Category Archives: History

I’m 50% a historian so I do some history of science. When something strikes me as useful, I use this category. Check out Whewell’s Ghost blog for other work.

by | April 1, 2013

God and evolution 1

[I have decided to restart ET for a bit, but given my circumstances, it will be sporadic at best. This is the first in a series that will be tagged “Living with Evolution”, and is the first rough draft of what I hope will be a book.]

The common view these days is the religion and evolution are incompatible, but ironically evolution was widely and almost universally adopted by the major denominations in the nineteenth century when Darwin published the Origin in 1859. One of Darwin’s first defenders and popularisers was the Rev. Charles Kingsley, an Anglican minister, whose The Water Babies was published in 1862 and 63. In it he made use of a somewhat distorted account of evolution:

Does not each of us, in coming into this world, go through a transformation just as wonderful as that of a sea-egg, or a butterfly? and do not reason and analogy, as well as Scripture, tell us that that transformation is not the last? and that, though what we shall be, we know not, yet we are here but as the crawling caterpillar, and shall be hereafter as the perfect fly. The old Greeks, heathens as they were, saw as much as that two thousand years ago… [Chapter 2]

The Water Baby in question, Tom, encounters a Professor Ptthmllnsprts who argues that men did not come from apes:

He held very strange theories about a good many things. He had even got up once at the British Association, and declared that apes had hippopotamus majors in their brains just as men have. Which was a shocking thing to say; for, if it were so, what would become of the faith, hope, and charity of immortal millions? You may think that there are other more important differences between you and an ape, such as being able to speak, and make machines, and know right from wrong, and say your prayers, and other little matters of that kind; but that is a child’s fancy, my dear. Nothing is to be depended on but the great hippopotamus test. If you have a hippopotamus major in your brain, you are no ape, though you had four hands, no feet, and were more apish than the apes of all aperies. But if a hippopotamus major is ever discovered in one single ape’s brain, nothing will save your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-greater-greatest — grandmother from having been an ape too. No, my dear little man; always remember that the one true, certain, final, and all-important difference between you and an ape is, that you have a hippopotamus major in your brain, and it has none; and that, therefore, to discover one in its brain will be a very wrong and dangerous thing, at which every one will be very much shocked, as we may suppose they were at the professor.— Though really, after all, it don’t much matter; because — as Lord Dundreary and others would put it — nobody but men have hippopotamuses in their brains; so, if a hippopotamus was discovered in an ape’s brain, why it would not be one, you know, but something else.

But the professor had gone, I am sorry to say, even further than that; for he had read at the British Association at Melbourne, Australia, in the year 1999, a paper which assured every one who found himself the better or wiser for the news, that there were not, never had been, and could not be, any rational or half-rational beings except men, anywhere, anywhen, or anyhow; that nymphs, satyrs, fauns, inui, dwarfs, trolls, elves, gnomes, fairies, brownies, nixes, wills, kobolds, leprechaunes, cluricaunes, banshees, will-o’-the-wisps, follets, lutins, magots, goblins, afrits, marids, jinns, ghouls, peris, deevs, angels, archangels, imps, bogies, or worse, were nothing at all, and pure bosh and wind. And he had to get up very early in the morning to prove that, and to eat his breakfast overnight; but he did it, at least to his own satisfaction. Whereon a certain great divine, and a very clever divine was he, called him a regular Sadducee; and probably he was quite right. Whereon the professor, in return, called him a regular Pharisee; and probably he was quite right too. But they did not quarrel in the least; for, when men are men of the world, hard words run off them like water off a duck’s back. So the professor and the divine met at dinner that evening, and sat together on the sofa afterwards for an hour, and talked over the state of female labour on the antarctic continent (for nobody talks shop after his claret), and each vowed that the other was the best company he ever met in his life. What an advantage it is to be men of the world!

From all which you may guess that the professor was not the least of little Ellie’s opinion. So he gave her a succinct compendium of his famous paper at the British Association, in a form suited for the youthful mind. But, as we have gone over his arguments against water-babies once already, which is once too often, we will not repeat them here.

Now little Ellie was, I suppose, a stupid little girl; for, instead of being convinced by Professor Ptthmllnsprts’ arguments, she only asked the same question over again.

“But why are there not water-babies?”

I trust and hope that it was because the professor trod at that moment on the edge of a very sharp mussel, and hurt one of his corns sadly, that he answered quite sharply, forgetting that he was a scientific man, and therefore ought to have known that he couldn’t know; and that he was a logician, and therefore ought to have known that he could not prove a universal negative — I say, I trust and hope it was because the mussel hurt his corn, that the professor answered quite sharply:

“Because there ain’t.”

