Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation: Review.

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: May 17, 2012 May 17, 2012; Hits: 5959 5959

Britain seemed to need a lifetime to overcome its revulsion at the materialism and atheism it saw as responsible for the horrors of the French revolution. Darwin’s natural selection, a purely physical cause of evolution, seems to have been part of that catching up. But a much more significant step was the sensation following publication of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in 1844. I declare this a great book. It is a wrap up of the science behind all phenomena, from the nebulae, to solar systems, terrestrial geology, stages in the fossil record, evolution of living creatures including us, to human psychology and prospects for our further evolution. With a steady confident tread it made science the standard to look to for accounting for knowledge of all kinds. It reads remarkably like a modern synopsis of scientific knowledge.

More important, it shows us how the discovery that we'd evolved looked to an early enquirer, 15 years before the appearance of Origin, and established the terms in which we still talk about evolution. More...