11.18.08
Recalibrating the idea of ‘evolution’
The previous post mentioned the idea of ‘recalibrating’ the idea of evolution, and here is more on that: Recalibrating The Idea Of Evolution. There is nothing absolute about current ways of defining evolution. The current Darwinian idea is so narrow that it can’t address most of the crucial issues of human nature except by rote application of natural selection thinking. It doesn’t work. There are many ways to ‘recalibrate’ evolution, but you need to evidence to go with it, that of the eonic effect can hardly be matched.
One of the strangest aspects of the evolution question is that noone really knows as yet what evolution is. And here Darwinism has confused us because of the way Darwin’s theory of natural selection has come to monopolize public understanding with an ideology of scientism. That natural selection is not the answer, and that evolution conceals mysteries still unknown to us is one of the dawning realizations of the discovery of the eonic effect. We detect a hidden force/process micromanaging the emergence of civilization, often down to the details. What are we to make of it?
Our theories have tended to reify the evolution question around genetic explanations, and this has greatly enriched our understanding in many ways, but as we examine the eonic effect we realize that behind the genetic component lies a deeper, and larger, process, or set of processes, whose action is barely on the threshold of our possibilities of understanding. It is thus highly misleading to biologize, geneticize, Darwinize historical/cultural questions. We need to adopt a new recalibrated definition of what we mean by ‘evolution’ in the case of human emergence.
The term ‘evolution’ means ‘rolling out’, and we can detect many processes that therefore deserve that title. Why should we give foundational status to the genetic version?