Here the debate being parodied is between Richard Owen, who said that there was no hippocampus major in the brains of apes, only in humans, which Thomas Huxley took great delight in showing to be wrong. Owen argued in favour of the “divines”, the Anglican hierarchy to which he owed his station and position; Huxley in favour of a secular science. Both, however, were empiricists. Facts took priority over theory, even for Owen. I think I must have missed that British Association paper in 1999, though, for all that I am a Melbourne resident./p pKingsley’s account was one of the reasons why evolution was so quick to be adopted. At the end of the 1860s, almost all scientists, and a large number of public intellectuals, counted themselves “Darwinians”, at least to the extent that they agreed that existing species had evolved from previous species by a process of modification. Even Owen accept the idea of modified descent, as evolution was called. What he and others did not accept, though, was the idea that the driving mechanism of evolution was an unguided process of natural selection. While evolution was adopted, natural selection was considered disagreeable to morality and religion. In fact, the notion that natural selection even emcould/em be an engine of evolution was at issue until almost 70 years later, although there were plenty ofadvocates for it, both scientific, and political.

Until the 1960s, the idea that evolution itself did not happen, that all living things are now as they were created a few thousand years ago, was the province of a few crackpots and the Seventh Day Adventist church, within which creationism developed in the early part of the twentieth century. While Darwin did object to “special creationism” (where the adjective “special” means “of species), it was a different beast. By Darwin’s time, those who believed in special creationism held that species were the result of divine intervention, not natural processes, but they had accepted that this was an ongoing process over at least several millions of years, a view proposed by Georges Cuvier in the early part of that century./p pModern creationism, which held that the Bible was scientific and that the world was young, was invented, more or less, out of whole cloth by George Macready Price, a Canadian amateur geologist, in the 1910s. Objections to evolution itself had been made by a few, especially during the Scopes trial of 1925 by William Jennings Bryan, who used Price’sideas.

On the whole, though, religious institutions did not object to evolution. In fact, the Catholic intellectual community, when it met to discuss the latest innovations in science, objected first to Dalton’s atomism, as it undercut the rationale for the doctrine of transubstantiation in the Mass. Darwin was discussed, but opinions were split. In the 1910s, though, German Catholic entomologist Erich Wassmann, argued that species could only modify so much, a view that dated back to Buffon in the late 18th century. The objections to evolution, and not just natural selection, weregathering pace.

pIn the 1960s, certain fundamentalists began to argue that the Bible (or in some cases, the Qur’an) was scientific, and that what the holy writings asserted must be taken literally. This is therefore called “literalism”, and although it is a view that has persisted over the last two thousand years, it has always been a minority opinion amongst believers. Most of the time, the scriptures were taken as being a mixture of allegory (metaphor and hidden theological meaning) and factual claims.

pStill, there was something faintly worrying about evolution for many religious. It was taken to be a stalking horse for atheism, for immorality, and for opposition to religion. The proponents of evolution themselves did not help in this impression, either. From Thomas Huxley’s agnosticism, to the views of the so-called “social Darwinists”, traditional beliefs were seen to be under challenge. It did not matter that many religious also thought evolution was correct; only the opponents of religion were seen.

Today a similar trend exists: old arguments never die, as the philosopher John Dewey once noted, we merely get over them. Many proponents of evolution now say much the same things, although a lot more forcefully than in the older times. Evolution requires a loss of faith, a loss of belief in human specialness, and the relativising of morality. In this series, I aim to consider these and other issues that arise for the ordinary person trying to make sense of it all./p pMoses Mainonides, a Jewish philosopher of the 12th century, wrote a book entitled emA Guide for the Perplexed/em, about the philosophy of the day. This is something like that. While I will give my own views, I won’t insist upon them. I have my conclusions; you come to yours. What this series will be predicated upon is the view that evolution emis /emtrue. I won’t argue for that. There are plenty of books and sites that do that. So if you think that evolution is not true, stop reading. You have nothing to learn from this, except how those with whom you disagree may think. That might be worthwhile, though.

