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Wednesday, December 6, 2017

PHILOSOPHY AND EVOLUTION

                                                                                 Dhruval Patel #9


                            Philosophy and Evolution

One of the most significant problem that people have with regard to evolution has nothing to do with religion, but rather it is philosophical in nature. If the theory of evolution is accurate and true, these individuals think, then we are virtually at sea, as nothing is determinate, or even fixed, and that all the coherence in life is gone, just like it was famously lamented by Donne regarding the death of physics and two-sphere universe. In the past five decades many topic and debates have been raised and reviewed, with respect to evolutionary ethics, naturalism, teleology, and many other relating to the creationism. Philosophy and evolution can arguably be said to have a relationship dating back to the origin of the evolution idea itself. This may partly be due to the fact the philosophy and science came to be separated just about the era when the first proposal of evolutionary theories took place, and may also be based on the fact that evolution, from the context of the Darwinian model, was opposed to the doctrines that were highly cherished by philosophers (Boag). The very first solid criticism against evolution was based on the notion that species were eternal in nature, and therefore through this definition, the species could not be changed. In recent times, the raised criticisms have been based on the science itself, implying that the principles of true science have not been met by evolution. These views were also expressed by Darwin himself earlier on in his development of the evolution theory. For anyone to understand any form of criticism and evaluation of the evolution and its related fields of study, one has to understand the philosophy of science into details.

Evolution has always found refuge through the scientific researches that are steered towards proving its accuracy in explaining the origin of humans. On the other hand, philosophy and science have always learned from one another. Philosophy is always drawing fresh strength from the scientific discoveries, and its material for the wide generalizations, whereas it imparts to the sciences the world-perspective and methodological instincts of its general values. Most general guiding standards that lie in the contemporary science, particularly the evolution principles, were for the first time articulated by the view power of the philosophical thought. For instance, the notion or model of the atomic structure of matter and most conjectures regarding the theory of natural selection were developed from the ancient era by Lucretius, a philosopher, and later on by Diderot, a French thinker (Boag). Theoretically it can be argued that his anticipations were transformed into a scientific fact some centuries later. In this context, it is sound to say that any form of a scientific theory that may be proved through experimental methods or not, has a deeper origin which is usually tied to philosophy.


Sources

Boag, Simon, et al. Philosophy, Science, and Psychoanalysis. Karnac Books, 2015.
Murphy, Nancey C. and William R. Stoeger. Evolution and Emergence: Systems, Organisms, Persons. OUP Oxford, 2007.
Trueba, Gabriel. Why Does Evolution Matter? : The Importance of Understanding Evolution. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.
Zilhão, António. Evolution, Rationality and Cognition: A Cognitive Science for the Twenty-First Century. Routledge, 2005. Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Science. 



1 comment:

  1. "If the theory of evolution is accurate and true, these individuals think, then we are virtually at sea, as nothing is determinate, or even fixed, and that all the coherence in life is gone" - to the contrary, evolution via natural selecction lends coherence and unity to all of nature. It is, as the late Prof. Stephen Jay Gould said, the central meaning of our lives at least to the extent that science can shed light on the question of meaning. Being "at sea" just means we're on a journey whose outcome is insecure but may possibly be wondrous.

    Evolution is, in a phrase which is the title of a little book I strongly recommend, "everybody's story." https://books.google.com/books?id=YDHbgWYBOqwC&pg=PA135&dq=everybody%27s+story&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTvf3sgfnXAhXjx4MKHYTxCOoQ6AEILDAA#v=onepage&q=everybody's%20story&f=false

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