Saturday, May 13, 2006
This is what I call iconoclasm ...
Tom Wolfe takes on natural selection: Darwin vs. Homo loquax. His view has much in common with those of the late philosopher David Stove (a nonreligious specialist in Hume) in Darwinian Fairytales : Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution, which I plan on reviewing in the next few weeks (no, Stove was not an ID theorist - nor am I). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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Interesting read, and the book seems to be, as well. I'll let you know after my copy arrives.
ReplyDeleteI'm not married to Darwinian theory -- I just think it comes closer than most theories out there. I don't think he was all wrong, more incomplete.
Natural selection is proven, and it is just like the arrogance of man to believe that we are somehow apart (above?) the processes we see all around us.
The author posits that self-destructive behavior is an example of the failure of Darwinism. Actually, there are any number of aberrations throughout the natural world -- most of them are handled through natural selection. That's why it's called "survival of the fittest" whatever works best for the species wins and not through any moral judgements on our part.
What I mean is, mankind is dominant on the planet, save for micro-biology and insects. (They seem to steam right along regardless of what the rest of us are up to.) So we have room for non-selective aberation. Still, there's antipathy in the system for aberations. If we were in a position for stronger survival competition, there would be more weeding out of aberation.
Anyway, I've blathered enough. Thanks for the food for thought!
My principal criticism of Darwinism is that I think natural selection figures in the evolutionary process, but I doubt that it is the only factor. If you are getting Stove's book, you're in for a treat - he's a lively, often funny writer, and he certainly enlightened me a good deal. I suspect you're like me, a believer with Hamlet that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any of our philosophies. Practically the only thing I'm certain of is that there is very little we can certain of.
ReplyDeleteFrank,
ReplyDeleteI think we share a brain. Yup, that's where I am with this stuff. I wonder why it's so hard for folks to just say, "I don't know."
-- Char (Ka)
I have found that it is not only hard for people to say it, it also is often hard for them to accept it. I have on a number of occasions said just that to people and have had to repeat it, not once but a couple of times. I'm flattered they think I know so much, but sometimes - a lot of times - I don't.
ReplyDeleteChaos theory (about information replicative error) and punctuated evolution (read the late Stephen Jay Gould collections and columns) come into play here. i have no difficulty with Darwin's basic concepts of the process of evolution, at core, although he did indeed leave the detailed mechanisms incomplete, and many discoveries since his time (the whole of molecular biology, for one) have shown that the mechanism is both robust and complicated.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I am very much in agreement with some of Rupert Sheldrake's postulates about the role of the hundredth-monkey effect and other non-local phenomena, and think they're part of the process, too.
Having said that, I am in no way a biological materialist; I don't believe it's all based on random chemical interactions. I'm of the opinion that there is something more at play, but not at all clear as to what it is. I agree that we just don't know.