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Filed under Creationism and Intelligent Design, Evolution, History, Living with Evolution, Philosophy, Religion

by | January 20, 2013

Chocolate history

Reader Jeb McLeish has brought to my attention an early attempt to do the metaphysics of chocolate: The Natural History of Chocolate by D. de Quelus (1730):

The Spaniards, who were first acquainted with Chocolate after the Conquest of the new World, have laid it down for an undoubted Truth, that Chocolate is cold and dry, participating of the Nature of Earth. They have supported this Determination neither with Reason nor Experience; nor do they know from whence they learnt it; perhaps they have taken it upon the Words, and from the Tradition of the Inhabitants of the Country. Let that be as it will, it is natural from false Principles to draw false Conclusions, of which the two principal are as follow.

The first is, That Chocolate being by Nature cold, it ought not to be used without being mixed with Spices, which are commonly hot, that so they might, both together, become temperate and wholesome. This was the Jargon and Practice of those Times. For the same Reason the ancient Physicians erroneously imagining that Opium was cold in the fourth Degree, never fail’d to correct this pretended Coldness in their narcotick Compositions, with Drugs extremely hot, as Euphorbium, Pellitory, Pepper, &c.

Their second Conclusion was, That Chocolate being dry and earthy, and from thence supposed to be of a styptick and astringent Quality; if it was not corrected, must necessarily breed Obstructions in the Viscera, and bring on a Cacochimy, and a great Number of other incurable Diseases.

These Prejudices have from the Spaniards pass’d into other Nations. To prove this, it will be unnecessary to cite a great Number of Authors, for whoever has read one, has read them all, the later having done nothing but copy the former; they have even sometimes improved their Dreams, and exaggerated this pretended Coldness of Chocolate, and at length push’d the Matter so far, as to make it a kind of cold Poison; and if it was taken to Excess, it would bring on a Consumption.

de Quelus is attacking the idea that chocolate is somehow an Aristelian substance, identified by a mixture of wetness, dryness, heat and cold:

It is not very extraordinary that People who are more ready to believe than to examine, (such as the World is full of) should give into the unanimous Opinion of so many Authors; and it would be strange if they were not carry’d down by the Stream of a Prejudice so general. But I cannot sufficiently admire that Chocolate being so much decry’d, has not been entirely laid aside as unfit for Use; without doubt there was nothing but the daily Experience of its good Effects, which could support it, and hinder it from giving way to Calumny.

Now to overturn this old System, it is sufficient, in my Opinion, to observe with how little Skill and Penetration they then treated of the whole Natural History; one ought not to be amazed that they have affirmed Chocolate to be cold and dry, in an Age when, for Example, they could say Camphire was cold and moist, which is a kind of Resin, from whence one Drop of Water cannot be extracted, whose sharp Taste, and penetrating Smell, joined to the extreme Volatility and Inflammability of its Particles, even in Water itself, are such evident Signs of its Heat, that it is difficult to conceive upon what account they persuade themselves of the contrary.

A clever and perceptive man, but he failed to realise that chocolate is greater than the sum of its parts, as revealed before. Chocolate cannot be made of four flavours, humours or elements, since it exceeds the properties of these things.

However, he notes the chocolate was discovered in Mexico in the 1520s, giving us a point at which we can safely say that western history was set on the path to True Endarkenment.

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Filed under History, Humor, Metaphysics

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by | December 24, 2012

Classification and the DSM

More from my forthcoming book with Malte Ebach. Last post for the year, folks.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

This text, known by its acronym the DSM (-I, -II-, III or -IV, and -V due in 2013), is the main standard classification of mental illness and disorders used across the world, although it is primarily the production of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). It is not the sole classification, there being also International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), produced by the World Health Organization. Both systems are widely used in the context of drug prescription, medical insurance and administration, government statistics, and medical education.

The original system that the DSM-I codified was based upon psychoanalysis categories.[1] DSM-I evolved out of the pre-war “Statistical Manual for the Use of Institutions for the Insane” after the second world war, in 1952, relying strongly upon military terminology and practice during the war, especially the Navy’s. Over the years it was revised extensively, and by DSM-III the APA abandoned the goal of earlier editors and authors to find an etiology for the diseases classified. Since very little in the way of etiologies for the diseases had been uncovered, it was seen that the role of the DSM was to provide practitioners with a way to efficiently and effectively diagnose conditions, and prescribe drug treatments and other treatments.

This meant that the DSM was not a nosology the way classifications of diseases were in medicine. Although medical science might not know what the etiologies of diseases were, the aim and project of medical research and classification was to move from phenomenology to etiology, and when a disease was finally explained in a way that might break it up into several distinct or more general conditions, medical science had little trouble doing so. Psychiatry, on the other hand seemed to move in the opposite direction. Instead of explaining and revising categories based on a knowledge of causal substrate, psychiatry revised based on “general concepts” of mental illness, some of which were in fact lay notions, and upon the availability of drugs to prescribe. What etiological research there was tended to be done by neuro-psychologists and neurologists instead.

