Since I’ve left the Bay Area my exposure to Marxist activists has been limited, and my inoculation to annoyance some of the lamer arguments has weakened. And I’m not talking about the fellow travelers who navigate intellectual waters influenced by writers like Althuser or the Frankfurt school synthesizing deep cultural and political analysis by picking and choosing which tenets they want to promote. I’m talking about true believers who are also well-read and even brilliant in areas of science or art, but whose eyes glaze over when politics come up and their default positions come up as a uniform response no matter how complex the topic in particular.
I know I have a reader or two from these ranks. I just learned that over the weekend. So I have a question about dialectic materialism, or specifically the notion that the perfection of humanity through revolution and the “unity of opposites” through phases of history identified, categorized, and denominated in such a manner as to suggest the inevitability of progress. Apparently built into the universe are not random forces, but an evolution which points to the formation of organic compounds which interact with energy and mass to convert to life. Then such life develops collectively into ecosystems, until intelligence and self-awareness are developed. From that mix comes society and built into the evolution the elimination of all oppression and strife out of which the “true history of man” is born.
So, my question is – how is it that you don’t believe in God? For 162 years since the Communist Manifesto, and perhaps before then, you have proposed nothing but intelligent design in the universe. Yes, you have rejected Feurbach’s thesis of materialism by integrating the Hegelian component, but that really doesn’t explain where the potential for the dialectic comes. You’re arguing essentially the existence of a grand designer.
Some of you dismiss the question as the product of “idealism.” Others don’t seem to grasp the question. None of you has given me a straight answer in 30 years of my asking. Theologians like Hans Kung and Ignace Lepp have asked the same question, and Marxists like Erich Fromme and Marcuse have tried to answer, but try to do so on their own terms rather than the truly address the question. The question is simple. Where did the potential for the dialectic come from?
Any takers?
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February 22, 2011 at 12:05 am
scott LaMorte
I only know of dialectic materialism through the works of Steven Pinker, where he presents the attacks of dialectic scientists against sociobiology and then later against evolutionary psychology. Frankly I wasn’t very impressed. Dialectic materialism fails at science.
February 22, 2011 at 12:13 am
Eric Kirk
Well, it fails first on defining itself. I’ve yet to have anyone, either a true believer, or professorial type, give me a clear definition. Usually when you come up with a noun you can provide a precise example, and telling me that when you step into a river the second time it’s not the same river just really doesn’t explain the concept of “dialectic.”
February 22, 2011 at 3:15 am
brian
Some people think way to much.
February 22, 2011 at 7:26 am
Mitch
I’m not a Marxist, Eric, but I’m an atheist who is ready to accept that the universe is designed.
I think when most people assert atheism, they are stating that they don’t believe in a God as presented by most religious hierarchies, and they are rejecting the supposed authority of those hierarchies as representatives of a Supreme Being.
When you expand your definition of God to include such things as universal tendencies, God and science are reconciled. (I believe firmly in gravity and the strong nuclear force, but I am clueless as to how either operates.)
I am agnostic regarding the idea that there is a tendency towards justice in the universe (to pick MLKs quote), but I’m a firm believer that biology on Earth has led to creatures capable of behavior usefully described as good and evil. So, for me, I toss in an extra “o” into God and can appreciate much of the wisdom in religious texts, even though I completely reject the idea of the JudeoChristianIslamic sky god.
February 22, 2011 at 8:08 am
Bolithio
To me, its sounds like another example of compatiblism. You can believe in the super natural to help rationalize this ‘true history of man’, especially when you accept that most people do believe in god. But the Marxist may also be inclined toward a view of naturalism, and thus reject the creator concept, preferring to believe in his own species as the important force driving their history. The dialectic seems just vague enough to allow for both views to ft in somewhere.
February 22, 2011 at 8:50 am
Erasmus
Who besides Eric would toss us such a heavy question and expect us to juggle it in the limited space of a blog comment? (And that is why so many of us esteem him so highly.) — Mitch (as usual) has provocative things to say. His subtle reasoning reminds me of certain statements of Simone Weil — e.g., “An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.” His reference to a “sky god” echoes my own religious preference. Jesus preached that the “kingdom of God is within you,” and the crucifixion (to my way of thinking) symbolizes the demise of ancient sky gods. Yes, present-day believers speak in sky-god terms,and that is why I am unchurched. But there is a tradition that would be more congenial to people like Mitch. Van Gogh, for example, wrote this in a letter (to Emile Bernard): “It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation — of loneliness, poverty,and misery, the end and extreme of things — the thought of God comes into one’s mind.” That isn’t the God of Pat Robertson …. perhaps some Quaker congregations would recognize Van Gogh’s God. — As for dialectical materialism: Marx, as we know, was indebted to Hegel for the scaffolding of his thinking, and Hegel’s dialectic is the process of God (or “Geist,” “Spirit”) working itself out in History. Marx simply appropriated this substructure without highlighting the philosophical basis for it. “Atheistic Marxism” is the result, but a Judaic or Christian Marxism is not inconceivable.
February 22, 2011 at 10:19 am
Ernie's Place
Why do people ponder the unaswerable?
February 22, 2011 at 10:21 am
Ernie's Place
I’m still hung-up on why my spellcheck doesn’t work…
February 22, 2011 at 10:32 am
Mitch
Ernie at 10:19 is pondering the unanswerable himself.
February 22, 2011 at 10:33 am
Random Guy
In the long run we’re all dead.
February 22, 2011 at 10:38 am
Mitch
Well, yes, we are. But not those lucky enough to make the cut.
February 22, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Eric Kirk
In the long run we’re all dead.
That’s a quote from John Keynes, a quasi-socialist.
Anyway, there’s too much for me to respond to here and now. Later tonight, when the kids are asleep and all is quiet.
Ernie – what’s unanswerable – the question of God, or the way the Marxist mind works?
February 22, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Anonymous
‘What’s unanswerable? BOTH
February 22, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Mitch
Erasmus,
I;d be interested to hear more about your interpretation of the crucifixion. The idea that it symbolizes “the demise of ancient sky gods” is something I’ve never heard before.
I think Quakers, Unitarians, American Buddhists and atheists have far more in common with one another than with the followers of today’s majority churches. Maybe even Sufis.
