11.07.08
Is evolutionary biology a science?
Actually the previous post on the relation of physics and biology was an understatement, here, and as pointed out on this blog many times biological theories don’t exist in the form of universal laws, as we see in physics, for reasons suggested by the The Oedipus Paradox.
The observer in biology is not external to the phenomena under observation, and this goes critical as we explore human evolution, and then human history, and the human present. The theory of natural selection is especially vulnerable to this issue. The observer of natural selection decides to apply this ‘law’ of biology to his own present and future, an absurdity, that generates Social Darwinism. At this point the notion of a theory breaks down in evolutionary biology.
This situation can’t arise in physics, because the observer doesn’t interact with the ‘law’ in question, and, e.g. couldn’t apply ‘gravitation’ to himself.
So, strictly speaking there are probably no universal laws of evolution.
In fact, there is some question as to whether evolutionary theory can be a science at all.
Scientists indulge in the fantasy of science, after eliminating, or mechanizing, ethics, putting consciousness aside as not relevant, and creating Just So stories about everything under the sun being an adaptation via natural selection. And this without observing anything in detail.
We accept the lack of theories with history, which we study as a chronicle of empirical events in succession. If we apply theories to history, as causal explanation, a paradox arises.
The eonic effect shows how this paradox is resolved, but not with a standard theory. We exploit the paradox itself: there must a science of history, there can’t be a science of history. This is a close relative of one of Kant’s antinomies. The eonic model takes this situation as its starting point, and applies analysis on two levels, …