Issue of the month: 2, Natural selection: not the best idea anyone ever had.

PUBLISHER:

redshirt

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 14, 2012 June 14, 2012; Hits: 7943 7943

Number 2 in a series of articles casting doubt on the Modern Synthesis. There isn't much for Darwin to be very famous for. Evolution and humans evolving from apes had been headline news for 15 years before Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species." Darwin took his theory of natural selection directly from the popular science of his day, livestock breeding, yet his theory failed to account for where either species or variation came from. Within 50 years his name had dropped out of sight. He only became very famous when his theory was combined with genetics in The Modern Synthesis. But that too turned out to be not the best idea anyone ever had. More...