February 22, 2011 at 3:20 pm
Erasmus
Well,Mitch, I can do no better than refer you to two books (written by two atheists): “Atheism in Christianity” by Ernst Bloch (see the review on Amazon and look inside the book as well) and “The Puppet and the Dwarf” by Slavoj Zizek. From the latter I quote: “Christ’s ‘Father, why hast thou forsaken me?’ is not a complaint to the omnipotent capricious God-Father whose ways are indecipherable to us, mortal humans, but a complaint that hints at an impotent God: it is rather like a child who, having believed in his father’s powerfulness, discovers with horror that his father cannot help him.” (p. 126). — In the New Testament itself there are many verses to be cited; the ones referring to Jesus as the “Son of Man” are numerous, and they point to a divinity rooted in the earth and striving upwards (the contrary of a sky-god). Cf. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John III, 14). Norman O. Brown’s “Love’s Body” is full of passages that point to this anti-Zeus.
February 22, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Erasmus
I realize that I didn’t address your question about the crucifixion. The “anti-sky-god” nature of that event is too clear in my mind, I suppose: a defeated, agonizing “god” (even if temporary) is so alien to the Zeus-types that I don’t think my commentary is necessary. Jesus rode a donkey, and there is a “foolishness” about his mission that isn’t stressed enough. The contrast with the Hebrew Bible’s God and the God-Kings of the ancient Near East is apparent. Yes, there is a heaven in the doctrine of Jesus — but this “kingdom of God” is located,ultimately, in our hearts.
February 22, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Joe Blow
A total exercise in futility. Everything said here is all composed in the dreaming minds – nothing more than baseless beliefs, conjecture and fantasy of wannabe little gods. The gift of knowing right from wrong – good versus evil.
February 22, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Mitch
Hmmm. It’s a really interesting interpretation you offer, and I confess I’ve been blind to it.
I’ve read Pagel’s Gnostic Gospels, so I’m aware that some believe there was a very different version of Christianity in earlier days, but I’ve never heard the central symbol of Christianity pointed to as evidence that the sky-god is impotent or dead. (Though I agree that, in a sense, it’s staring you in the face.) Thanks.
February 22, 2011 at 10:39 pm
Eric Kirk
Erasmus – I think the whole concept of Historical Materialism is rooted in Jewish prophetic conceptualization, which also divides history into thematic phases with the idea that it’s all leading to something.
I’m not sure how to define a “sky God” here, but if we accept that there is a purpose and plan for the universe it does imply a literal rather than figurative consciousness, in whatever form. Is that what we are talking about?
February 23, 2011 at 7:23 am
Mitch
I don’t know how others define a sky god. I define it as the white-bearded guy who speaks to the Pope and the 700 Club, so that they can infallibly tell the rest of us how we are supposed to behave if we are to avoid an eternity in the cosmic Pelican Bay.
That is a completely different thing, at least for me, than a belief that there is a purpose and plan for the universe. I can accept that a vast consciousness is immanent in the universe, and I don’t view that as a belief in God as he is understood by the actual practitioners of our major religions. Theologians don’t count.
I’m also not terribly worried about whether or not a vast consciousness is immanent in the universe, because its existence or not does not drive me to behave in a way to make it happy and I don’t believe it has any signed contracts with personal representatives, whether for TV appearances, funds collection, or behavioral directives.
For me it’s enough that as biologically evolved beings, we each have both selfless and selfish natures, and we often seem to grow happier when we act on our selfless nature, as opposed to our selfish. That’s enough of a mystery for me, and it seems to be plenty of sacred knowledge right there.
February 23, 2011 at 9:28 am
Plain Jane
If universal laws had to have been created by something then something had to create the creator(s). Evolutionary psychology explains why we are the way we are – because it mostly works.
February 23, 2011 at 10:22 am
tra
If universal laws had to have been created by something then something had to create the creator(s).
O.K., I’ll say it just one more time:
It’s turtles all the way down!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
February 23, 2011 at 10:27 am
Eric Kirk
I define it as the white-bearded guy who speaks to the Pope and the 700 Club
To hear each of them tell it, those are two different white bearded gods.
February 23, 2011 at 10:32 am
Mitch
Agreed, Eric. But either way, he’s the same asshole to me.
February 23, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Erasmus
OK, I’ll say it one more time: “it’s matter all the way down” is just as arbitrary an assertion as “it’s mind that permeates everything.” Religions posit a Mind (call it “god” if you prefer) that created the universe; scientific materialism talks about evolution. But as Bertrand Russell writes in “What is the Soul?” ( an essay in his “In Praise of Idleness”), “Mind and matter were something like the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown; the end of the battle is not the victory of one or the other, but the discovery that both are only heraldic inventions. The world consists of events, not of things that endure for a long time and have changing properties.” — Evolution, as branch of materialist science, hasn’t come close to describing the origin of life, much less human consciousness. Those who put Darwin bumper-stickers on their cars possess a faith in an eventual materialist answer to their questions about origins; those who put the Christian fish there instead think the answer has already been delivered. Both are wrong. And both can easily mock the other side — a mockery made easy by mutual ignorance. A natural philosophy (what we call “science”) will someday reconcile the two antagonists, but in the meantime we’ll have to listen to both the Bible-thumpers and the “turtles all the way down” sneerers.
February 23, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Mitch
Erasmus,
I don’t think tra is sneering at anyone; he’s pointing out the flaw in the logic of those who think they have chipped away at the problem of origins by positing a Creator.
Personally, I think the big difference between science as it is practiced and religion as it is practiced is the difference between democracy and totalitarianism.
Science-based people seeks answers that others can replicate; if others can’t replicate your answers, your answers are “voted” down.
Religious people (that is, religious people as the middle 90% of them actually act), think they have the answer because it’s been written down in a book their parents may have told them to believe, and the worst of them insist that anyone who doesn’t believe in their book and its God is going to go to hell. It’s just a step from there to ordering people around “for their own good,” which is the justification that every other totalitarian regime uses.
It always strikes me as bait-and-switch advertising when people use relatively sophisticated views of religions which, as practiced by the majority, are metaphor-free. Sure, there are plenty of people who think of religious texts as metaphorical; there are many, many more who think Noah’s Ark is sitting on some mountain and who thrill at the animatronic dinosaurs and cavemen brought to us by the right-wingers who are pushing literal Christianity these days, unaware of or unacknowledging of Jesus’ religious radicalism.
February 23, 2011 at 1:04 pm
Plain Jane
Hmmm, seems to me evolution has done a pretty good job of describing the origin of life and human consciousness, discovering more every day. Still no evidence of a miracle. Considering the dearth of evidence on the religionists’s side, the inaccuracies in their written accounts, and the more often than not corrupt nature of their leaders throughout history, science wins.
