12.10.08
The Oedipus Paradox
An older selection, brought back on top:
The way in which theory and ideology lurk behind Darwin’s theory requires careful examination of how we construct any theories.
From World History & The Eonic Effect
1.2.3 The Oedipus Paradox
Science in its current form claims an objectivity of social theory that is
illusory. Theories are clumsy instruments in the social sciences. We are so
conditioned to the triumphs of physics, and the claims for its extension into
all fields that we fail to realize what a muddle the whole thing is. A theory
as potentially violent as Darwin’s should demand care in its handling. A
theory is taken, in the manner of physics, as a set of universal generalizations,
physical laws, and, by and large, these are true throughout space and at all
times, including the future of the observer, who makes the generalization. In
the transition to evolutionary ‘science’ in the period of Darwin, this
mindset passed into a series of tacit assumptions about the application of
science to other fields, including the biological and social sciences. Darwin’s
theory of natural selection was highly desirable because it seemed to cast
biological evolution in terms of a ‘law’ universally valid throughout space and
at all times, including that of the observer, here, of evolution. But is such
an extension valid? T. H. Huxley was one of the first to get suspicious
here. Why is it that we feel compelled, he thought, to contradict the ‘law of
evolution’ in practice?
Physical laws are statements about carefully defined massive objects.
Evolutionary generalizations are about organisms, and the character of these
entities is never systematically defined, or observed, and their character changes
over time. The generalization by natural selection, apparently, stretches
from the beginning of life, to the emergence of man, and therefore to man’s
present, and, evidently his future, since, by definition, that is the nature of a
‘law’.
Let us note the flood of fallacies that emerge here. All of these organisms
show a distinct increase in their degrees of freedom (which may mean no more
than the evolution of locomotion) with time, and with man this seems to cross
a threshold where an ‘active will’ (which need not be ‘free will’) can
select a set of options, no doubt still within the grip of physical law, that
will alter or simply create the future. The extraordinary question arises here:
what if he adopts a ‘theory about natural selection’ as the basis of his
action?! Or even the option to negate this theory! Note the contradiction. A ‘
law’ should operate at all times without choice from an observer. But man,
having evolved a higher degree of freedom, could choose to consciously mimic
what he thought the ‘law’ of natural selection, taking this as grounds for the
abandonment of other factors in his decision, including ethical restraints.
Since natural selection naturally suggests competition and conflict, he puts a
premium on such conflict, with, to make matters worse, a spurious
teleological expectation about the ‘future value’ of such conflict, as opposed to
ethical restraint.
What has gone wrong here? Clearly in a passive organism without an active
will, an ‘evolutionary law’ might apply, but in an organism with an active
will, and mind, the idea of the theory becomes a thinkable idea that can
influence action, and this will turn into a possibly confused bogus form of mental
software: I should act according to ‘law’. The obvious answer is that ‘
evolutionary laws’ don’t exist in the sense of ‘physical laws’! We need a new
kind of ‘theory’ for evolution, one that can define its domain of application,
the type of organism it refers to, specify the temporal coordinates of the
observer and creator of a theory, and be so specified that it will apply only to
the observer’s past, and never his present or future, since he always has
option to ‘do otherwise’, contradict, or falsify that ‘law’. For this and
many other reasons, we must suspect that Darwin’s generalization is simply
false, a subtle fallacy of reductionism misapplied.
Some new kind of evolution has appeared long ago to produce mind, an active
will, and, indeed, science itself. Man has, all along, passed through an ‘
evolutionary process’ of some other kind that ‘evolves’ his potential to act,
and act ethically. It is hard to see how natural selection could ever foot the
bill here. And any generalization must take into account the ‘turning point’
after which future of prediction by ‘law’ is voided. Theories with temporal
domains, and referring only to the past of the theorist/observer are not
contradictory, and we will attempt to produce one for the so-called eonic
effect, and its distinct species of ‘evolution’. We must produce a theory about
the ‘evolution of freedom’.
We will use the term ‘Oedipus Paradox’ for this phenomenon of theories.
