Re: Pat Buchanan: Making a monkey out of Darwin

"On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:06:57 -0400, in article
<tJSdnfWRioSNt9fXnZ2dnUVZ_u2dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Steven L. stated..."

Jason Spaceman wrote:
From the article:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"You have no notion of the intrigue that goes on in this blessed world
of science," wrote Thomas Huxley. "Science is, I fear, no purer than
any other region of human activity; though it should be."
=20
As "Darwin's bulldog," Huxley would himself engage in intrigue, deceit
and intellectual property theft to make his master's theory gospel
truth in Great Britain.
=20
He is quoted above for two reasons.
=20
First is House passage of a "cap and trade" climate-change bill.
Depending on which scientists you believe, the dire consequences of
global warming are inconvenient truths =96 or a fear-mongering scheme t=
o
siphon off the wealth of individuals and empower bureaucrats.
=20
The second is publication of "The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed
and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold," by Eugene G. Windchy, a
splendid little book that begins with Huxley's lament.=20
=20
That Darwinism has proven "disastrous theory" is indisputable.

That the Theory of Evolution has enabled us to understand=20
antibiotic-resistant "superbugs," trace human migrations across the=20
Earth for thousands of years, and other major advances for the human=20
condition, is indisputable. The Social Darwinism that Mr. Buchanan=20
fears was experimented for a time--with disastrous results. But those=20
results--such as the Holocaust in Nazi Germany--were so disastrous that=20
Social Darwinism has been discredited, no matter what Darwin said.

The ToE has been a lot less disastrous for humanity than Einstein's=20
Special Theory of Relativity. Just ask the survivors of Hiroshima or=20
Nagasaki. Or ask President Obama, as he seeks to halt Iran's nuclear=20
weapons program. Because Special Relativity leads immediately to the=20
principle of mass-energy equivalence: E =3D m c^2.

No Theory of Relativity =3D=3D> no nuclear weapons.

And yet even the most fervent anti-nuclear demonstrators have never=20
chanted "Down With Einsteinism!" Or demanded that the Theory of=20
Relativity be abandoned.

Likewise, there could be no strategic bombing of cities without=20
airplanes. And yet peace activists don't go around denouncing the=20
Wright Brothers.

Why is that?
That's because they're opposing a specific *policy* (the production of=20
nuclear weapons or nuclear reactors). They're not opposing a=20
*philosophy*. They don't mind that E =3D m c^2. They just don't want=20
anybody building bombs with it.

Dawkins, P. Z. Myers, all the atheist-evolutionists are just as much=20
opposed to Social Darwinism as a national policy as the Religious Right=20
is. And P.Z. Myers is no Doctor Strangelove when it comes to nuclear=20
weapons.

But the ToE has major philosophical implications, which contradict the=20
philosophy of the Religious Right.

I agree that some scientific and technological developments have been
abused. And that their being abused does not have implications for
whether the science involved is genuine.

But it happens to be that there is little basis for making such a
connection between those social/political movements of the early
20th century (such as Nazism) and evolutionary biology.

Hitler, of course, would make use of anything that he heard of,
irrespective of whether he cared about it or understood it. I haven't
heard of evidence that he cared about or understood much science, but
that didn't mean that he couldn't claim that he was another Koch, if
that would serve his purposes.

But Hitler did *not* appeal to even a distorted view of Darwin. Why
he didn't, I don't claim to know. But some of Hitler's precursors
and influences were *opposed to Darwin's ideas, and there are some
examples of Hitler's followers being also opposed.

We can speculate why.

For one thing, we should realize that the early decades of the 20th
century was an era known as the "eclipse of darwinism", for it was
widely unappreciated, even by scientists, how *natural* selection
could be a productive force in the world of life. So, we can imagine
that appealing to Darwin would not have the same "scientific" status
as an appeal to Koch - or Pasteur or Mendel, to mention a couple of
other biologists who Nazis did mention favorably.

Moreover, there are some features of evolutionary biology in the
style of Darwin (or as it is understood today) which would not be
very popular to these social/political movements.

Such as *natural* selection - rather than thinking that goal-directed,
purposeful selection would be needed to avoid "deterioration".

Such as common ancestry of humans (particularly, of course, one's own
ethnic group) with other animals.

For people with a pre-scientific idea that purposes and lessons are
to be drawn from nature, evolutionary biology could be rather
uncomfortable.

Moreover, to distinguish evolutionary biology from the anti-evolutionists,
recall that many of the creationists insist upon telling us that they
fully accept "micro"evolution. They reject only what they call "macro"-
evolution. And it is hardly possible that any of those social/political
movements would have any interest in any evolution outside of "mankind",
so they would be in agreement with the creationists. (Not, I hasten to
say, that I am claiming any blame on creationism for these movements.
At most, perhaps, we could only say that creationists are so stuck in
their misinterpretations of evolution that they don't realize when they
are seeing their misinterpretations elsewhere.)


--
---Tom S.
"...ID is not science ... because we simply do not know what it is saying."
Sahotra Sarkar, "The science question in intelligent design", Synthese,
DOI:10,1007/s11229-009-9540-x

.

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