Feel free to argue or disagree with the argument. Perhaps we can rationalize or come to a better understanding of what I am trying to say.
I debated these points before, and ultimately I’ve concluded that Darwin has constructed a very plausible theory of nature that, in its every particular, reinforced the operating assumptions of the Industrial Age he lived in.
For example, he saw the same principles of division of labor at work in nature. After reading Malthus, he came to realize that, as in human society, populations bred beyond their means, leaving survivors and losers in the effort to exist.
Likewise, in the first volume of A System of Synthetic Philosophy, entitled First Principles (1862), Spencer argued that all phenomena could be explained in terms of a lengthy process of evolution in things. This account of evolution provided a complete and ‘predetermined’ structure for the kind of variation noted by Darwin – and Darwin’s respect for Spencer was significant.
Darwin’s descriptions relied heavily on machine imagery. He came to personally view livings things as the sum total of parts assembled . Even the origins of life were seen within the biological equivalent of nature s assembly line (morphology from micro-organisms straight up to humanity).
In short, Darwin borrowed just about everything he experienced from the popular culture of his time and transposed them onto nature.
I confess that evolution is no longer percieved within the 19th century concept of linear progress – the assembly line of life if you will. Rather, it seems to be a long-term tendency and a trend.
Yet it still in no way precludes crisis and lengthy setbacks. In fact, such crisis seem to be an unavoidable part of evolution. Although life continues to expand, it has also suffered repeated crisis and mass extinctions which continue to occur when one global ecosystem has reached its limits and collapses.
Obviously the theory has changed since Darwins’ time. Yet, to some extent, people are still consistently seeing a pattern where our origins of life are seen within the similar context of the biological equivalent of the scientific method.
In other words, the
theory of evolution seems to be a mirror image of the
scientific method broadcast over the origins of species.
Noting an analogy between the scientific method’s
“trial and error” (or “prediction and modification”) and comparing it to evolutionary theories’
“natural selection and mutation” – it appears to be, at least on some level, exactly what a scientifically minded person would
expect to find.
In other words, if God indeed used evolution in the same way that some scientists perceive him doing so, then it would appear that God himself is actually akin to the
Great Experimenter– using trial and error through multifarious mutations and extinctions in order to produce humanity.
Don’t get me wrong. I definitely believe that God used and still uses evolution. I just highly reject the Blind Watchmaker mentality that superimposes the purposeless of creation. I also think there are limits that one should use when saying they ‘believe in evolution’.
Like Otto Rank, I too suspect that Darwin’s theory was in some ways the English bourgeosie looking into the
mirror of nature and seeing their own behavior reflected there.
In many ways, the theory of evolution seems to be evolving right along with the various cultures it has been accepted in the most. It has been held up as a product of societal thinking rather than a reflection of mind-independent reality.
Gould himself had written before passing on:
S.J. Gould:
Science, since people must do it, is a socially embedded activity. It progresses by hunch, vision, and intuition. Much of its change through time does not record a closer approach to absolute truth, but the alternative of cultural contexts that influence it so strongly. Facts are not pure and unsullied bit of information; culture also influences what we see and how we see it.
He had also said:
S.J. Gould:
Theories are not inexorable inductions from facts. The most creative theories are often imaginative visions imposed upon facts, the source of imagination is also strongly cultural.
The key debate is this discourse is that grey area between
objectivity and
subjectivity:
Does science obey certain disinterested norms or rules, designed or guaranteed to tell us something about the real world, or is it a reflection of personal preference, the things in culture that people hold dear?
I’m quite sure of that those who hold evolutionary views are not immune to this personal preference which they hold so dear. While genuine science is indeed being conducted within evolutionary circles, I too will note that it is also seems combined somewhat with a reflection of their personal preference as well.
No one is immune to this-- and only time will tell how much of either is true, just as God himself reveals.
- the Gospel was first preached to people who held ideas which gave the world a far shorter past and a far less extensive geography than we are familiar with.
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