> Krimel said to Willblake2: > This seems a fairly shallow view of evolution especially for someone with > a Ph.D in biology. Evolution is, at least in my view, one of the most > beautiful ideas ever conceived in the mind of man. It is a thread that > runs through all of the disciplines of science. It has had profound impact > on history, philosophy and art. Of course it is not all about struggle and > those who have used it to justify manifest destiny and social Darwinism > have long ago been discredited. > dmb says: > Yea, I'm with Krimel on this one.
Thankfully for the scientific principle of Conditionalism, there are plenty of people with solid intellectual credentials who question the mainstream theory of evolution. Pirsig for one. Physicist Paul Davies for another, as follows: "The universe looks as if it is unfolding according to some plan or blueprint. The input is the cosmic initial conditions, and the output is organized complexity, or depth. The essential feature is that something of value emerges as the result of processing according to some ingenious pre- existing set of rules. These rules look as if they are the product of intelligent design. My own inclination is to suppose that qualities such as ingenuity, economy, beauty, and so on have a genuine transcendent reality -- they are not merely the product of human experience -- and that these qualities are reflected in the structure of the natural world." As for social Darwinism being discredited, it depends, as with some many controversies, on one's definition, as Wikipedia points out: "As Social Darwinism has many definitions,it is hard for some to be either for or against it; some of the definitions oppose the others. John Halliday & Iain McLean state that "Part of the difficulty in establishing sensible and consistent usage is that commitment to the biology of natural selection and to `survival of the fittest´ entailed nothing uniform either for sociological method or for political doctrine. A `social Darwinist´ could just as well be a defender of laissez-faire as a defender of state socialism, just as much an imperialist as a domestic eugenist." As I say to UTOE, my tabby, "There's more than one way to skin a cat." Platt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