This ‘Oedipus Paradox’, a term from Karl Popper, is a sign of an improperly
constructed theory, and will be discussed further in Chapter Four. It arises
from the failure to define the boundary of history (the chronicle of the ‘will
to act’), and evolution (the emergence of passive organisms). In some
embarrassment we wake up to the way in which the visible surface of ‘jungle life’
and the spectacle of natural selection has hoodwinked us into a false
generalization about evolution.
Resolving the Oedipus Paradox As we discover the eonic effect, we will see
this problem resolved by creating a new kind of historical model that unites
in tandem the definitions of ‘evolution and history’, the one emerging from
the other. ‘Evolution’ is always seen looking backwards, and never applies
directly to the free potential of the present, and the agent acting out history.
In the interaction of these two we see the direct appearance of ethical
evolution/behavior, induced and ‘free’, or on the way to being free, its
evolution and self-evolution (i.e. history) connected yet separate. It’s pretty
obvious, with this new model, an ethical override arrives to induce a ‘should’
about murder and botched theories with their inducements of mayhem.
The Old Testament There could hardly a more dramatic example of the
intersection of macroevolution and history, generating ethical protocols, than the
Old Testament. We must keep in mind, however, the primitive nature of this
early instance, and the way in which the document itself is a record only of the
‘history’ aspect of our unified ‘evolution/history’ process, and this
kicks up all the dust of mythological thinking. We are ‘evolving’ past this
archaelogical monument.
A catch for any theory If we adopt this approach we must, to produce a
theory of evolution, produce a deduction of the system of ethics to go with it in
any account of ‘evolution and ethics’. The Old Testament is already ancient
history in this regard. How then do we pass judgment on the cunning and
cynical Darwinians indifferent to murder in the name of ‘value-free theory’? The
attempts of Kant to derive freedom and the categorical imperative in
conjunction, are also, as we will see, eonic in their emergence, as an upgrade,
however incomplete, to this question. The simplest answer is that we are unable
to produce a ‘theory’ of evolution without a deduction of ethical judgment. We
are allowed, however, an intelligent ‘cop out’ with an ‘if’: if our
evolution is thus incomplete, and the true birth of history an unrealized potential
in a field of rogue Darwinian ‘theorists’, cunning enough to use science
glamor and pseudo-theories for their dark purposes.
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A second section, coming after The Oedipus Paradox
\\From World History & The Eonic Effect
1.2.4 Botched Theories And The Coefficient of Murder
Let us look at this implication of the Oedipus paradox, and consider the
ethics involved in the assertion of evolutionary, and indeed, ethical theories,
seen in a definable ‘coefficient of murder’ associated with the theory. The
option to ‘act according to the law of evolution’, survival of the fittest,
natural selection (death of the competitor) informs the agent, who proceeds to
violent means, sure in his rejection of ethics of the grounding in science
of biological law. Unscrupulous warmongers are handed a gift of legitimation
by Darwin’s shortsighted theory. To inject the theory of natural selection
into the culture of his time without any specification of the domains of its
application was the source of the hopeless confusion that arose in Darwin’s
wake, leading to the entanglements of Social Darwinism. Herbert Spencer is
partly to blame here, but he never proposed the facts of social competition as a
universal explanation for evolution.
Consider, then, the non-linear self-interaction of theory and history, a
possibility current science never examines, assuming an objective observer, able
to formulate laws, although he is actually time-bound, with an ambiguous
present. How will a theory taken as true by induced belief alter present
behavior in the agent of theory? Apply that to the idea of conflict for survival.
Notice the difference between what is observed in the past among unconscious
organisms and what is taken as a theory about that, in the present, given the
conscious subjectivity of the observer. Here theory is suddenly an historical
variable. The record speaks for itself here. The belief in natural selection
tends toward a de facto revision of ethical assumptions. Its promotion can
become a Machiavellian strategy.