The DSM is a case of a classification that is moving away from Theory rather than to it, largely because it is not an attempt at a natural system, but one of convention and operational use. However, the majority of those who employ it seem to think it is a natural scheme. This may retard the progress of psychiatry, as Dom Murphy thinks:

… classification can draw on causal discrimination in the absence of causal understanding. And it can use causal discrimination as a source of hypotheses. If we have good reason to believe [through this classification] that two syndromes depend on different pathologies, then we can orient research around finding out what they are. … The system of classification in the DSM is incoherent, heterogeneous, and provincial. It is incoherent in that it rests on a theory about the taxa of interest that requires symptoms to be expressions of underlying causes whilst at the same time it prohibits mention of these underlying causes in the taxonomy. It is heterogeneous in that it does not classify like with like at appropriate levels of explanation. And it is provincial in that it is cut off from much relevant inquiry. These complaints … reflect worries about the current state of biological psychiatry as a whole, since DSM-IV-TR is its flagship. [2]

With the approval of the DSM-V in 2012, critics noted in review that it was an amalgam of convenience and in some cases putative special interests. [3]

Apart from a connection with the available treatments, not all of which are clinically or epidemiologically tested, there is a minimal change of emphasis upon etiology in refining the categories of the manual. Nevertheless, the mere having of a systematic classification generates substantial research programs, and the results of neurobiological research has input much of what etiology there is in psychiatry. [4]

1. This is based upon the comprehensive research and discussion in Murphy 2006. Although Murphy’s theoretical discussion of classification in chapters 9 and 10 is consonant with ours, we arrived at similar ideas independently and in distinct domains.

2. 2006: 323.

3. For example, the Canadian Medical Association Journal editorial, 10 December 2012. Child psychiatrist Claudia Gold refers to DSM-V as a “care rationing document”.

4. Kupfer and Regier 2011, Regier, et al. 2009.

References

Kupfer, David J., and Darrel A. Regier. 2011. Neuroscience, Clinical Evidence, and the Future of Psychiatric Classification in DSM-5. American Journal of Psychiatry 168 (7):672-674.

Murphy, Dominic. 2006. Psychiatry in the scientific image. Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press.

Regier, Darrel A., William E. Narrow, Emily A. Kuhl, and David J. Kupfer. 2009. The Conceptual Development of DSM-V. Am J Psychiatry 166 (6):645-650.

Thanks to Dom for providing me with a copy of his wonderful book.

 

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Filed under Epistemology, General Science, History, Natural Classification

by | December 19, 2012

Classification and the periodic table

It might be thought that classification in the special and historical sciences is occasionally atheoretical, but that in the general sciences, physics and chemistry, it is derived from Theory. But in fact one of the most exemplary cases of empirical classification that led to Theory is in these sciences: the periodic table.

According to a study by Eric Scerri (2007), the standard textbook story of the periodic table is wrong, unsurprisingly since most such textbook narratives are. The idea of a table of elements did not derive from Dalton’s revival of atomism, but from increasingly refined laboratory techniques for ascertaining the atomic weight of elements. The notion of atoms, of course, did derive from Dalton but these developments did not seemingly rely much upon it. Because samples of element include what we now understand are isotopes, atomic weights are not perfectly correlated with atomic numbers. Consequently while it was apparent from the experimental data as the atomic weights of elements were refined that there was some sort of pattern, e.g., by Stanislao Cannizarro and Alfred Naquet who both arranged these weights in a table, early attempts tended instead to rely on a kind of platonist numerology, Johann Döbereiner’s “theory of triads” in which patterns of elemental properties fell into threefold relations. These were not unlike the affinities of systematics, and indeed the term “affinity” was used by chemists. However, there were too many exceptions for triads to be the basis for a table of elements (although something like it later returned briefly).

