The Darwin debate has been a feature of cultural discourse ever since the
publication of Darwin's Origin. The original critics were not
fundamentalists in our sense, a group that arose a generation later.
These critics pointed immediately to the problems of the theory. The
persistence of the Darwin debate seems to puzzle Darwinists, a sign they
have naively not understood their position, and evidently can't compete in
the field of social Weltanschaungen. In fact, the debate preceded
Darwin, and its earlier form was clearly visible in the changing reactions
to such figures as Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck. The dread specter of
Jacobinism hung over ideas of 'transmutation' in the wake of the French
Revolution, and the facile liberal optimism and championing of progress, not
unlike the brief phase of the 'radicalism' of Adam Smith (witness the
copresence of the 'classical liberal' Tom Paine) mixed with inchoate
evolutionism in Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, were suddenly
discredited by events, amply clocked by the appearance of the demographer as
'better they starve' reactionary, Malthus. Erasmus Darwin went out of
fashion, Tom Paine died broke, and Adam Smith was rapidly recast as a
conservatized icon of capitalism. The generation of the Restoration deeply
conditioned debate, as it did the same to a figure such as Hegel, followed
by the extreme materialistic reaction of the following generation, visible
in Marx or Feuerbach. This was the period in which Darwin conceived and
delayed his theory, successful finally with his cleverly conservatized
theory of evolution. The debate over Malthus went on for a whole generation,
and was an early precursor of the Darwin debate. This was one of the
earliest cases of the brutal use of 'theory' as ideology, and was clearly
noted by the seminal critic of ideology, Karl Marx, or if you like, Sismondi.
Time has dealt Marxism one and the same critique and the charge of ideology
has now been pinned on the radical left. But the point is clear from the
sheer brazenness of Malthus. Darwin was not so crass. But Old Whig that he
was, he plied an ideological thesis in disguise. Is there any difference
between Darwin and Adam Smith? asks S. J. Gould in his Structure of
Evolutionary Theory. The next generation after Lamarck who dies forgotten
sees the tempest over Chambers' Vestiges, who in many ways prepared the way
for the coming of Darwin by taking the heat off the evolution controversy.
Figures such as Spencer openly, in some ways clearly and honestly and in
some ways fallaciously and invidiously, thought nothing of applying
evolutionary thought to sociological constructs. The trend was clear in
Erasmus Darwin, betwixt and between biology, the Lunar Society of
proto-Industrial Revolution innovators, and the economists: social and
biological thinking was never properly differentiated. Nothing that Darwin
did really resolved this issue. The point is that critique religion as we
might, the substitute was corn pone and white sugar, no good. A point
obvious to some, incomprehensible to others.Darwin was never especially
enthusiastic about Spencer and yet the influence is direct, and very clear,
as is that of Malthus. Darwin at no point was able to extricate evolution
from social evolutionism, and the Social Darwinism of the next generation is
a direct descendant of his confusions. Often blamed on Spencer (and the
charge is also valid), this Social Darwinism was one of the factors that led
to the rise of fundamentalist criticism of Darwinism, witness the clear
statements by a figure such as William Jennings Bryan, correctly aware of
the place of degenerate Darwinism as the early twentieth century slid into
the calamity of WWI. Bryan gets little credit now for his valid concerns.
The record here is disgracefully sanitized.
Darwin's theory was a species of bad software drifting into public
consciousness with its primal confusions over the nature of theory. Darwin
was an idiot on theory, and succeeded because he didn't know any better,
where many demurred seeing all too well the problems. Spencer is equally at
fault, and in any case shows plainly the way in which post-Malthusian
classical liberalism is trying to write the book on sociology, and ends up
entangled in Darwinism. The exact same fallacies resurface in a figure like
Hayek, where themes of the 'spontaneous social order' are at work with their
Smithian-Darwinian innuendoes. One should also point out the influence of
the positivism of a figure such as Comte, and the onset of reductionist
programs in the social sciences, creating a mindset and methodology that
many have claimed was too deeply constricted to constitute a viable social
philosophy. One of the persistent features of the Darwin debate is the
putdown, starting with Huxley and ending with Dawkins. This is the
insinuation of scientific brilliance and religious stupidity. But the
reality is the enshrinement of Darwin-style stupidity. And these 'stupid
fundamentalists' are laughing at Darwinists behind their backs. What
does this have to do with the current Darwin debate? Everything and nothing.
