05.20.09
Laws, theories, and Social Darwinism: the Oedipus paradox
The issue of social darwinism seems to leave most scientists suddenly at a loss to deal with what is clearly a breakddown in scientific objectivity as to theories. The sense of the universal applicability of scientific reasoning is so strong that the problem arising with evolutionary theories never seems to register. And yet a strange contradiction lurks in the very idea of an evolutionary ‘law’ or generalization. Such a ‘law’ is clearly implied in the assertions about Darwin’s natural selection. Some scientists, if asked, would deny that natural selection was such a ‘law’, but in practice that is the way it is taken. And the result is a fallacy because it could not apply to all situations, especially to that of the observer himself who is under no compulsion to follow the ‘law’ in practice. A strange situation has arisen: a generalization about passive organisms suddenly is applied to an active agent with a ‘will’. He is by definition able to transcend the functioning of any so-called law, by the will to do otherwise, or to simply act according to other principles.
This kind of situation is not the same as that in physics where the law of gravitation can be extended to the future of the observer himself.
But with biological evolution that situation has changed. Natural selection applies to the behavior of organisms, but with an organism with a will of its own there is no ‘law’ to apply.
This situation should be a reminder of the fact that biology is not physics, and that universal generalizations about ‘how evolution happened’ are likely to be non-existent.
We see how social darwinism arises from natural selection beliefs: Natural selection generated ‘evolution’ in the past, therefore by my own actions I can generate ‘evolution’ by applying natural selection/competition/survival conflict to my own behavior.
But human behavior is not like that and the clear degeneration of motive in the social darwinist misinterpretation of Darwin is a delusion about theories and science.
The Oedipus Paradox