February 23, 2011 at 1:15 pm
Eric Kirk
Well, creationists and evolution skeptics have raised the question of the mechanism for chromosomal speciation, but I’m told that the primary questions they raise are considerably dated.
Wikipedia does have a good lay discussion of speciation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation
This discussion is a little more advanced and claims to document observed instances of speciation following a discussion of the debate as to the definition of speciation.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
February 23, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Plain Jane
The first one had some pretty easy to understand instances of speciation as well, Eric. That we share a common ancestor with chimpanzies has been proven through DNA. There are many instances of observable speciation in plants, flies, fish as well as rational explanations for why they occurred.
February 23, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Bolithio
Dont you think that most people with darwin stickers are simply trying to piss off the fish sticker people?
February 23, 2011 at 2:56 pm
tra
…“turtles all the way down” sneerers.
I wasn’t sneering as I posted about the turtles. Sorry you perceived it that way.
As I made clear last time we had this discussion, in my view both science and religion potentially have the same “turtles all the way down” problem, which they both solve with a “swimming turtle” that holds up all the rest. From the “Allusions in Popular Culture” section of that same wikipedia entry:
In the book Small Gods, the question “what does the turtle stand on?” is asked, and gets the reply “It’s a turtle, for heaven’s sake. It swims. That’s what turtles are for.”
In science, the swimming turtle is the Big Bang, in most religions it’s the Creator. Neither is able to explain how the swimming turtle came into existence, merely that it did. This is, of course, a bigger problem for science, since it can’t very well stop looking for answers to the question of “what came before that,” even though the answer may never be discernable.
For most mainstream religions, the problem is easier to solve, at least to the believer — the answer is that there was no “before,” because the Creator has always existed. In other words, “It’s a turtle, for heaven’s sake. It swims. That’s what turtles are for.”
February 23, 2011 at 3:03 pm
tra
Oops, the last two paragraphs were mine and should not be in italics.
February 23, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Erasmus
TRA: what you quote puts your remarks in a very different light, and I don’t detect any important disagreement between us. — PJ: I don’t take the side of religion against science, but I hope for a more evolved science, one that resembles quantum mechanics rather than Darwinism. And I second Einstein’s well-known comment about science without religion being blind. Evolutionary theory has made little progress addressing the “big” questions. Evolution,of course, predated Darwin by many years, and the co-discoverer of natural selection as the driving force of the process (Wallace) ultimately exempted the human mind from his own theory. In truth, Darwinism hasn’t solved the basic problems of its own theory. I quote Peter Atkins, professor of chemistry at Oxford: “The word ‘evolution’does not appear in the ‘Origin’…. nor does the book deal explicitly with the origin of species, which is still a highly vexed question.” (p. 22 of “Galileo’s Finger” — on the book’s jacket, Richard Dawkins says that Atkins deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature). — Natural selection is only a filter, and filters cannot drive a process forward. There is no convincing reason why — after a, frankly, miraculous appearance of life on the planet —- pond scum should not have continued to live in the same manner for the rest of the earth’s existence. There is no evidence that mutations alone, followed by natural selection, could produce a creature with legs or arms from a spot of scum. Even Noam Chomsky doesn’t accept “natural selection” as a convincing explanation for, among other things, birds’ wings (see the attack on Chomsky in Dennett’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”). I’m persuaded that people accept Darwinism because they can’t imagine an alternative. The “educated” public is unaware of how many unanswered questions there are. In France, Lamarck still enjoys a bit of a vogue, and at least one eminent French evolutionist — Pierre Grasse, who taught at the Sorbonne — was far less triumphalist than his Anglo-Saxon colleagues, and far more candid about the inadequacy of current theory.
February 23, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Plain Jane
Is there something besides a “big bang” that could explain our expanding universe, Tra? I imagine a big bang, a hundred billion or so years of expansion, finally losing thrust and everything eventually being sucked back into a black hole. When the last bit of matter is absorbed it sparks a big bang.
February 23, 2011 at 5:09 pm
tra
That’s been a theory that’s been out there for a while, Jane, the idea basically being: Big Bang, energy of Big Bang expended, gravity takes over and pulls all the matter back together, Big Crunch, followed by another Big Bang. But I do remember hearing somewhere a few years ago that the latest measurements suggested that may not happen, and that this may be a one-act play with one expanding universe where everything is gradually getting farther and farther away from everything else.
I guess the question was whether the energy from the Big Bang was enough to push everything far enough apart so gravity would never be able to overcome the existing momentum, or whether the energy of the Big Bang would be expended at a point where the matter would still be close enough to get pulled back together by gravity. If recall correctly, the current thinking is that the former scenario is probably correct, and in that case there would be no Big Crunch.
February 23, 2011 at 5:16 pm
Plain Jane
Fortunately none of us will be around to find out, Tra.
February 23, 2011 at 6:15 pm
Mitch
Erasmus and all,
Here’s 15 minutes of Richard Dawkins on the evolution of the eye:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4742301713635559854#
I think many humanists oppose evolution on the grounds that “survival of the fittest” was used, ridiculously, to justify class hierarchies. All “survival of the fittest” means, of course, is that the creatures with the best fit for an environmental niche will reproduce at a faster rate than creatures which fit less well.
February 23, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Sonia Baur
Dear Eric:
As a bona fide red-diaper baby, I find your references to Marx obscure.
Marx had some amazing insights about economic (material) reality. Most important was the idea that in the capitalist system the value of goods produced by workers was only in part returned to workers as wages and the other part retained as profit (capital assets). Henry Ford was given great credit for understanding that he had to price his cars so that the workers making them could afford to buy them. Indeed the outcome of profits being too high, and workers share too low leads to depression. And so these cycles keep recurring.
February 23, 2011 at 7:21 pm
Sonia Baur
continued: Marx thought that the workers would revolt and demand social justice, and indeed that did happen, more in Europe than here ie pensions, health care, good education, public health, environmental safe-guards etc. Is or was “socialism” inevitable? What do you think?
I do know that it has nothing to do with god. The inevitable in question has to do with what we the peeps will put up with and how much we insist that society be organized to serve our need.