The point here is that Darwinism is not equipped to produce a social
humanism, but tends to generate one by default, and the results have never
been adequate in any sense of the term. Part of the problem is Darwin's
theory itself, based on natural selection. Part of the problem is just this
inability to differentiate social and biological evolutionism. Theories of
Dawin and Spencer are too clumsy to solve the problem. The trick has never
been managed, for the simple reason that Darwin's theory doesn't work, and
many of his first critics sensed easily the reason why. The problem goes
back a long way, and was clearly delineated by a figure such as Kant in his
classic critiques, where the issue of the human subjectivity in the context
of the physics of objectivity received its almost primordial formulation.
All of this has been swept away in the tide of Darwinism, then
Neo-Darwinism. The entire project of secular humanism wagered its bet on a
very narrow set of conceptions. That wager is destined to fail and the
chickens come home to roost in the current Darwin debate. Part of the
problem can be seen by the analogous fate of Marxism, very unpopular now,
but at all points an indicator of these trends of thought. The failures of
Marxism are well-known, but the point that is it struggled with is precisely
this issue of social evolution in relation to ideologies. It might have been
a candidate for some remedy but failed crucially on that score. This
example, issues of socialism apart, shows that all the pieces were in place
for a new secular humanist of modernity in the early nineteenth century
(witness the bizarre efforts of Hegel on that score) but the result was
truly a botched job. Marx was a smart fellow, but he bungled the job, ditto
for the rest. Hardly accident then that rightwing conservatives in an age of
brazen neo-liberalism are flooding into the vacuum of previous failures in
the era of post-Communism. In a way, it should remind those who are plagued
by Creationists all over again that they should be putting their own house
in order. But this they seem unable to do.In this context Ruse raises the
issue of science, evolution and religion. In one way it is true that science
cannot, and should not be pressed into the service of religious issues. But
in another it has no choice, and yet is unable to do the job right. Thre is
no mystery to this. Sociobiology on ethics is not a viable science, let
alone a subtitute for religion. The genetic fundamentalism of theories of
kin or group selection ought to be a joke, but such is current education
that most students don't even sense a problem here.
The classic Kantian distinctions of theoretical and practical reason,
however arcane they sound now, clearly attempted to harmonize the balance
between science and action, even pointing to the hope for a new 'religion
within the limits of reason'. However problematical Kant's thinking here, he
exposed in stark clarity what the generation of the Enlightenment and its
parallel generation of Romanticism sensed as the problem with modernity. One
can get the whole thing in a nutshell from Rousseau, whose influence on Kant
was direct. You can study Kant's Dialectic in his first critique and
consider his third antinomy of determinism and freedom to see that core flaw
in all scientific efforts to produce a social philosophy from a reductionist
program. Kant made clear the way in which a scientific program was destined
to be cursed by its inability to produce an ethical dimension to knowledge.
Just at this point the correction was set to produce a new cultural
humanism, theistic and/or atheistic, that would complement the scientific
revolution. And yet strange to say it never happened. Between Hegel, Marx,
and Darwin, and quite a few others, the football was fumbled and we are
really only five or six generations from that point of crisis, still frozen
in the same problem. I hold little brief for the Bible Belt, but they see
one thing the geeks and nerds who think hitech culture the epitome of
intelligence don't see: the failure of their project, and the failure even
to take the modernist suggestions to the resolution of that failure. Small
wonder they have decided to tune out altogether. That failure does not call
for some postmodern termination of the project. Five or six generations is
nothing. But the job has to be attempted, yet noone seems able to even
address the issues.
One thing is sure, it you plan to replace religion with sociobiology the
tide of greater life will rise and smite you. So my advice to the current
honchos of evolutionary psychology and Darwinist fundamentalism, is 'wise
up', or we are all done for.
All these problems, then, were clear long ago, and yet now such is the reign
of scientism and the Darwin propaganda machine that these crucial histories
of modernity are totally erased from memory, and the only social philosophy
left to challenge this monolithic hegemony springs from the American Bible
Belt. That's a pitiful state of affairs. Truly. The mindcontrol in Orwell's
book paints a stark portrait. But the current reaity is almost more
frightening because it is concealed.
