Evolution and the Humanities: David Holbrook, review

PUBLISHER:

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Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

Details: Written by Shaun Johnston Shaun Johnston; Published: June 9, 2015 June 9, 2015; Hits: 2600 2600

“It has become a stereotype accepted almost without thought, without question--and remains unexamined. ‘Science says’ it seems, that life and man are ‘random’ results of an ‘accident’ in ‘chemistry’. And although this contradicts all that we know of the world and ourselves, it remains the only philosophy of life that seems to be upheld by the one remaining authority in the modern world, science… Week after week one is reminded by chance remarks in publications that many people accept a certain attitude to life, a metaphysic, coming across to the humanities from science, that can only be menacing to any sense that life can have meaning. I hope this explains how an English specialist came to adventure into debate on evolutionary theory—for the grounds of the myth are in Darwinism.” Most of Holbrook's book is commentary on the writings of others, but at the beginning and the end he draws on his own experiences of the relation of the humanities to evolutionary theory. Full review.