The Evolutionary 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?

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In the first half of 2010 SUNY Press launched an annual publication, "The Evolutionary Review." The Review boasted a formidable editorial board, including Stephen Pinker and David Buss. One of the two editors, Joseph Carroll, in an online interview said "The aim of the journal is to give evidence that evolutionary perspective--'This view of life,' one of Darwin's phrases--is adequate to encompass every aspect of human concern." It was therefore part of the program described elsewhere ("Consilience) to bring the sciences and humanities together under the umbrella of Darwinism. The Review ceased publications after four issues.

Joseph Carroll is author of "Reading Human Nature: Literary Darwinism in Theory and Practice (forthcoming, 2011), Evolution and Literary Theory (1995) and other guides to finding Darwinian underpinnings in works of literature. Carroll is a Faculty Member in the English department and Curators' Professor, Arts and Sciences, at University of Missouri - St. Louis.

The other editor of the Review is Alice Andrews who teaches psychology and evolutionary studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz. By a strange coincidence, Alice and I (Shaun Johnston , publisher of this site) ply our respective trades just six miles from each other in the mid Hudson Valley. The similarity goes beyond sharing the same location and launching our publication in the same year. Both our publications propose that the humanities be refounded on the basis of evolutionary theory. In so far as we do differ, we differ by which theory of evolution we propone as that basis, Alice's choice being the Modern Synthesis, mine being Lamarckism, and in who is to oversee the process, Alice I think favors those already committed to Darwinism as a universal metaphor for all human endeavor, while I encourage the humanities to come up theories perhaps more suited to their mission than Darwinism.