----- Original Message ----- From: "Ted Winslow" <egwinslow at rogers.com>
As I've pointed out before, "creationist" nonsense is not the only alternative to the scientific materialism of the orthodox neo- Darwinian explanation of the fact of evolution, the explanation underpinning "sociobiology". The self-contradictory (e.g. it's not possible without self-contradiction to to derive from them any claim about what we "ought" to do in our sexual or any other activity) ontological ideas constitutive of this explanation are also inconsistent with the continental tradition in philosophy represented by Hegel, Marx and Husserl. As I've also pointed out before, the role given to these ideas in orthodox evolutionary theory have been made the object of explicit criticism by another representative of this tradition, A.N. Whitehead. The most succinct version of this criticism is found in The Function of Reason. This is now available free online at:
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6326292
The following passage from Chap. 1 summarizes a key criticism.
“there is another factor in evolution which is not in the least explained by the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. Why has the trend of evolution been upwards? The fact that organic species have been produced from inorganic distributions of matter, and the fact that in the lapse of time organic species of higher and higher types have evolved are not in the least explained by any doctrine of adaptation to the environment, or of struggle. “In fact the upward trend has been accompanied...'
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The terms 'higher' and 'upward' are, alas, left utterly undefined.
The passage quoted owes more to Whitehead's reading of LJ Henderson's "The Fitness of the Environment" and discussions with JBS Haldane and William Bateson than W.'s reading [lack thereof actually] of Hegel and Marx and Husserl.