Hi Roger,
ROGER:
'I just finished reading "Monad to Man" by Michael Ruse. This book tracks the
history of evolutionary thought and its connections to the philosophy of
Progress. Ruse argues convincingly that virtually every evolutionary
theorist since Lamark has been heavily influenced by their cultural beliefs
in Teleological Progress. They frequently believed that evolution naturally
progresses toward greater complexity, knowledge, control, adaptability,
and/or freedom. Many of them saw man as the pinnacle of evolution and
believed that future progress was inevitable.'
Yes, it was quite common to infuse the idea of biological progress with
social progress. The evolutionary idea of progress was almost certainly
influenced by cultural and religious beliefs.
ROGER:
"However, over the past 40
years or so, theorists have deliberately removed any teleological aspects
from evolutionary science. Interestingly though, with rare exceptions, most
have still been heavily influenced by their philosophy on the topic. In
other words, Ruse finds most evolutionary theorists have intentionally
suppressed their clear personal beliefs and tried to keep it out of their
formal science. They believe the topic is unscientific."
I haven't read Ruse's book, but I have a hard time accepting that most
evolutionary theorists nowadays have metaphysical beliefs that they feel
must be suppressed in the interest of scientific professionalism. I'd be
interested to know how Ruse teased this information from them. It could be
a misunderstanding. Many scientists find it difficult to avoid colloquial
language like "design" and "progress" when discussing evolution but they
don't mean to impart these words with any heavy teleological import when
they do.
ROGER:
"Ruse provides ample support that Darwin, Mayr and virtually every other
evolutionist you can think of was indeed a strong believer in there being a
direction to evolution. (As Platt's quote shows) Gould is a notable
exception. (If anything, Gould argues the position overly strongly and
unscientifically the other way -- he overstates the scientific case that
evolution is NOT teleological.)"
I think the term "teleological" is used somewhat differently by different
people. In "Full House", Gould does not deny that evolution directs (at least
some) fauna and flora to greater complexity. In this he is in agreement
with Darwin and Mayr. For some this directedness toward complexity is enough
to warrant being called teleology. However, I don't think Gould would call it
that because to him teleology means that a hidden variable, like God or
Dynamic Quality, has its hand in - premeditatively designing genetic
mutations to some more perfect purpose. If the directionality of complexity
(for example) can be explained by nature alone, which Gould proposes is
possible, there is no need for this mystic baggage. I don't believe he is
overstating the scientific case for this (except perhaps in some of his
earlier writing where he denied there was any increase in complexity after
the Cambrian explosion).
Glenn
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