Open letter to Institute for Cultural Evolution

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?

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I am impressed by the intelligent treatment of issues in the ICE Evolutionary Worldview document of December 2012. I like the grounds for discussion, I don’t agree but I have no specific changes to suggest. I write merely to give feedback, because the issues matter to me, too.

I see your policies and philosophy as those of Hegel, who you credit. A lot of your wisdom is his wisdom. I see a risk in that. He was very concerned as you are that the community build a new worldview. He was very concerned that Germany build a new community able to support the next stage in consciousness. At the same time, he rejected Kant’s insistence that worldview approximate ever more closely to some external physical reality. The danger is embarking on a journey without a rudder. Without any replacement for Kant’s setting of a criterion there is danger of intellect spirally freely under no other constraint than powerful personalities. These can be supposed to have appeared in the form of Bismarck, Nietzsche and Hitler. No logic in Hegel limited them.

To me you seem to accept postmodern values without any justification, merely because they appear to succeed “modern” values. You seem to assume that equality for women has a logic that requires no defense. I sense an unquestioning adoption of a politically-correct set of values, without any intellectual foundation. You seem to depend on Hegel’s approval of later-appearing values that appear to fulfill the prior stage’s musings. I see no principles underlying the values you recommend except that they are eco-friendly, as if that alone was justification. The argument seemed circular. Later values justify themselves.

In Hegel’s time two other statements of evolution appeared. One was Comte’s, with his three stages of cultural development leading to the culminating and final stage of Positivism, leading in turn to our materialist modernism. The other was biological evolution. I see you opting for Hegel over Comte.

My preference is to reform biological evolutionary theory. I notice that you, and the other “evolutionaries,” do not suggest that. I see “Darwinism” as what stands in the way of a set of values independent of nationality and century.