Since I am not a Christian, let alone a Creationist, I find this situation
very undesirable, to say the least. But I don't think that either
Creationism or Intelligent Design are able to resolve any of these issues
outside of their own small worlds. But armed with thinktank dollars and
conservative promotional schemes they can certainly wreak havoc in the short
term. Reading a book like Philip Johnson's Darwin on Trial you hear all the
echoes of these original issues, coopted in oversimplifications for a
conservative religious agenda and a revved up political machine.
But it is essential for those who propose some form of secular humanism to
come to their senses and do something more intelligent than rehash Darwinian
formulas. The first order of business is to jettison the obsession with
Darwin's theory of natural selection. Full stop. If you can't figure that
out, the rest is pointless. The fact of evolution is the last line of
defense, and that is enought. So it was in Darwin's day, so it remains to
today. After that a genuine social philosophy of modernity (or any other
age) that can handle science without scientism, takes an inlelligent stance
toward religion, theism/atheism, and that isn't regurgitated Spencerism or
capitalist (or Marxist) propaganda for economism needs to appear to carry
the day. But we can easily see that noone seems capable of such a project.
It was about to be born in the late Enlightenment, but somehow the thread
was lost.So it is small wonder we should debate science and religion and
find the Bible Belt gloating, 'your time is up'. Religion in its
current forms cannot solve this question either, but it does generate the
required response to reductionist thinking with an ethical philosophy of
history. It seems impossible that modern secularist can't do better than
that But the facts speak for themselves, the paralysis in frozen Darwin
dogma, utilitarianism, economism, and reductionist fantasies of total
science.So it is not a question of science abdicating issues of religion, as
Ruse seems to suggest to Dawkins and Wilson. It is really a question of
being able to produce a coherent view of man that can carry secular culture
and/or a religous culture that is not stuck in the mythologies or
metaphysics of the past. But it won't happen in the current environment of
Darwinian fundamentalism. Bible Belt fundamentalists are no better, but at
this rate we are going to get a generation's worth of this stupidity rammed
down our throats.Thanks, Charles Darwin. Idiot!
______________________
From Boston.com
In the ongoing
struggle between evolution and creationism, says philosopher of science
Michael Ruse, Darwinians may be their own worst enemy
By Peter Dizikes |
May 1, 2005
CREATIONISM IS ON the march in America. In states from Alabama to
Pennsylvania, supporters are attempting to restrict the teaching of
evolution - and introduce their current favorite theory, Intelligent
Design, into the classroom. Darwinian evolution, they say, cannot account
for the complexity of life, which can only be explained with reference to
some kind of creator. And such efforts may be having an effect. According
to a Gallup survey released last November, only about a third of Americans
believe that Darwin's theory is well supported by the scientific evidence,
while nearly half believe that humans were created in more or less their
present form 10,000 years ago.
What accounts for this revival? Some observers point to the increasing
political influence of the religious right. Others point to decades of
well-funded creationist efforts to chip away at evolution's stature,
reducing it to just one in a range of competing theories. But Michael Ruse
has a different explanation: He lays much of the blame at the feet of
evolution's most famous advocates.
Ruse, a philosopher of science at Florida State University, occupies a
distinct position in the heated debates about evolution and creationism.
He is both a staunch supporter of evolution and an ardent critic of
scientists who he thinks have hurt the cause by habitually stepping
outside the bounds of science into social theory. In his latest book,
''The Evolution-Creation Struggle,'' published by Harvard University Press
later this month, Ruse elaborates on a theme he has been developing in a
career dating back to the 1960s: Evolution is controversial in large part,
he theorizes, because its supporters have often presented it as the basis
for self-sufficient philosophies of progress and materialism, which
invariably wind up in competition with religion.
While scientists and creationists often square off over the scientific
evidence for evolution, the source of the ongoing dispute is deeper.
''This is not just a fight about dinosaurs or gaps in the fossil record,''
says Ruse, speaking from his home in Florida. ''This is a fight about
different worldviews.''
