Strange claim. Human conditions are "evolutionary ones"!
> "I used to use these Marx-mots and dialectical cliches as a rule of thumb
> all the time.But I think that in the "human-centrism" of such statements
> they display a world view that is pre-evolutionary and thus in a deep sense
> anti-materialistic."
>
> How very wise you were, but less so now, I think. To not be human-centric,
> that would be a human delusion, surely. Imagine a trilobyte that was not
> trilobyte-centric. To be human-centric properly, though, is not to be
> pre-evolutionary, but post-evolutionary. The laws of evolution were
> superceded once man began to consciously shape his environment. Pointedly,
> human evolution ceased at just that point - overtaken by human industry.
How can this be? If evolution "ceases" when a species shapes its environment, then evolution has stopped for beavers, birds, wild cats, spiders, ants, etc. In fact, the tendency for species to shape their environments is a product of natural selection and becomes further "raw material" for natural selection in the future. Homo sapiens sapiens, like all extant species, will continue to evolve until it's extinct.
Miles