only as the crank who proposed an odd theory about adaptation in giraffes necks, but that is incidental to his main contribution. That aspect of his thinking apart, his basic view is that of evolution on two levels, one of them a progressive, the other adaptive or environmental branching out. That is the simplest and most intuitive way to take the evolutionary data that we have, except that the progressive level is hard to get right, and in any case the Darwinians simply decided to do things the wrong way. This second aspect got eliminated in Darwin, the reason for all the confusion.So Darwin was on the surface more scientific, but narrow, while Lamarck, still inchoate and a bit disorganized, had the key ideas, mixed with confusing blunders and all sorts of now obsolete ‘this and that’. Part of the problem is that after the French Revolution Lamarck went out of fashion due to his radical allegiances, and evolution became a suspect term associated with revolution, for a whole generation, and Darwin succeeded finally in resurrecting the idea and making it respectable, by eliminating all the controversial aspects, and making natural selection the sole force of evolution. The powerful association of natural selection with classical liberalism and the economics of Adam Smith made that an easy switch that greased the wheels of public acceptance and elite promotion, where Lamarck died in a garret. You can read Desmond’s Darwin: Life of Tormented Revolutionist to get this history, during the Restoration period, when ‘evolution’, associated with revolution, was as excoriated as bolshevism is in our own time.
The minute we consider a two-level approach we have the basis for an observable representation of teleology. That still requires care but in any case it is really Lamarck who founded the science of evolution, not Darwin. A point people like Butler pointed out in the nineteenth century in his endless diatribes against Darwin’s ‘plagiarism’ and complete lack of originality. Fair or not, all that has been completed written out of the Darwin pageant now dominant.It’s a lost cause to point it out, it seems. The confusing point is that Darwin was able to create a productive research tradition with the wrong starting point, while Lamarck tended to get bogged down in a mess of pottage.His data was still premature. Anyway, this suggests the way an evolutionary mainline can coexist with all the branching out that deviates from that mainline in a kind of drift. It is this drift into variety under one kind of evolution that Darwinists try to make the whole of evolution, forever confusing the issues. Teleology is always a ticklish subject, because it can become ideological. And if we ascribe teleology to the whole of time, say, then our position in the present is paradoxical, for it would seem to conflict with our freedom Karl Popper castigated Marx for this kind of trap in theory, and the discredit thrown on teleological thinking has been considerable.I try in my eonic model to mediate this problem by devising modified theories where the observer is defined as central, and his theories are made to detect directionality in the past leading to an open ended present. In this kind of model, the dynamics is switched off in the present, as he observer is free to make then next move, although the system of directionality may return in the future.
BTW, if you think about it, this was what Zarathustra was attempting to say (I guess), the reason, in its decline, for all the mythology of ‘future return’ that appeared in his wake. Be that as it may, a greater teleology might leapfrog the present in the far future, but the present must show relative degrees of freedom in the now. You can pursue that and much else like that in my material is you like.In general, if you neglect this factor, and consider teleology in someone like Hegel, then Marx, the result can lead to hopeless confusion, and dangerous projections on the future that aren’t anything but hallucination. The various Bolshevik fiascos were really teleological tragedies, so it is good to be wary here. So teleological thinking has a shadowy side to it. That’s not just a criticism of Marx. People do the same with capitalism. They deny it, but they ascribe a teleology to it. Whatever the benefits of markets, they don’t determine the far future. To think so you may as well worship the hole in the ozone. So, to get the question away from two current ideologies, both Marx and (fanatical) capitalism have shown false teleological tendencies. Getting it straight is not so easy. Anyway I am very appreciative of your very excellent remarks, subject to the minor disclaimers I have offered based on the dangers of ambiguity in the term ‘teleology’ and the wish of ideologists to hijack the concept. . Much more can be said here, but this post is getting a bit long._________________
endnote
In my own historical thinking, if I may close with a brief plug for that, you will find applied to world history a model with a type of historical directionality of intermittent approximation as described above, with stages seen in the so-called eonic effect, which is just three turning points of evolutionary intensity, the central one seen in the spectacular Axial Age, which fits my model perfectly in the sense of being a short phase or rapid burst of ‘teleological’ redirection or seeding. But it also shows how this process does more than just pursue a telos, it also pursues parallel branches in the exploration of variety and difference, on its way toward a garlanding of diversity on the way to globalization. This is especially the case in the Axial period, while in the rise of the modern we see all the conflicts and collisions of a global process trying to reset its direction. This type of process of a greater totality with a mainline overlaid on that whole is controversial, yet can efficiently be made to account for the facts of world history, with especial care applied to the relationship of observers in the present, their future, and the dynamics visible in the past. Such models free the present from determinism, even as they introduce directionality in relation to the whole. John Landon
From Teilhard group
Hello everyone,
A word of thanks to John Landon for sharing his paper
(commenting on a article in the New Republic) and to
Janice for encouraging us to give the paper our serious
consideration.