February 23, 2011 at 10:39 pm
Eric Kirk
Sonia – It’s in the concept of historical materialism outlined in a number of his works, including the Communist Manifesto. The “Prehistory of Man” appeared in a later work entitled A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, but was popularized by Erich Fromm in Marx’s Concept of Man, which introduced the alienation concept to the new left in the 1960s and a movement known as “Marxist Humanism.” It was also big with the Frankfurt School from which Herbert Marcuse came from, and he was the darling of the grad school wing of the new left.
I had one of those existential moments in 1988 when I worked with members of the now disbanded League of Revolutionary Struggle (they had Amiri Baraka in their ranks until they purged him) in the Jackson presidential campaign. They would invite groups of us students involved in the campaign for beer and basically try to coax us into their ranks. During one discussion I told this one LRSer that I was critical of the notion that nothing we were doing was part of human history (as opposed to prehistory), and one Hispanic potential recruit at the table agreed, “I think that’s bullshit.” So the LRSer tells me that Marx never said that, and that I must have heard it from some bourgeois professor paraphrasing Marx to suit him. So I went to the McHenry library and pulled out the book and brought it to the next Rainbow Coalition meeting, and the guy continued to deny that Marx had ever said it and refused to open the book.
Funny thing is that my father had a nearly identical experience in the 60s involving a Trot in the Socialist Workers Party (named Nat Weinstein, a a painter’s union activists who was later purged with his wife who was a perennial socialist candidate for mayor of SF) who had been pushing The Permanent Revolution and my father had found something that contradicted some tenet of SWP theology. My dad marked the page and set it on the table, and Weinstein refused to pick up the book.
Weinstein was purged from the SWP shortly after I left it, for advocating support of the Polish Solidarity Union.
Sonia, my father is also a red diaper baby (remdering me a red diaper grand baby) and he views Marxism like many a Catholic with a college education does with his/her own childhood faith.
February 24, 2011 at 1:15 am
Sonia Baur
I misspoke. I don’t doubt the veracity of any of your references, Eric. I was thinking more about the relevance. Marx lived such a long time ago. It would be so much fun if he would come to life again and analyze (or reanalyze) “Marxist theory” in light of the history that has passed since then. I suspect he would be able to provide yet more enlightenment on economic matters than we can manage. Thanks for the forum.
February 24, 2011 at 9:32 am
Eric Kirk
He might. And hopefully he would have abandoned the surplus value theory of labor, which is pretty much discredited by the realities of the past century. The declining rate of profit as a quasi-calculus issue however has held up, and even the Hayek/Friedman types have acknowledged it in their own ways.
Marx wasn’t really strong on implementation however. Some of his successors were a little better at delivering, whether they chose the incremental approach of Bernstein/Kautsky or the “revolutionary” approaches of Lenin and company.
February 24, 2011 at 2:41 pm
Anonymous
Marx was a hypocrite who wouldn’t let his daughter date revolutionaries. Engels owned factories.
February 25, 2011 at 7:31 am
Silly Mitch
And the founding fathers kept slaves. What’s your point? Are you a revolutionary having trouble getting laid?
February 25, 2011 at 9:01 am
Eric Kirk
Well, Jenny is long dead and that would involve some really gross necrophelia.
February 25, 2011 at 9:14 am
Erasmus
Mitch —- Dawkins is superb at conveying the majestic march of evolution through the eons, and if I were a biology teacher I would assign his books and show this video.– Unfortunately, he starts his story at the point where his theory falls down: the point where a primitive eye already exists. How was that point reached? What were the “pay-offs” that caused an organism to pass along genetic changes that resulted in the primitive eye? Without the advantage conferred by mutations, there is no progression towards the inchoate eye. Dawkins doesn’t deal with the crux of the matter. This whole debate is nicely summarized by Chomsky’s view on birds’ wings: a third of a wing might easily be a DISadvantage to a bird, yet Darwinian theory must find a selective benefit. There is no “telos,” no goal for evolution, so the “concept” of flight is absent. What is the “pay-off” for an eighth of a wing? A fourth? And so on.Until the bird can fly, the mutations appear useless or even harmful.
February 25, 2011 at 10:12 am
tra
Chomsky’s a brilliant guy, but let’s face it, he’s an expert on linguistics, and to some degree politics…not evolution or biology.
But as far as the question about 1/3 of a wing, I think he raises a very interesting question, from a layman’s perspective. But I would have to hear more about what the counter-argument is according to those with expertise on evolution before deciding whether Chomsky’s point really poses a problem for the theory of evolution.
February 25, 2011 at 10:31 am
Plain Jane
From a rank amateur layman, it seems that rudimentary wings would have given an advantage in escape, fighting and reaching higher food sources because they would provide the ability to glide and jump higher.
February 25, 2011 at 10:51 am
tra
As far as the 1/3 of a wing thing, here are a couple of thoughts, based, to some degree, on a foggy memory of something read long ago, or maybe viewed at a natural history museum? It seems to me that this is a reasonable explanation for the utility (and therefore natural selection for) 1/3 of a wing:
Before they flew, I assume that the bird-anscestors ran and jumped. If you can jump farther, and control your balance better, with 1/3 of a wing than with less wing-like forward appendages, that 1/3 of a wing could prove to be a beneficial mutation (or at least not a deleterious mutation…remember, natural selection tolerates neutral mutations as well as beneficial ones, and sometimes the neutral mutation will later become beneficial, as further mutations occur, or as environmental conditions change).
Running and jumping in pursuit of prey, or to avoid predators, would likely lead to some situations where the bird anscestor was attempting to jump down from some height (a rock, a log) and the better they could control their fall and their landing, the more likely they would be to survive (and reproduce).
At some point, with a little more wingspan, and a little bit less body mass, a semi-controlled fall can become a well-controlled downward glide. Add a little more wingspan and a little less body mass, and now the evolving birds have the ability to stay aloft for some period. Eventually, with enough changes in body structure, the birds can take off from the ground. I would suspect that flying insects probably evolved more or less along the same lines.
February 25, 2011 at 10:53 am
tra
While I was in the process of writing my long-winded 10:51 post, Jane jumped in and summarized the overall point in far fewer words at 10:31. Well done, Jane.
February 25, 2011 at 11:03 am
Mitch
Erasmus,
The concerns you bring up are well-known and well-discussed in any decent college biology course. The most common suggestion is that things which are useful for one task are then (to use common but inappropriate language) re-purposed. And the usefulness of a capability to know when/where light is present would seem pretty obvious to me, given that anything capable of photosynthesis needs to seek light.
