Raymond Tallis: Aping Mankind

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: August 11, 2011 August 11, 2011; Hits: 23025 23025

In the last two pages of the book I struck gold. "Intentionality, which tears the seamless fabric of the causally closed material universe, could be the equivalent of black body radiation [in pointing to a revolution in physics]....An enquiry that begins here could mean the beginning of a new dawn in human thought...Criticising the Neuromania and Darwinitis that locates us entirely in the material world is the first step in the task of understanding the place of the human spirit in the great drama of existence and seeing more clearly than we do at present what it is to be a human being." More...