I have read John’s essay a couple of times and I
concur with Janice that it does contain helpful
clarifications pertaining to the Darwinian - Intelligent
Design debate.
Although neither a biologist nor a scientist, I am,
nonetheless, keenly interested in biology as well as
in science in general. And so I would like to mention
a few of the points that John has raised which, to
me, seemed particularly interesting and worth
pondering. Here and there I will interject remarks of
my own with reference to some of these points.
I’ll proceed in the hope that I am not misrepresenting
what John is saying. If I do get anything wrong,
however, I’ll welcome having the matter corrected by
him.
What I have to say will be outlined in point form
as follows.
FIRST POINT
Evolution, involving speciation, is a fact based on
the fossil and genetic evidence.
SECOND POINT
Natural selection is a fact as a feature of evolution and
does involve chance and randomness, as, for example,
a happenstance error in genetic coding which produces
a mutation.
THIRD POINT
Evolution cannot be accounted for solely on the basis
of randomness such as that associated with natural
selection.
FOURTH POINT
There may not have been enough time for even a single,
complex polypeptide (i. e. a complex protein molecule)
to have evolved in the interval between the Big Bang
(about 13.7 billion years ago) and the present if the
cosmos has been solely under the sway of chance
with no admixture of teleological orientation.
FIFTH POINT
Directionality of a teleological sort needs to be added
into the evolutionary mix if we are to satisfactorily
account for evolution being where it is today.
We may note, at this juncture, that Teilhard’s theory
of directed chance combines random happenstance
with teleological directionality. The Jesuit scientist
regards matter-energy as teleologically oriented, from
the get go, in the direction of complexity-consciousness.
Further, in his opinion, matter-energy, as always alive
and conscious (although, for the most part,
imperceptibly so), has selected and made use of those
chance or fortuitous events which were conducive to
the realization of its orientation.
SIXTH POINT
The Intelligent Design folks, dissatisfied with the Neo-
Darwinian view that evolution is entirely under the
superintendence of chance events like natural selection,
have proposed what we might call a “theological”
approach which entirely eliminates happenstance
from the cosmic process. The “theology” in question
proposes a theory of on-going intervention by a
Higher Power which organizes matter-energy
according to a plan or design of it’s own devising.
SEVENTH POINT
The Intelligent Design people would seem to reject the
notion of an inherent, teleological orientation operating
as a kind of a priori feature in the cosmos. This rejected
feature can be called methodological naturalism — a
term which suggests that nature operates methodically,
systematically in a fashion which accords with its
inherent orientation.
EIGHTH POINT
With the appearance of humanity something new
appeared on the evolutionary scene. A feature of this
newness was the ability to freely give or withhold
consent. So, for example, things could get done,
or not done, on the basis of free choice. We seem
to have a scenario here where, to some degree,
chance is being overruled by choice. If genetic
screening discloses to a couple that they have a
one in four chance of passing on to their offspring
a disease such as cystic fibrosis that couple may
choose to remain childless. Such a choice eliminates
any chance that an infant afflicted with the disease
in question will be born to them.
Teilhard, by the way, would agree that when humanity
burst upon the evolutionary scene, via the critical point
of hominization, a new type of life emerged — one
capable, for example, of giving or withholding consent, of
engaging in highly abstract thought, of seeing deep into
the past, of projecting far into the future, of undergoing
religious experience.
NINTH POINT
If I have understood John aright, he is, in his paper,
advocating a holistic view of evolution, a view that
involves at least science and philosophy as opposed
to a one that involves science alone. In this connection
the paper mentions the German philosopher, Immanuel
Kant, and this philosopher’s propensity to regard the
universe as inherently teleological. John mentions an
early nineteenth century group of German biologists, the
teleomechanists, who, influenced by Kant’s thought,
did not hesitate to ascribe purposiveness or teleology
to the organisms they were studying.