The metaphor of a trial, hence a crime, is ironically appropriate for a
subject as ridden with dangerous potential for criminal suggestion as Darwin’s
theory, with its legacy of Social Darwinism, from which Darwin himself is
forever being exempted, even as the subtitle of his book gives the game away, and
all blame is foisted on Spencer. Lest that be gainsaid, the innuendo in that
subtitle is clear. Atrocious potential contradictions lurk in all improperly
defined historical theories.
With dangerous theories the result of the Oedipus paradox can be a calamity.
The assumption, without verification, that survival of the fittest, hence
conflict, leads to biological innovations, then applied to social evolution,
induces ‘theory realization’ in the expectation of a future good. We should
define the ‘coefficient of murder’ in units of ‘casualties per paradigm shift’
as the measure of the downfield consequences as mayhem in the action of
those who ‘thought the theory correct’ in its paradigm span, and took the theory
into their own hands as scientific law voiding considerations of ethics.
Darwinism has a very high coefficient here in the emergence of Social Darwinism.
Coefficient of murder Theories of evolution are historically embedded,
observations looking backward toward the past, and scramble the time domain of the
theory’s application, as they assume a universal generalization that
overflows into the present and future. Thus ill-conceived they might induce ‘acting
out the theory’ as a paradoxical ‘should’. We could then study the
historical course of the theory and measure its casualty rate.
Those casualties remain after the next paradigm shift as irreversible
consequences in history. We can run amok with theories. And the coefficient of
murder for Darwinism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century must be
high indeed. We need a way to defend ourselves from being accessory to this by
assent to theory.
Although this measure is obviously difficult to compute in practice, it is a
real parameter, and we can see the woeful genocidal consequences of this
theory in the period after its appearance. Further, those who knowingly dissemble
in the promotion of this theory should keep this measure in mind, even as
they easily evade ‘trial’ in the pursuit of ‘science’ and the promotion of
economic action. Those who unknowingly fall into this trap as dupes of
propaganda deserve the restoration of their ethical intuitions in the debriefing of
theory. The coefficient of murder hangs heavily over Darwinism. The foundation
of science must be truthful behavior, yet here the suspicion of
Machiavellian behavior arises in the promotion of a paradigm. We should be alert to ‘lie
detection’ in Darwinian public behavior.
The point is that we should always take theories provisionally, if this
self-interaction of theory and agent is based on speculative interpretations of
the never closely observed evolutionary record. The confusion arises, no doubt,
from the analogue of economic behavior.
Economic competition This issue is made complicated by the fact that
economic competition might increase productive efficiency in market systems.
Whether this is true or not (e.g. compared with socialist systems), it is not a
statement about biology. The observation is not grounds for a universal
generalization about evolution! This false analogy was the original serpent in the
garden that cast its blight on Darwinism. Let us note that the functioning of
markets requires conformance to law, and presupposes a system to enforce
ethical restraint! How biologists could have wrested this example from market
systems to apply to the whole of nature, stripped of its cultural ethics, is
perplexing, and a story of ideology indeed.
Darwin on trial. Let the virtual theory trial proceed on a philosophical
basis. Given its record Darwinism is certainly on trial, and we need not gush
with scientific enthusiasm confronted with the real legacy of the potential ‘
repeat offender’. Since Darwinists are often more ethical than the violent
religionists supposed the upholders of the sacred, we may be forced to dismiss
the case on the grounds of ‘theoretical idiocy’. We can proceed with
Darwingate, what they knew and when they knew it, to sort the dupes from the
hypocrites, and many texts here are transparently deceptive, especially once we see
how peer review and the Darwin book market influence veracity. So the record
speaks for itself. And the supine accessories in the social sciences bludgeoned
into bad jargon by the ‘Two Cultures’ debate won’t get off lightly either.
Given the legacy of eugenics and the Holocaust, we must be at all points
vigilant promotion of this theory means what its adherents say it means, which
means ‘genocide’ in the pursuit of population tampering in some conspiracy of
evolution. The legacy of eugenics warns us these are not idle speculations.
Darwin’s theory is an accident waiting to happen.