I think there’s a whole literature regarding partial wings — what I seem to recall is that they acted as heat radiators and/or absorbers in some early species.
From my perspective, the actual path that evolution has hewn motivates a thriving debate in the mostly-democratic halls of science; the more outlandish challenges then somehow find their way to “creation scientists,” who learn them for propaganda purposes but never present the surrounding context of the debate itself.
February 25, 2011 at 11:08 am
Mitch
Googling “evolution origin of wings” will let you peek in on an interesting debate about whether insect wings evolved from gills on aquatic animals or independently as new appendages, and will give you some idea of the reasoning involved.
February 25, 2011 at 11:10 am
Mitch
And Wikipedia has an interesting article on the evolution of the eye:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
February 25, 2011 at 11:17 am
tra
Well, wikipedia has a very interesting article about theories on the evolution of flight. Apparently there have been three basic theories for how flight evolved, two of which were developed around 1880, and one new contender just proposed in 1999.
Pouncing Proavis model: A theory of a pouncing proavis was first proposed by Garner, Taylor, and Thomas in 1999: “We propose that birds evolved from predators that specialized in ambush from elevated sites, using their raptorial hindlimbs in a leaping attack. Drag–based, and later lift-based, mechanisms evolved under selection for improved control of body position and locomotion during the aerial part of the attack. Selection for enhanced lift-based control led to improved lift coefficients, incidentally turning a pounce into a swoop as lift production increased. Selection for greater swooping range would finally lead to the origin of true flight…”
Cursorial model: A cursorial, or “running” model was originally proposed by Samuel Wendell Williston in 1879. This theory states that “flight evolved in running bipeds through a series of short jumps”. As the length of the jumps extended, the wings were used not only for thrust but also for stability, and eventually eliminated the gliding intermediate…
Arboreal model: This model was originally proposed in 1880 by Othniel C. Marsh. The theory states Archaeopteryx was a reptilian bird that [climbed trees and then] soared from tree to tree. After the leap, Archaeopteryx would then use its wings as a balancing mechanism. According to this model, Archaeopteryx developed a gliding method to conserve energy…
At least from the discussion on the wikipedia page, it sounds like the Cursorial model is less likely to be correct, and that the evidence more closely fits the Pouncing Proavis model or the Arboreal model.
Climbing trees, and then jumping out of them…I hadn’t thought of that! But it makes sense. Apparently the early bird anscestors may have been able to save considerable energy by climbing and then jumping/gliding — covering a greater distance with less energy. And then there would be advantages for avoiding predators, and for spotting and swooping down on prey.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight
February 25, 2011 at 11:23 am
Eric Kirk
Googling “evolution origin of wings” will let you peek in on an interesting debate about whether insect wings evolved from gills on aquatic animals or independently as new appendages, and will give you some idea of the reasoning involved.
I would have assumed from fins, or from land based frontal appendages. Seems like it would be inefficient to gain two new appendages while losing frontal, since birds like mammals and reptiles only have four appendages totally. But I guess biology can be counterintuitive.
February 25, 2011 at 11:23 am
Plain Jane
Thanks, Tra. Yours was fleshed out with the details I was too lazy to type.
I’ve been trying to find the site where I read about bats who became isolated on an island and are devolving into rat-like animals who forage for bugs on the ground.
February 25, 2011 at 11:29 am
tra
Anyway, after a little bit of thought and a small amount of research, it seems entirely plausible that 1/3 of a wing could have provided a significant adaptive advantage to the bird-anscestors.
So I’m not sure why Chomsky would try to make an argument based on the 1/3 of a wing objection. I recall that Chomsky has some controversial opinions on the evolution of language (at least that’s kinda-sorta related to his field of expertise), and maybe his thoughts about the evolution of wings were somehow related to his defense of his theories about the evolution of language? That’s just a raw guess, I’d have to know more about the context of his remarks about the 1/3 of a wing “problem.”
February 25, 2011 at 11:31 am
Mitch
The whole study of evolutionary history has always struck me as so awe-inspiring that I’ve never understood why people need to make up myths.
From an idea so simple that one of the complaints about it is that it is tautological, an enormous fossil record can be seen to make sense. The idea is that in any environment where resources are limited and users of the resources capable of reproducing, any difference in survival will lead to more of the better-at-surviving and fewer of the less-good-at-surviving.
Throw in geological time, and you get the diversity of life that we see today.
It’s a real shame that evolution, misunderstood, has gained a bad reputation, and I wish the easy-to-misunderstand phrase “survival of the fittest” had never been uttered. Evolution has precisely nothing to say about class hierarchy (except, perhaps, insofar as evolutionary psychiatry may point out ways in which our thought processes may reflect a need to form dominance hierarchies and to present displays of conspicuous consumption).
I can think of nothing more awe-inspiring than evolution over time, except perhaps for the recent discoveries of unlimited complexity within seemingly straightforward rules (fractals, chaos theory, etc…) Certainly it puts any god modeled after a big, powerful tribal chief to complete shame in the awe department.
February 25, 2011 at 11:35 am
Mitch
Here we go:
http://stevereads.com/papers_to_read/aerodynamics_thermoregulation_and_the_evolution_of_insect_wings_differential_scaling_and_evolutionary_change.pdf
February 25, 2011 at 11:35 am
tra
I’ve been trying to find the site where I read about bats who became isolated on an island and are devolving into rat-like animals who forage for bugs on the ground.
I believe the title of that study is “Life on Tea Party Island”
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
February 25, 2011 at 11:57 am
Plain Jane
Isn’t that an island in the Gulf of Mexico, off Mississippi maybe?