The tendency to apply ideas about organic evolution to society and
philosophy, Ruse claims in his new book, dates to the Enlightenment, but
it really took flight in the aftermath of Charles Darwin's 1859
publication of ''The Origin of Species.'' While Darwin himself, in Ruse's
view, largely abstained from gratuitous social theorizing, many of his
fellow scientists, such as the English biologist T.H. Huxley, as well as
nonscientists like Herbert Spencer, enthusiastically used the general
notion of evolution to argue that society was moving forward through
history. While their ideas varied, writes Ruse, ''progress was the
backbone of it all'' - even though that value, he believes, cannot be
wholly justified, or properly derived, from actual evolution by natural
selection. 1
As Ruse sees it, this trend continued in the 20th century, when even
important biologists like the Englishman R.A. Fisher held eugenicist views
about human perfectibility. Julian Huxley, evolution's most famous British
advocate in the 1950s and 1960s, emphasized his own secular vision of
''evolutionary humanism'' in his writings, while his American counterpart,
George Gaylord Simpson, spoke of the impossibility of compromise between
evolution and religion.
Virtually every prominent Darwinian in recent decades has eschewed social
Darwinism, and most believe that evolution itself, while responsible for the
increased complexity of organic forms over time, cannot be regarded as a
linear process driving toward a particular endpoint. But Ruse asserts that
popular contemporary biologists like Edward O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins
have also exacerbated the divisions between evolutionists and creationists
by directly challenging the validity of religious belief - Dawkins by
repeatedly declaring his atheism (''faith,'' he once wrote, ''is one of the
world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate''), and Wilson by describing his ''search for objective reality''
as a replacement for religious seeking.
All told, Ruse claims, loading values onto the platform of evolutionary
science constitutes ''evolutionism,'' an outlook that goes far beyond the
scientific acceptance of evolution as a means of explaining the origins and
development of species. Provocatively, Ruse argues that evolutionism has
often constituted a ''religion'' itself by offering ''a world picture, a
story of origins, and a special place for humans,'' while its proponents
have been ''trying deliberately to do better than Christianity.''
To be sure, Ruse acknowledges, some biologists are religious, while a
significant portion of religious believers are willing to accept the concept
of evolution at least to some extent. But, he argues, the way evolutionists
have often linked their science to progressive politics has, in recent
decades, become anathema to many believers, especially fundamentalist
Christians whose biblical literalism leads them to believe that worldly
change will only arrive with the Second Coming. The advocates of evolution,
Ruse argues, have thus been ''competing for space in the hearts and minds''
of many religious believers without even realizing it - much to the
detriment of their cause.. . .
Ruse, a native of England who emigrated first to Canada before coming to
Florida State five years ago, is used to raising the ire of fellow
Darwinians. Last year, when he co-edited a book, ''Debating Design,'' with
William A. Dembski, a leading advocate of Intelligent Design, leaving him
open to charges that he was giving creationists credibility and a platform.
Ruse says he expects a similarly heated response to his latest book.
''Some colleague or another is going to go through the roof on this,'' he
says, with a hint of enthusiasm. He predicts ''a range of reactions from the
irritated to the livid. And if I don't get that I'm going to be a very sorry
person.''
If the book raises hackles, though, it also raises critical questions.
Given the inherent conflict between evolution and a literal reading of
Genesis, does it really matter what evolution's advocates say? Or are
creationists bound to attack evolutionary science regardless? And to what
extent does Ruse's own approach, as the in-house critic of evolution's
advocates, help or hinder his cause?
On the first count, some historians of science agree the social
theorizing of evolutionists has helped motivate creationists. ''If you go
back to the 1950s and '60s, you can find people reacting to Julian Huxley's
grand statements about the meaning of evolution,'' says Edward J. Larson, a
historian at the University of Georgia and author of the Pulitzer
Prize-winning ''Summer for the Gods'' (1997), about Tennessee's famous 1925
Scopes Trial, in which a schoolteacher was accused of violating state law
against the teaching of evolution. More recently, University of California
law professor Phillip E. Johnson, a champion of Intelligent Design, has
claimed to be responding to Dawkins's declarations of atheism.