Mendeleev's first published table, 1869

Until Dmitri Mendeleev’s table was published in 1869, the best previous version was that of Julius Lothar Meyer,[1] who, like Mendeleev had arranged elements in a series based on their atomic weights. What Mendeleev did that was better than Lothar Meyer and other precursors was to employ his vaster knowledge of the empirical properties of chemical elements, and to make an arrangement based on weights and properties, in a kind of family resemblance (Scerri 2007: 125, 150). He refined it over many years, again based on the experimental results. The term “experimental” here is a little bit misleading, in our terms, because while there was intervention to refine and purify the samples used, this was not intervention to experimentally modify the samples along some independent variable to test a hypothesis. In our terms, it was simple empirical research.[2]

Mendeleev even expressly noted that he was taking a Lockean or even operationalist approach:

. .  . by  investigating  and  describing  what  is visible  and  open  to  direct  observation  by  the organs of the senses, we may hope to arrive, first at hypotheses,  and afterwards at theories, of what has now to be taken as the basis of our investigations. (quoted in Kultgen 1958: 180)

Subsequent to the adoption of the table by chemists, there arose a program to improve and explain the “periodic law”. As Scerri says, once scientists have a classification, they seek an underlying cause of the regularities (as Darwin did).

Following on from the adoption of atomic theory and the discovery of electrons by Thompson in 1897, and the nuclear structure of the atom proposed by Rutherford, Bohr’s introduction of the quantum to the structure of the atom led to an explanation of valency, which was originally discovered by Edward Frankland and Friedrich Kerkule in the 1860s. Eventually, Rutherford and Antonius van den Broek proposed around 1911 that each atom had an integer number that gave it its weight. About the same time, the discovery of isotopes by Frederick Soddy explained why atomic weights varied: different samples had varying admixtures of the isotopes, whose weights varied.

In short, the periodic table is a mixed case of empirical research guiding theory development. It is not a simple example, because there was prior Theory, and also because much of atomic theory derived from other sources and cases, especially in the study of radioactivity, but nevertheless classification plays a key role in this most central of physical scientific domains.

1. Scerri gives notice of at least four later “precursors”, Emile Beguyer De Chancourtois, Gustavus Hinrichs, John Newlands and William Odling, who proposed some of the features later credited to Mendeleev.
2. Scerri 2012 has argued that Weisberg 2007 is wrong to think Mendeleev was producing, inadvertently or otherwise, a model. He proposes that classification is a kind of “sideways explanations”. This need not affect Weisberg’s view of the importance of models (since he allowed that Mendeleev was not actually making models, but gave a hypothetical interpretation in which he was), but it is indicative of the lack of philosophical attention generally given to what he calls mere classifications.
 

References

Kultgen, J. H. 1958. Philosophic Conceptions in Mendeleev’s Principles of Chemistry. Philosophy of Science 25 (3):177-183.

Scerri, Eric R. 2007. The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance. New York: Oxford University Press.

Scerri, Eric R. 2012. A critique of Weisberg’s view on the periodic table and some speculations on the nature of classifications. Foundations of Chemistry.

Weisberg, Michael. 2007. Who is a Modeler? British Journal for the History of Philosophy 58:207–233.

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Filed under General Science, History, Natural Classification, Philosophy, Science

by | November 26, 2012

The classification of clouds

[A segment of my new book, coauthored with Malte Ebach]

The classification of clouds

Clouds were regarded as so subjective, fleeting and resistant to classification that they were a byword for the failure of empirical classification, until Luke Howard in 1802 proposed the foundation for our present system of cloud classification (in competition, although he did not know it, with others in Europe, and on the heels of Hooke and later meteorological language proposals including one by Lamarck the same year.

Howard’s proposal, like Lamarck’s, was driven solely by empirical observations. No experiment was possible with clouds (although there were some schemes for building cloud producing machines early on), and there was no real theory as such, just a desire to, as Lamarck said, note that “clouds have certain general forms which are not at all dependent upon chance but on a state of affairs which it would be useful to recognise and determine” (Hamblyn 2001: 103. This section is taken mostly from Hamblyn’s excellent book). In short, this is an example of a classification scheme without much if anything in the way of Theory.

Howard proposed seven classes (genera) of clouds – three “simple modifications”, cirrus, cumulus, and stratus, two “intermediate modifications”, cirro-cumulus, and cirro-stratus, and two “compound modifications”, cumulo-stratus and cumulo-cirro-stratus, or nimbus. His criteria used apparent density, elevation, height, and whether it produced rain. Particular types of clouds were called, following the logical and Linnaean examples, “species”. He also devised our present system of signs for these cloud types, and proposed a correlation with certain types of rain and clouds. Now meteorologists could communicate and seek explanations and presently the International Cloud Atlas is the global standard for identifying clouds (World Meteorological Organization 1975).