February 25, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Erasmus
What intelligent responses to my comment! I hope no one considers me an “anti-evolutionist ” or that I have some sort of hidden agenda. I just find evolutionary theory insufficient to account for much of nature. S.J. Gould, for instance, says that “it now appears as though there was more anatomical diversity at the very beginning than there is now and has ever been since. There were fewer species, but those species were allocated to many more basic kinds of anatomy.” (“A Glorious Accident,” ed. Kayzer, p. 85). How does that square with most people’s conception of evolution as a journey from simplicity to complexity? It is well-known that so-called “primitive” languages (uninfluenced by other cultures) are far more complex than modern tongues. Does that seem plausible, given most people’s view of cultural evolution? Every trait must be useful in order for it to survive — agreed. But what prompted the move from single-celled organisms to more complex ones? In what sense is a bacterium less well adapted to its environment than its successors in the evolutionary trail? — It is said that “accident” accounts for the emergence of complex life (actually, life itself). Isn’t ascribing the wonders of nature to “accident” tantamount to admitting that no theory exists? An accident is something we do not understand — it’s the opposite of an explanation. Gould says that “The accident is the 60 trillion contingent events that eventually led to the emergence of Homo sapiens” (op.cit., p. 92). 60 trillion “accidents” — and Einstein was born. Is this tale any less fanciful than the Book of Genesis? “:God” is hardly a respectable explanation of our existence — and 60 trillion accidents is similarly unsatisfactory. No wonder so many people unintimidated by Ph.D.s continue to adhere to their creationist myths! At least creationism has an advantage that Darwinism doesn’t: it posits an intelligence that precedes a creation, and everyday life displays the same cause-and-effect. No one says that Shakespeare’s plays were brought about by accident, and simple folk say the same thing about the universe. I can’t say I blame them. — In short the argument from “usefulness” is really question-begging. Of course the eye is helpful; of course wings are beneficial — these are truisms. But it’s a Panglossian science to say that utility accounts for everything. (How well-adapted our nose is … to hold up our spectacles!, in Voltaire’s parody of 18th century utilitarian thought.)
February 25, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Mitch
Erasmus,
Three things come quickly to mind. First, we are absolutely not the “successor” to single celled organisms. That’s a mis-presentation of evolution that’s been corrected at most natural history museums for at least twenty years. Where there used to be timelines implying “progress,” there’s now a tangled bush, I believe.
Second, as any writer will tell you, simplicity takes longer than complexity. It takes time to wander to the most optimized form of any new capability and, if we’re fortunate, we don’t end up with a Rube Goldberg machine when a pair of levers will do the trick.
And third, we all need to be far humbler in the face of what can happen as a result of a trail of millions of events. One of the things that science has long since begun to recognize is the whole field of emergent phenomena. Large enough quantitative changes can lead to qualitative changes.
There’s been a long “debate” between philosophers like John Searle and others over where “knowing” is located in a material world. Searle thought he had a slam-dunk with his “Chinese Room” thought experiment (search it on Wikipedia if you’re not familiar with it), but I’m happy to agree with the scientists and others who feel that the room itself had the knowledge that Searle claims is nowhere in the system.
I personally have no problem with the idea of Einstein emerging after x accidents, when x is a very large number, just as I have no problem with wetness emerging out of a large enough set of water molecules which, individually, are not wet at all.
February 25, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Mitch
Here’s an essay I wrote for a local newsletter. Linking it may save me some typing.
http://arcatazengroup.org/voices_2_2010.php#mitch
February 25, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Erasmus
A very impressive essay — I hope it had many readers, and that they appreciated its wisdom. — Of course, wisdom needs qualification…. Nowhere did I mention or indeed imply “progress.” “Successor” merely is a temporal qualifier. But I ask you: what did the “ancestor of all life” look like? If I’m not mistaken,most scientists imagine a single-celled creature. (Based on all the species it somehow gave rise to, it must have been a kind of stem-cell … pretty miraculous, I’d say, as unlikely and “awe-inspiring” as anything cooked up by religion.)— I’m well-acquainted with Searle, and I side with him on the Chinese Room question. Perhaps at a later date we can debate it.— I don’t know what you mean by “logically inevitable” when you talk about evolution. I don’t think very many evolutionists would agree with you. — Simplicity takes longer than complexity? Perhaps so — but the common conception of evolution doesn’t reflect that truth. (*As I like to stress, evolution itself is not my bugbear. Thinkers like Daniel Dennett are.)=== Once again: congratulations on your eloquent essay. I may quibble with some of the phrasing, but the capacious vision it embodies is rather grand.
February 25, 2011 at 4:03 pm
tra
I just find evolutionary theory insufficient to account for much of nature.
That may simply be because there is a lot to account for and no one person can study it all in depth. But, taking the evolution of avian flight as an example, when you actually do even a little bit of digging you may find that there are quite a few folks who do have viable evolutionary theories to explain the phenomenon. Of course there’s plenty we haven’t yet studied, and some things we’ll probably never get around to learning (and other areas where it will be impossible to prove exactly what happened), but this does not at all prove that the evolutionary explanation does not exist.
S.J. Gould, for instance, says that “it now appears as though there was more anatomical diversity at the very beginning than there is now and has ever been since. There were fewer species, but those species were allocated to many more basic kinds of anatomy.” (“A Glorious Accident,” ed. Kayzer, p. 85). How does that square with most people’s conception of evolution as a journey from simplicity to complexity?
Well there are a couple of things to address here. First of all, you start with talking about anatomical diversity vs. similarity but then shift to talking about organizational complexity vs. simplicity . Those are two different things, and I’m not sure where you’re seeing a suspicious inconsistency.
Second, “most people’s conception of evolution as a journey from simplicity to complexity” is not entirely accurate. It’s understandable given that a lot of evolution has actually worked out that way, with single-cell organisms becoming more complex and so on. But evolution only favors complexity when it offers a relative advantage over simplicity in a given evolutionary environment, which is why there are still plenty of single-celled organisms around today.
It is well-known that so-called “primitive” languages (uninfluenced by other cultures) are far more complex than modern tongues. Does that seem plausible, given most people’s view of cultural evolution?
Again, “most people’s view of…” may simply be inaccurate, or at least not universal to all phenomena. At any rate, cultural “evolution” is a whole ‘nother ball of wax, and operates in ways that are at times similar to biological evolution, but the fact that there are differences between cultural evoution and biological evolution does nothing to discount the evidence for biological evolution.
Every trait must be useful in order for it to survive — agreed. But what prompted the move from single-celled organisms to more complex ones? In what sense is a bacterium less well adapted to its environment than its successors in the evolutionary trail?
I’m going to ask you to go ahead and do a little research on your own, as I suspect that, just like the eye and wing questions, there are plenty of viable evolutionary theories to explain this. I don’t want to be caught up in a loop of you posing one question after another just because you don’t personally know the answer to it, and then me going and looking it up for you. Now if you do a bit of digging, and find out that there really don’t seem to be any answers to the specific question, then get back to me. With regard to the evolution of avian flight, a simple 60-second wikipedia search and a few minutes of reading made it clear that the 1/3 of a wing “problem” really doesn’t seem to be a problem at all. I’m pretty sure if you spend a little bit of time looking into the question of evolution from single-cell to multi-cell organisms you’ll find the same thing is true — that this has already been looked into and that there are one or more viable evolutionary theories to explain the phenomenon.
