----- Original Message ----- From: "joanna" <123hop at comcast.net>
>The terms 'higher' and 'upward' are, alas, left utterly undefined.
>
Yes. It always struck me how similar the evolutionary picture was to the
older great chain of being. Only diff being that in one you have man at
the top, and in the other, God.
And the industrial revolution + capitalism changed our metaphors so that the latest is always the best. Put those two together and you have some of the less scientific underpinnings of evolutionary theory.
Joanna
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It was Lamarck who inverted the chain's explanatory order, clearing the way for the other great materialist manifesto of 1848. The one not written by M&E.
Ian