Kant is also well known for his insistence that when
we are confronted with moral choices there arises, out
of the very structure of our reason, a kind of urging or
imperative to do what we believe is the right thing.
The German thinker called this inner urging, which
we are free to obey or not, the categorical imperative.
Now few of us, I would say, will wish to assert that
moral decision making has no effect on the future, on
the way evolution will play itself out in times to come. If
I chose to disobey the urgings of the categorical
imperative by leading a life of crime and by bringing
up my children to be criminals, very probably I am the
occasion of at least some harm being done within the
evolving noosphere. Further, this harm would not appear
to be based, in any direct way, on natural selection.
It seems that ideas pertaining to teleology and ethics
are notions that arise more out the realm of
philosophy [1] than out of the domain of science. Yet
these ideas have an impact upon our view of evolution.
The very fact of this impact may help to pull our minds
towards the proposal that we look at evolution in a
holistic, multi-disciplinary, fashion, a fashion that
includes at least science and philosophy.
TENTH POINT
This point is more a personal comment on my part than
a mention of an item of interest in John’s paper.
It does seem to me that there are Darwinists and
Darwinists.
Some Darwinists say that evolution, involving speciation,
is a fact, that humanity descended from the anthropoid
apes, and that natural selection is the key mechanism
by which all of this has happened and continues to
happen. Perhaps we could term these persons
strict or orthodox Darwinists
Other Darwinists say that evolution, involving speciation,
is a fact, that humanity descended from the anthropoid
apes, but that natural selection, though a reality, is not
the key mechanism by which evolution has happened
and continues to happen. Perhaps we could term these
persons modified or unorthodox Darwinists.
The modified or unorthodox Darwinists, in other words,
are those who are willing to accord a leading place, in
their evolutionary world-view, to the notions of teleology
and ethics. Indeed, ethics itself, in that it seems to
rest on an inner urging or imperative, appears to have a
teleological aspect to it. Ethics or morality seems
to point us towards an end, the end of doing what
we believe is the right thing.
It might not be going too far to suggest that Teilhard
de Chardin could himself be classed among the
modified or unorthodox Darwinists.
In any event, I did find John’s paper to be interesting
and thought provoking and would recommend it to
anyone on the list who may not have read it as yet.
Notes:
[1] And, as a strictly personal opinion, I will suggest
that teleology and ethics may have a beneficial
connection to non-fanatical religion. We may wish
to recall, in this connection, that Immanuel Kant, for
example, was a sincerely religious person who
acceded to the reality of a moral law, the immortality
of the human soul and the existence of God.
With good wishes,
Brian.
____________________________
Post2Thanks for your interesting caution on teleology. I was delighted by the response to my NR article, but it made me let my guard down a little bit. My ‘teleological’ thesis is like a bunkered down combination of tortoise shell and Sherman tank. It is a highly restricted attempt to demonstrate directionality over a short range. It is like a drunk taking three steps toward Kilarney, or so he says. We see a short interval, three steps, and that’s directional, purportedly teleological, but since it is in real time, the telos issue is openended, he could end in a ditch. These kind of problems arise and complicate any model of the ‘evolution of freedom’ such as mine (and Hegel has another, btw). If the ‘endtimes’ or ‘telos’ is one thing how does that impinge on the emergent freedom of the evolving individual/species, etc…These questions, then, have a detailed, very exciting/boring, derivation in my model, and that requires a sort of ‘tutorial’, or study course since the puzzle has about ten pieces that fit together in a complicated way. I have in fact a tutorial on this at my website, hope you are interested. If it doesn’t make any sense feel free to say so, I can upgrade it. Once you get the basics it brings an immense simplicity to the study of world history, subject to a number of controversial issues, however.
That approach will clarify the issues but also drive one to interpretative extensions. I am delighted at the attempts, but the ‘eonic model’ is designed to give a close-range snapshot of a directionality sequence in world history in the most rigorous fashion possible. Where you take it from there is something each has to be responsible for. With that caveat I am glad this list is able to be responsive to such issues, and in a fashion that can allow critical thinking, because the Darwin debate is getting everything confused.So in a word we speak of teleology, but that is a macro process applied to cosmology ( guess), and in the meantime, will we reach Kilarney? Maybe stop for another swig? NOT!