It is said that “accident” accounts for the emergence of complex life (actually, life itself). Isn’t ascribing the wonders of nature to “accident” tantamount to admitting that no theory exists? An accident is something we do not understand — it’s the opposite of an explanation.
Not really. An accident is something that happens without anyone having the intention of making it happen. So, for example, most car wrecks are accidents, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we can’t determine the cause of the accident (a particular failure of mechanical equipment, slippery road conditions, driver impairment, or whaever), or the physics of how it unfolded. And even if we can’t determine the exact cause of a particular accident, that doesn’t mean that magic or supernatural forces were involved, just that our ability to pinpoint causes of automobile accidents is less than 100% perfect.
At any rate, it would certainly be accurate to say that mutations are “accidental” (unless you think that the mutations were intentionally caused by a God or other supernatural entity). But that does not at all undercut the theory of evolution, it’s part of the theory: random genetic mutations do occur, and over long time-spans mutations that result in traits that are advantageous to survival (and therefore reproduction) are passed along more often than non-advantageous traits.
Gould says that “The accident is the 60 trillion contingent events that eventually led to the emergence of Homo sapiens” (op.cit., p. 92). 60 trillion “accidents” — and Einstein was born. Is this tale any less fanciful than the Book of Genesis?
Yes. Because we can observe that the “accidental” process of evolution in action today, so the mechanisms are proven to be viable, are consistent with known principles of biology, chemistry, physics and so on. This is of course not true of the version of events given in Genesis, which basically amounts to “God did magic, and stuff sprang into being.” Now no human is alive today who was alive back then, so maybe everything we know about how the universe works today was not true back then, but yes, that’s certainly a far more “fanciful” scenario.
“God” is hardly a respectable explanation of our existence — and 60 trillion accidents is similarly unsatisfactory.
I don’t see why. 60 trillion accidents over billions of years doesn’t strike me as unlikely or unsatisfactory at all. Again, every single thing that happens, happens “accidentally,” unless there is a conscious intent behind it.
No wonder so many people unintimidated by Ph.D.s continue to adhere to their creationist myths! At least creationism has an advantage that Darwinism doesn’t: it posits an intelligence that precedes a creation, and everyday life displays the same cause-and-effect.
It’s only an “advantage” in that it replaces many difficult, but theoretically answerable questions, with one simple, but unprovable answer: “God does magic, and stuff happens.” It’s not a more satisfactory answer to anyone who wants to understand how the world actually works or what is likely to happen next, but it is a simple, mind-closing answer that is extremely useful in the context of intellectual laziness — a trait that I think it’s fair to say is much more common among Creationists than PhDs in evolutionary sciences.
How well-adapted our nose is … to hold up our spectacles!, in Voltaire’s parody of 18th century utilitarian thought.)
Voltaire may have been a brilliant philosopher, but he clearly didn’t think too deeply about the actual utility of a nose. In fact the nose is well-adapted as a sense-organ, as an alternate passageway for air, as a warmer and moistener of incoming air, and a filter to prevent dust or other unhelpful particles from entering the lungs.
With all due respect, a lot of these “objections” to evolutionary theory seem to add up to “I don’t know the explanantion off the top of my head, and the answer isn’t 100% self-evident, but rather than taking the time to see if anyone has found viable evolutionary explanations, I’m going to just go ahead and assume that such explanations don’t exist, and instead embrace supernatural explanations that are simple and easy to understand and don’t require any time, research, or intellectual effort.
February 25, 2011 at 4:24 pm
tra
Just to be clear, Erasmus, that last paragraph was directed at the die-hard Creationists, not at you.
While I can see that my recent overly-long comment reveals some frustration/annoyance on my part, overall I am enjoying the discussion. Otherwise I wouldn’t bother responding in the first place, and certainly not in so much detail.
So, agree or disagree, I thank you (and Mitch) for this interesting discussion.
February 25, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Erasmus
TRA raises so many issues, and writes in so persuasive a manner, that I’m going to postpone a detailed reply — probably until the next time this issue arises on Eric’s blog. Just one crucial point: evolutionary theory is quite good at explaining what occurs when the process is well under way. The Dawkins video that Mitch posted is an example of Darwinism at its best. What it leaves unsaid, and what it elides (the steps leading to the primitive eye), leave me unsatisfied. Evolution is a very hard nut to crack: no one was around to witness it, and life itself is a conundrum in a way that the structure of the atom is not. I suppose my chief objection to Darwinism is cultural, not scientific (I can’t blame a science for its shortcomings, after all). An impoverished image of humankind can result from a replacement of our Western heritage (religious and cultural) by a theory that relies so heavily on chance. Darwin had some keen insights; he does not belong on bumper-stickers (any more than the Christian fish).
February 25, 2011 at 5:03 pm
Mitch
Thanks for the kind words, Erasmus.
I apologize for putting the word “progress” in your mouth, but most people view evolution as a progress and it’s not. It’s more like an (unconscious, I’d say) exploration of the available ecological niches at every moment. And since the available ecological niches are heavily dependent on what other life exists, it’s a pretty complicated exploration, always changing. The successors to bacteria are more modern bacteria. I’d suggest that WE are what happens when all the niches for bacteria are taken up by excellent bacteria.
If I’m not mistaken,most scientists imagine a single-celled creature.
Wikipedia’s article on Abiogenesis goes into what scientists think might have preceded the cell. As there’s no fossil record, it’s entirely possible that the earliest forms of life served as a scaffolding on which modern life emerged, and then faced extinction.
“Simplicity takes longer than complexity? Perhaps so — but the common conception of evolution doesn’t reflect that truth.”
I don’t know about that. Evolution, like good design, seems to do an amazing job of reducing things to the simplest that still works. The last three words are important, and there are exceptions. Often, Rube Goldbergian evolved structures are thought to be a result of the re-purposing we talked about earlier.
This is not based on any science knowledge, but I suspect that from an evolutionary point of view, single cell organisms are the best, but when you use up all the ecological niches available for single cells, you end up “having to try out” more complicated solutions like multicellular organisms. And so on all the way down to us. I think viruses are a triumph of evolutionary simplicity.
