05.16.10

I am amazed, Ruse reviews my review of his book

Posted in Booknotes, Evolution, Science & Religion at 11:45 am by nemo

I am amazed: Ruse reviews my review of his book at Amazon: The Sins of Orlando Figes
By Michael Ruse

What is interesting is that, as soon as the book was listed by Amazon, a review appeared–one of those things that readers do and that are listed under the information about the book. And to say that it is a bit of a corker is to underestimate. “This is an odd book: It teeters on the verge of being a good book, nearly bringing a new perspective to a tired debate, and then it skids off and loses its focus. The reason is simple: You can’t be a Darwinian true believer, defending ad infinitum the metaphysics of natural selection, and deal with the topics the book raises, or rather–it seems, someone else raised, and which Ruse almost dishonestly takes up and discusses as if this was his material.” And that is just for starters! I ignore or belittle Kant, for instance. (No matter that I am almost obsessive on the subject of Kant in an earlier book, Darwin and Design.) “It would seem that Ruse wishes to intone from on high with academic grandeur to fix these questions without any reference to the original discussions. This is professorial arrogance at its worst.” And so we keep going. “As to the mainline topic of the book, science and spirituality, it is still another useless effort to bridge the Divide here, doomed to failure if by science and spirituality you mean Darwinism and Christianity.” There is quite a bit more along these lines.

I am charged with not reading the book, false, a spurious charge.
Read the book then, I was not trying to sink this book, only to clarify the misleading impression given on Kantian issues.
Since I am the only reviewer of his book, he is wondering if his book will remain unread. It is not my problem, but I am a little surprised myself that the Darwin group will boycott this book. Not enough that Ruse is a strict Darwinian, and atheist. That’s not enough for the Dawkins cult: he can’t be an ‘accomodationalist’ as they call those who try to bridge Darwinism and religion. I have a problem here myself, but it is hardly grounds for boycott.

Anyway, Ruse’s comments on my review are desperate, and again disingenuous. Ruse knows perfectly well who I am, has received a free copy of my book on history and evolution, been reviewed three or four times by me at Amazon, and, further, I stand by what I hinted at in the review: that Ruse is attacking my Kantian take on evolutioin and history without the courtesy of mentioning me by name. The review simply shows his ignorance of philosophy. I hate to say it, but that’s the fate of students of Darwinism: they think they can trash a figure like Kant using Darwin. Ye Gods.
Ruse is a lousy second-rate philosopher who is incapable of seeing the relevance of Kant to the Darwin debate, to issues of teleology, to issues of the philosophy of biology, and to issues of ethics and religion. That is a harsh judgment, but it is time to warn a next generation of the bad influence of Darwinian stupidity on your educational development.
Kant virtually prophesied the coming problems of Darwinism, decades before the fact. Darwinism violates every protocol of Kant’s critique of (bad) metaphysics. It does exactly what Kant warned about: pontificates on ‘soul, god, and free will’ issues using natural selection ideology.

I feel sure that his book is an attempt to forestall my influence (next to the recent Cambridge University text on Kant’s essay on history, another obvious attempt to stop me) on the Internet, which academics and Darwinians can’t control. I could be wrong, so I merely hinted at this in my review, but now I feel almost certain. My work is completely boycotted, nothing new or surprising but it has had more than a half a million viewers and is known all over the world, no wonder the bigwigs worry.

You cannot easily refute the logic I have produced on history and evolution, and the discussion of the Axial Age, a taboo subject.
What is wrong with these people? They want to use Darwinian ideology to control the whole of culture. It is beyond belief, and is going to end by discrediting science.

The book of mine also has a unique insight into, and solutioin of, a classic problem of Kant, the paradoxical (historical) evidence of the absence of a cause (???), but Kant scholars are too hoitytoidy to even address the issue if it is addressed by an outsider. LIfe is hard: if you a non-cult member non-PHd but understand something in Kant better than Kant scholars, then you are out of luck.

I could have been a PhD, with ease, but the Beatles famous album came out in ’68 at the point i was taking a summer course in scholarly German, with the result that i dropped out of society and entered an alternate universe that was less than professorial but far better in retrospect. I could have ended up like Ruse in the pits of academic stupidity. I am thus fortunate.
In general you cannot enter the prof world if you are a Darwin critic which tells you that a lot of smart people are keeping their mouths shut.
I am one of the few with better than professorial competence, but outside the system, who can pursue the Darwin debate without fear. I have been drafted almost it seems to carry this load, where the professional cadre is simply cowardly.
I did not say that Ruse ignored Kant, I said that he had not understood him. He says he is obsessive on Kant in his earlier book, which I also reviewed. I will check it again, but it seems that he misunderstood Kant there also.
The charge of professorial arrogance stands. It is the assumption that you should never acknowledge the existence of outsiders, and if they get to be uppity like me, trash them indirectly.
As to the argument of Ruse’s book, what I say is clear, and has been said here a dozen times: Darwinism and Christianity is not the same issue/discussion as evolution and religion, and yet they are often collated together. It is impossible in my view to reconcile Christianity and Darwinism.
But in general the relation of religion in general to evolutionism in general remains ambiguous, since they are left undefined. I can see ways in principle to consider ‘evolution’ and ‘religion’ in some sense compatible, as visible in my discussions of the Axial Age, etc…
At one point I almost felt sorry for Ruse, he has been treated unfairly here, more or less, but his book just doesn’t rate it, so it can’t be helped.
However, the book does raise a lot of issues that could be challenged by postdarwinians/Kantian biologists, so it is readable under those guidelines.
Meanwhile the near dishonesty, near I said, on the Kant issue should be clarified for the public.
Kant produced the teleomechanists, cf. Lenoir’s The Strategy Of Life, a paradigm on evolution that is precisely what is needed for postdarwinism, with a little ugrading.

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