This is a classic example of an empirical passive classification. Although the hydrological cycle was of ancient vintage, the direct Theory of clouds, such as it was, had to await the hypothesis of the thermal theory of cyclones and cloud formation (Kutzbach 1979). Similar passive classifications were done for wind, resulting in the Beaufort Scale.

Howard’s scheme outcompeted Lamarck’s largely because of its technical terminology and signs. Lamarck’s was too French and odd even for them. It gained great acceptance. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, had written a poem in Howard’s honor, as well as contribute “Towards a Study of Weather” in which he briefly discusses Howard’s categories of clouds and a basic law of weather (Goethe 1825 (1970)).

Bibliography

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang.von. 1825 (1970). Versuch einer Witterungslehre. In Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft, edited by D. Kuhn and W. von Engelhardt. Weimer: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger:244-268.

Hamblyn, Richard. 2001. The invention of clouds: how an amateur meteorologist forged the language of the skies. London: Picador.

Kutzbach, Gisela. 1979. The thermal theory of cyclones: a history of meteorological thought in the nineteenth century. Boston: American Meteorological Society.

World Meteorological Organization. 1975. International Cloud Atlas. Secretariat of the World Meteorological Organization:155 pp.

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Filed under History, Natural Classification, Science, Species and systematics, Systematics

by | November 24, 2012

Why is Darwin’s theory so controversial?

So asks this essay and gets the whole thing wrong.

Darwin’s theories (plural) are not controversial because they imply that species are mutable. This was a widely held view by preachers, moralists, Aristotelians, naturalists, breeders, formalists, folk biology, and even biblical translators.

Darwin was not controversial because he implied racist ideas about humans. He never did and the racism that is sometimes associated with his ideas preceded him by centuries (and were good Christian virtues) and were mediated by those who disagreed with him.

Darwin was not controversial because he thought the age of the earth was large. This preceded him also, and was settled in the late eighteenth century, although the present value wasn’t finalised until the 1960s.

Darwin was not controversial because his account of humans being animals contradicted the Bible. Linnaeus knew humans were animals a century earlier, and indeed the only issue was whether humans were animals with souls (or if all animals had souls), which Darwin never implied anything to the contrary.

Moreover, it was Christians who rejected the literal interpretation of the Bible, long before Darwin (beginning with the Alexandrian school in the second century), and those who realised that the global Flood was a myth (or an allegory) were Christian geologists a half century at least in advance of Darwin.

No, the reason why Darwin was controversial is very, very simple. Darwin argued that complex designs could arise without a mind to guide it. In short, his controversial idea was natural selection (and sexual selection, but even that preceded Darwin). Almost from the day it was published, critics attacked the implication that the living world was not all that special, and that it lacked a Plan or Meaning. Theologians, moralists and even scientists objected to this, and while even most of the Catholic Church accepted common descent and modification of species, it was natural selection they hated.

All the supposed “controversies” of Darwinism (or that phantom, “neo-Darwinism”) are post hoc attacks based on the prior objection to the lack of a guiding hand in biology. Don’t like natural selection? Attack Darwin by calling him a racist or blaming him for the Holocaust. Say he is antiessentialist. Say he is anti-religion. No matter how much evidence one puts forward that these are deliberate lies manufactured by those who hate Darwin for natural selection, it won’t stop the prevarication industry.

Sensible philosophical critics of Darwin focus on selection for that reason. It undercuts our prior belief that We Are Special. Human mentation, cognition, language, morality, religion or economics is somehow privileged in the universe. Bullshit. We are an animal and we arose without the universe seeking us (although, as I have argued, a deity might choose this universe because we evolve in it). The human exceptionalism which critics like Fodor, Fuller, Plantinga and the rest presume but do not argue for unfairly places the onus on Darwinians. It is time to stop taking them seriously.

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Filed under Biology, Creationism and Intelligent Design, Epistemology, Ethics and Moral Philosophy, Evolution, History, Logic and philosophy, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Race and politics, Social evolution, Truisms

by | September 28, 2012

Wilkins in the Ukraine, and a special issue on Lyell

I have been translated again (people never learn). My Macroevolution FAQ:

Ukraine translation by Gmail Archive – http://www.stoodio.org/macroevolution.

The translator is Vlad Brown, so any errors of fact can now be assigned to someone else… [Thanks Vlad]

Also, check out the special issue of the Geological Society of Lond Special Publication (143) from 1998, which was on Charles Lyell. It is now open access, and you can download the PDFs.

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Filed under Evolution, History, Philosophy, Science, Systematics