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Re: Nihilism in the Flesh/no way
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As much as I think this mail is wrong in its contents, I admire the
fact that it is send. It gives us the opportunity to show where it is
wrong. There we go......
> <Human evolution, characterized by our ability to process information, is
> fundamentally entwined with technological development. Complex tools and
> technologies are an integral part of our evolutionary "fitness." Genes that
> are not able to cope with this reality will not survive the next millennium>.
>
> This quote contains some of the most frightening authoritarian language since
> the Final Solution, and presents the threat of "adapt or die" as a value-free
> social given.
It is a common scheme to attack straw-man. No seriouss scientist that
engages in social evolutionary theory will hold the views above.
Needless to say that always some in society will use theories to
state their non-scientific views under the umbrella of scientific
knowlegde.
Neo-libaral economists have stated that evolution is equal to the
survival of the fittest, and thus the weak must perish for the good
of all.
Everyone who thinks about it will realise this is complete nonsense.
And so is the statement above,
Evolutionary theory states that those that are fittest may survive. To
say that that is indeed how it should be in human affairs is a severe
misinterpretation of science. A description is no valid argument for
a prescription.
[serious deleting]
> Evolution is a theory, not a fact
>
> To be sure, evolutionary theory has become such a key principle in organizing
> biological information that some toxic spillage into other disciplines is
> almost inevitable. It commands such great authority that its spectacle is
> often confused for fact. At present, evolutionary theory is primarily
> speculative; no valid and reliable empirical method has been developed to
> overcome the temporal darkness that this conjecture is supposed to illuminate.
> Consequently, evolutionary theory circles around in its own self-fulfilling
> principles. It is in an epistemological crisis, in spite of authoritative
> claims to the contrary.
Mark that the only argument to underline this view is the saying so
of the writer.
> The tautological reasoning of evolutionary theory proceeds as follows:
> Those species with the greatest ability to adapt to a changing environment are
> naturally selected for survival. Those that are selected not only survive, but
> often expand their genetic and environmental domains. So how is it known that
> a species has a capacity for adaptation? Because it was naturally selected.
> How is it known that it was selected? Because it survived. Why did it survive?
> Because it was able to adapt to its environment. In spite of this logical flaw
> of rotating first principles, evolutionary theory brings a narrative to the
> discipline that makes biological dynamics intelligible. While the theory can
> in no way approach the realm of certainty, it does have tremendous
> common-sense value. If for no other reason, evolutionary theory is dominant
> because no one has been able to produce a secular counternarrative that has
> such organizational possibilities.
Why is this reasoning serioussly ill? Becuase it assumes that the
reasoning goes as is stated. Any theory can be used tautologically.
Most of all evolutionary theory, and it has been used tautological.
Let us break into the statements above:
. So how is it known that
> a species has a capacity for adaptation? Because it was naturally selected.
> How is it known that it was selected? Because it survived. Why did it survive?
> Because it was able to adapt to its environment
This is indeed an example of the use of evolutionary theory in a
tautological manner. However that this is possible does not mean that
this has to be the case.
If we illiminate the sentence " Because it survived." with a sentence
like "because it could run faster", we have a valid statement.
In evolutionary theory philosophers claim that evolutionary theory
must be causal, that means that real causes, like running faster,
seeing better, or growing more efficient root-systems must be present
in the explanations of better fit to be valid.
Furthermore is evolution a fact or theory? Mayr in a book called 'one
long argument' has distinguished between five theories of Darwin.
One of them is that species evolve, and anaother that the specues we
noe know are descended from one ancestor. Those theories are not
theories, but proven to a large extend to be true. As true as any
theory can get.
To say that the language with concepts of variation, selection and
mutations is a theory is true. To say that the first mentioned
staments are not fact is simply misleading.
> Evolution is an intriguing notion for other reasons too. The idea that
> natural selection is a blind process is certainly a turning point in Western
> thinking. There is no teleology, not even the guiding "invisible hand."