As for the Chinese Room, I’m not surprised that we are driven towards different camps. I think it’s tremendously difficult for members of each camp to understand the attitude of those in the other camp. I regard every person capable of language as an example of a Chinese Room filled with neurons, not ONE of which speaks English. Intelligence — or knowledge, or understanding, or soul — strikes me as emergent, and you can’t explain it if you insist that the material of which it is built must exhibit anything similar to intelligence — or knowlege, or understanding, or soul.
Thanks again for the kind words.
February 26, 2011 at 8:41 pm
moviedad
Eggheads!
February 26, 2011 at 9:23 pm
tra
But which came first, the chickenheads or the eggheads?
February 27, 2011 at 8:32 am
moviedad
Beware the omelet!
Chickenheads, of course.
February 28, 2011 at 8:31 am
Eric Kirk
Damn! Maybe Karl Marx can answer the question in his next interview!
http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2011/01/8220-crisis-interview-theory
February 28, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Evolved
I can give this one a try. When the universe evolved the phenomenon of rationality in an organism certain realities took root. The organism of man developed a survival instinct which involves collective activity based upon intelligence in organization and therefor the trend towards unfettered cooperation is natural even if frustrated here and there by competing concerns for short term survival of the species. It is not so much a morality of the universe but an essential component of cooperative instincts necessitated because we are so lame when it comes to strength, speed, and teeth. The rationality begets cooperation and all of the grandiose language is simply poetic explanation of a biological phenomenon.
February 28, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Anonymous
Marx wouldn’t want a double espresso. He’d want an eggnog latte.
February 28, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Eric Kirk
Probably he’d want hisbiscus tea.
March 1, 2011 at 8:58 am
Mitch
Erasmus wrote,
An impoverished image of humankind can result from a replacement of our Western heritage (religious and cultural) by a theory that relies so heavily on chance.
Doesn’t this sound an awful lot like faith by wishful thinking? And wasn’t this the exact argument made against removing the Earth from the center of the universe?
We love, we hate, we show courage, fear, and cowardice. We are beautiful and ugly, truthful and deceitful, magnificent and contemptible. Why does any of that matter less if it is not a result of a God? How does the lack of a personal God with representatives on Earth even dent the far more abstract concepts of eternal truth or “Ultimate Reality”?
(Yes, I confess, this is bait. I was sorry to see the discussion fade into disconcerted-sounding jokes.)
March 1, 2011 at 10:26 am
Erasmus
The bait is too tasty to pass up. — This entire discussion is about to be swallowed up by the passage of time, otherwise known as the lengthening of the scroll and the refocus of attention on other matters. A brief reply, then: Nietzsche’s section #14 of “Beyond Good and Evil” — and Carl Sagan’s statement that “I am a collection of water, calcium, and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label.” The difference between Nietzsche’s sentences and Sagan’s defines what is at stake here, and if I were more certain of this discussion’s longevity I would elaborate in detail.
March 1, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Mitch
Well, I can’t guarantee anything in terms of my own longevity, let alone the discussion’s, but I’ll check out the Nietzsche.
March 1, 2011 at 3:42 pm
tra
Erasmus,
You said you might eventually respond to the points raised in my 4:03 post on 2/25 (which were in response to points you raised earlier), but so far you haven’t. Which is fine, not a problem. I do appreciate your kind words about my “persuasive” writing, and if you just want to drop the whole thing that’s O.K. with me, we can consider the discussion closed (at least for now) and agree that we still disagree (at least on some points).
But if you do care to offer a response to that 4:03 post, I am curious about which points I was able to persuade you on, and which arguments you found less persuasive, and why.
Either way, I’m curious about the Nietzshe quote that you refer to. But I don’t have “Beyond Good and Evil” on my bookshelf. Could you point me to an online excerpt, or perhaps just paraphrase it in your own words?
– tra
March 1, 2011 at 4:58 pm
Erasmus
I feel I owe at least a summary of N’s section, although I also feel a duty to respond to your previous post but I prefer to defer a discussion that would tire my fingers as well as my brain. — N states that physics is an interpretation and arrangement of the world and NOT an explanation of it, but because it is founded on belief in the senses (he lived before quantum mechanics, obviously) “it passes for more than that.” Then he turns to the Platonic mode of thinking (which he calls “noble”) and its opposition to “palpability”. “This overcdoming and interpretation of the world in the manner of Plato involved a kind of enjoyment different from that which the physicists of today offer us,or from that offered by the Darwinists …. ‘Where man has nothing more to see or grasp he has nothing more to do’ — that is certainly a different imperative from the Platonic, but for an uncouth industrious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, which has nothing but course work to get through, it may well be the right one.” — N, though an atheist, knew what was lost when the transcendent dimension of life shrank, and he included Darwinism among the by-products of the shrinkage. There is an “overcoming” at work in a metaphysics that scorns the visible, and while the enterprise may be illusory, it also invigorates and ennobles. What is attractive about N is the honesty, the refusal to plead for his own (atheist) side. I think it’s hard to deny that some of the greatest 20th century works of art offer a portrait of humanity that undercuts what Michelangelo or Milton created. Carl Sagan loved to rhapsodize about the grandeur of the universe, but he failed to confer a similar nobility on the person admiring this universe. (I don’t buy any pro forma homage to humanity.) N was sensitive to the tragic side of life, unlike those who think that science offers the best explanation of, and guide to, our existence. — Meaty issues, to be sure, and I hope that this blog will continue to be an agora in which the various sides of them will be presented.
March 1, 2011 at 6:27 pm
tra
Erasmus,
Thanks for that, and no sweat on the other.
– tra
March 2, 2011 at 9:05 am
Erasmus
TRA —- I re-read your lengthiest comment, and my only complete disagreement is with your remark concerning Voltaire: he was trying to be humorous (in his parody of Leibnizian optimism), and I’m sure he appreciated the immense usefulness and “adaptiveness” of the nose. — You are correct on “accident,” though there is still much to say on the topic, and anyway evolution works within constraints that limit the scope of chance. —- I’m almost halfway through a new book called “Darwin’s Pious Idea” (an anti-Dawkins and anti-creationist book), and I’m very impressed by it so far. It’s refining my thoughts on the subject, and I don’t want to unload my half-baked ideas on anyone until I finish the volume and come to terms with its arguments. The author is Conor Cunningham, an extraordinarily well-read young man.
March 2, 2011 at 5:37 pm
Mitch
For anyone interested in Beyond Good and Evil, the amazing Project Gutenberg offers an English language translation free and online. Here’s a link to Erasmus’ citation:
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?pageno=8&fk_files=1455580