mindless, algorithmic process of evolution, hated it.
why couldn't that whole process itself be the product of evolution, and so Karl Marx was exultant: "Not only is a death blow dealt here for the first forth, all the way down? And if mindless evolution could account for the time to 'Teleology' in the natural sciences but their rational meaning is breathtakingly clever artifacts of the biosphere, how could the products of empirically explained" (quoted in Rachels 1991, p. 110). Friedrich Nietzsche our own "real" minds be exempt from an evolutionary explanation? Darwin's saw—through the mists of his contempt for all things English—an even more idea thus also threatened to spread all the way up, dissolving the illusion of cosmic message in Darwin: God is dead. If Nietzsche is the father of our own authorship, our own divine spark of creativity and understanding.
existentialism, then perhaps Darwin deserves the title of grandfather. Others Much of the controversy and anxiety that has enveloped Darwin's idea were less enthralled with the thought that Darwin's views were utterly ever since can be understood as a series of failed campaigns in the struggle subversive to sacred tradition. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, whose to contain Darwin's idea within some acceptably "safe" and merely partial debate with Thomas Huxley in June 1860 was one of the most celebrated revolution. Cede some or all of modern biology to Darwin, perhaps, but hold confrontations between Darwinism and the religious establishment (see the line there! Keep Darwinian thinking out of cosmology, out of chapter 12), said in an anonymous review:
psychology, out of human culture, out of ethics, politics, and religion! In these campaigns, many battles have been won by the forces of containment: Man's derived supremacy over the earth; man's power of articulate speech; flawed applications of Darwin's idea have been exposed and discredited, man's gift of reason; man's free-will and responsibility ...—all are equally beaten back by the champions of the pre-Darwinian tradition. But new waves and utterly irreconcilable with the degrading notion of the brute origin of of Darwinian thinking keep coming. They seem to be improved versions, not him who was created in the image of God __ [Wilberforce 1860.]
vulnerable to the refutations that defeated their predecessors, but are they sound extensions of the unquestionably sound Darwinian core idea, or might When speculation on these extensions of his view arose, Darwin wisely they, too, be perversions of it, and even more virulent, more dangerous, than chose to retreat to the security of his base camp, the magnificently provi-the abuses of Darwin already refuted?
sioned and defended thesis that began in the middle, with life already on the Opponents of the spread differ sharply over tactics. Just where should the scene, and "merely" showed how, once this process of design accumulation protective dikes be built? Should we try to contain the idea within biology was under way, it could proceed without any (further?) intervention from any itself, with one post-Darwinian counterrevolution or another? Among those Mind. But, as many of his readers appreciated, however comforting this who have favored this tactic is Stephen Jay Gould, who has offered several modest disclaimer might be, it was not really a stable resting place.
different revolutions of containment. Or should we place the barriers far-64 UNIVERSAL ACID
Darwin's Assault on the Cosmic Pyramid 65
ther out? To get our bearings in this series of campaigns, we should start with or end "so as to obtain the best result." This fitting of means to ends a crude map of the pre-Darwinian territory. As we shall see, it will have to be implies, argued Aquinas, an intention. But, seeing as natural bodies lack consciousness, they cannot supply that intention themselves. "Therefore revised again and again to make accommodations as various skirmishes are some
why couldn't that whole process itself be the product of evolution, and so Karl Marx was exultant: "Not only is a death blow dealt here for the first forth, all the way down? And if mindless evolution could account for the time to 'Teleology' in the natural sciences but their rational meaning is breathtakingly clever artifacts of the biosphere, how could the products of empirically explained" (quoted in Rachels 1991, p. 110). Friedrich Nietzsche our own "real" minds be exempt from an evolutionary explanation? Darwin's saw—through the mists of his contempt for all things English—an even more idea thus also threatened to spread all the way up, dissolving the illusion of cosmic message in Darwin: God is dead. If Nietzsche is the father of our own authorship, our own divine spark of creativity and understanding.
existentialism, then perhaps Darwin deserves the title of grandfather. Others Much of the controversy and anxiety that has enveloped Darwin's idea were less enthralled with the thought that Darwin's views were utterly ever since can be understood as a series of failed campaigns in the struggle subversive to sacred tradition. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, whose to contain Darwin's idea within some acceptably "safe" and merely partial debate with Thomas Huxley in June 1860 was one of the most celebrated revolution. Cede some or all of modern biology to Darwin, perhaps, but hold confrontations between Darwinism and the religious establishment (see the line there! Keep Darwinian thinking out of cosmology, out of chapter 12), said in an anonymous review:
psychology, out of human culture, out of ethics, politics, and religion! In these campaigns, many battles have been won by the forces of containment: Man's derived supremacy over the earth; man's power of articulate speech; flawed applications of Darwin's idea have been exposed and discredited, man's gift of reason; man's free-will and responsibility ...—all are equally beaten back by the champions of the pre-Darwinian tradition. But new waves and utterly irreconcilable with the degrading notion of the brute origin of of Darwinian thinking keep coming. They seem to be improved versions, not him who was created in the image of God __ [Wilberforce 1860.]
vulnerable to the refutations that defeated their predecessors, but are they sound extensions of the unquestionably sound Darwinian core idea, or might When speculation on these extensions of his view arose, Darwin wisely they, too, be perversions of it, and even more virulent, more dangerous, than chose to retreat to the security of his base camp, the magnificently provi-the abuses of Darwin already refuted?
sioned and defended thesis that began in the middle, with life already on the Opponents of the spread differ sharply over tactics. Just where should the scene, and "merely" showed how, once this process of design accumulation protective dikes be built? Should we try to contain the idea within biology was under way, it could proceed without any (further?) intervention from any itself, with one post-Darwinian counterrevolution or another? Among those Mind. But, as many of his readers appreciated, however comforting this who have favored this tactic is Stephen Jay Gould, who has offered several modest disclaimer might be, it was not really a stable resting place.
different revolutions of containment. Or should we place the barriers far-64 UNIVERSAL ACID
Darwin's Assault on the Cosmic Pyramid 65
ther out? To get our bearings in this series of campaigns, we should start with or end "so as to obtain the best result." This fitting of means to ends a crude map of the pre-Darwinian territory. As we shall see, it will have to be implies, argued Aquinas, an intention. But, seeing as natural bodies lack consciousness, they cannot supply that intention themselves. "Therefore revised again and again to make accommodations as various skirmishes are some
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