Evolution quotes 31 May 2010 Evolution itself, it must be remembered, does not necessarily mean, applied to society, the movement of man to a desirable goal. It is a neutral, scientific conception, compatible either with optimism or with pessimism. According to different estimates it may appear to be a cruel sentence or a guarantee of steady amelioration. And it has been actually interpreted in both ways. In order to base Progress on Evolution two distinct arguments are required. If it could be shown that social life obeys the same general laws of evolution as nature, and also that the process involves an increase of happiness, then Progress would be as valid a hypothesis as the evolution of living forms. … In fact, upon the neutral fact of evolution a theory of pessimism may be built up as speciously as a theory of optimism. [John Bagnell Bury, The idea of progress; an inquiry into its origin and growth, 1920] Evolution History Philosophy Quotes Social evolution EvolutionHistoryPhilosophyQuotes
Creationism and Intelligent Design Another historian criticises FAPP 26 Apr 2010 Bob Richards is a leading intellectual historian of Darwinian ideas, and here he takes Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini to task for their misunderstanding of the way that the theories of evolution have developed. One point that he makes is that every “objection” FAPP have raised was an objection in the nineteenth… Read More
Philosophy In which I upset PZ, again, by not knowing 29 Jun 2010 Ron Rosenbaum has written a piece in Slate on agnosticism, in which he generously quotes an Australian “scientist”, that is, me. Oh dear. This is going to set the cat among the pigeons. And indeed one such cat, my friend and sparring partner PZ Myers, has already responded. Read and… Read More
Evolution Evolution quotes 12 Jun 2010 Evolution and phylogeny.—Evolution is the process and phylogeny the record of descent. Phylogeny is thus the measure of relationship, and is to be expressed in terms of community of ancestry; hence, if relationship is to express evolution adequately, it must take account of each change, from the branch to the… Read More
Reminiscent of T.H. Huxley’s famous line: “Let us understand, once and for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.”