> Instead, evolution gropes through time, producing both successful and
> unsuccessful species. Its varied manifestations display no order, only
> accident. This notion is an incredible challenge to the Western desire for
> rational order. At best, God is playing dice with the universe. The very
> anarchistic strength of this notion is also its scientific downfall. How can
> the accidental be measured in causal terms? For example, the engine of
> physical adaptability is mutation. If mutation is the accidental, uncommon,
> unexpected, and anomalous, how can it be quantified, when the knowledge
> systems of science are based on the value of expectation and typicality?
I will tell you how. This statement above confuses blind with
anomalous. Blind means that the mutations that occur are not directed
in any way towards selective forces that occur. That they are
non-predictable is not true at all. On basis of the chemical forces
between molecules in the DNA one can predict what bonds will be
affected easier by UV-radiation, chemicals, etc, if it would be known
how strong these forces would be at a given time.
That history is contingent is not something sceince can help to
solve.
> Can we say with any degree of assurance that social development is
> analogous to this model of biological development? It seems extremely unlikely
> that culture and nature proceed in a similar fashion.
Evolutionary theory makes no such statements. It simply says that we
can use the same language to describe both processes, not that we can
predict what will happen, or that there is any similarity in actual
evolutionary direction.
[serious deleting]
> Conclusion
>
> Two key problems occur in attempting to use evolutionary theory in the
> analysis of cultural development. First, presenting cultural development as
> analogous to biological development is like trying to hammer a square peg into
> a round hole. There is little basis for likening a blind, groping process of
> species configuration within an chaotic, uncontrolled environment to a
> rationally engineered process of social and economic development within an
> orderly, controlled environment. Retrograde notions of cultural development,
> such as providence, progress, and manifest destiny, have more explanatory
> power, because they at least recognize intentional design in cultural
> dynamics, and at the very least they imply the existence of a power structure
> within the cultural environment. Evolutionary theory, in its social sense, is
> blind to the variable of power, let alone to the inequalities in its
> distribution.
Any theory is blind to what you don't put into it, so lets make it
better I would say.
Further to view social processes as what happened in Bosnia and
Germany in the second world war as providential gives a view of the
planners as really horrible and right evil people or gods.
> The second problem is historical. Since the application of
> evolutionary theory has continuously been the foundational rhetoric and
> justification of social atrocity for the last 150 years, why would anyone want
> to open this Pandora's box yet again? At a time when biotech products and
> services are being developed that will allow imperatives of political economy
> to be inscribed directly into the flesh and into its reproductive cycle, why
> would anyone want to use a theoretical system with little, if any, informative
> power, that if deployed through pancapitalist media filters will promote
> eugenic ideology? While it cannot be denied that all inquiries for the purpose
> of gaining knowledge bring with them a high probability that the information
> collected could be misused in its application, in the case of social
> evolutionary theory, the historical evidence is overwhelming that it will be
> misused. This situation is not fuzzy enough to make this role of the dice a
> smart gambit, and the good intentions of individuals who engage this discourse
> will not save it from capitalist appropriation and reconfiguration to better
> serve its authoritarian and nihilistic tendencies.
>
Any theory can be used in evil ways, and most have. Eugenetics is a
horrible way to use evoutionary theory, and nobody will deny that. I
fear however that the only way to shut misuse up is to destroy all
humans, or something like that, hardly an argument to stopp thinking.
To say that evolutionary theory has no explanatory power is simply
foolish. I will bot even begin to state books that say the opposite.
I seriously doubted if I should answer this message at all. Maybe it
would be better to ignore it all together.
But I decided that some on the list woulds believe it.
It is so full of confusion and wrong explanation that I would
allmost ask a moderator to get such messages of this list.
If anyone has arguments against the use of evolutionary theories,
lets hear it. But if reasoning like "you are a human and humans kill
other humans, so I will kill you before you start killing too" is
allowed on lists, I don't know what rules for free speech should
be.
still, greetings from the Netherlands
Hans-Cees Speel
still wondering if I should have answered this......
Theories come and go, the frog stays [F. Jacob]
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|Hans-Cees Speel School of Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and management
|Technical University Delft, Jaffalaan 5 2600 GA Delft PO Box 5015 The Netherlands
|telephone +3115785776 telefax +3115783422 E-mail hanss@sepa.tudelft.nl
HTTP://www.sepa.tudelft.nl/~afd_ba/hanss.html featuring evolution and memetics!
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