Ruse, a self-identified agnostic, acknowledges the ''thrilling quality''
of Dawkins's writing but says he objects to adamantly anti-religion
statements coming from a scientist. ''I don't have any more belief than
Dawkins,'' he says. ''But I do think it matters that he is making it very
difficult for those of us who care about evolution to put forward a
reasonable face to the reasonable portion [of the public] in the middle.''
By focusing on scientific superstars, though, Ruse may be downplaying the
social and institutional factors which have fueled the emergence of
organized opposition to evolution. While Darwinian evolution has faced
fierce critics ever since 1859, American resistance to it has often become
most concerted in response to broad societal developments. The Scopes Trial
itself occurred not long after a significant increase in high school
attendance, which made the question of what students were learning there
more pressing. And the widespread adoption in the 1960s of a textbook on
evolution produced by the Biological Science Curriculum Study group, a
Colorado-based educational publishing company, spurred the organization of
well-funded anti-evolution groups that remain active today, such as the
California-based Institute for Creation Research.
''Certainly the presence of the BSCS textbooks in the 1960s became the
rallying point for the creationists,'' notes Larson. And the recent growth,
he adds, in the number of theologically conservative evangelical Christians,
at the expense of mainline Protestant denominations that have traditionally
been more receptive to evolution, has only given the anti-evolution movement
more momentum.
Ruse acknowledges this dynamic. But he says that precisely because
scientists ''are plunged into a situation not of their own making,'' they
should change tactics, and seek out religious moderates who might be willing
to accept evolution if it were presented in a more diplomatic manner.
Other science supporters agree there is a middle ground where minds, if
not hearts, can be won. ''There are many people in religious communities,
who if they were given information on evolution in an objective, careful
way, would not have a problem believing in evolution,'' says Albert H. Teich,
director of science and policy programs for the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. The AAAS will release a new guide to evolution this
summer, which it hopes will have broad appeal.
While Ruse claims the writings of evolutionists have had unintended
consequences, his own work has not been immune from that problem. Some
creationists who cite his work to support their position have ignored his
distinction between ''evolutionism'' and evolution. In 2000, for instance,
Tom Willis, president of the Creation Science Association for Mid-America,
claimed that ''Michael Ruse ... recently stated that evolution is a religion
and always has been.''
Ruse accepts such incidents as an occupational hazard. ''What am I
supposed to do?'' he asks in response. ''I'm an academic. I believe in
freedom. I believe the most important thing you can do is criticize your own
ideas.''
Colleagues do not entirely agree. ''If you deal in this area, you have to
word things carefully,'' says Eugenie C. Scott, an anthropologist who is
executive director of the National Center for Science Education, an
evolution advocacy group in Oakland. ''And sometimes it may be necessary to
forego the snappy line, just so it's not easy [for a creationist] to take
your thoughts out of context.''
Adds Scott: ''I'm a hell of a lot more careful than Michael. I personally
prefer not to provide ammunition for the opposition.''
Scott believes that in previous books Ruse has done ''a nice job''
debunking Intelligent Design. As for those who criticize him for
collaborating with Intelligent Design advocates like Dembski, Ruse says,
''If you sup with the devil, it's legitimate for people to take shots at
that.'' He did it because ''I think it's a bad mistake to ignore the other
side.''
Ultimately, Ruse says, ''Evolution is true. Evolution works.'' But as he
sees it, the traditional ways of presenting evolution have hurt as much as
helped.
''If everything were going well, you could sit back and say, ‘Ruse,
don't rock the boat,''' he says. ''But it's awful. If Bush gets one or two
more Supreme Court Justices, we'll have Intelligent Design in the
classroom.'' (In 1981, Ruse testified in a case in which an Arkansas judge
ruled that creation science - which the state had tried to introduce in
schools - was not valid science but an unconstitutional attempt to teach
religion in the classroom. The Supreme Court upheld the decision in 1987.)
That's why he will continue to insist that many religious believers who
currently reject or remain indifferent to Darwin can come to accept it - as
long as they are presented strictly with scientific facts, and given less
reason to think evolution could be a threat to their social and spiritual
values.
''Am I going to convert Phillip Johnson?'' asks Ruse, referring to the
anti-Darwinian Berkeley professor. ''Absolutely not. Are we going to find a
way to reach people in the center on these things? Sure.''
Peter Dizikes is a journalist living in Arlington.
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