[lit-ideas] Re: Darwiniana
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 12 May 2014 22:54:00 +0100 (BST)
Glancing through Stove's "Darwinian Fairytales", I failed to notice any
references to Popper: so far, so good you might say - but this omission is
perhaps surprising given Stove has written a work "Popper and After" which
attempts to critique Popper's philosophy on the ground it is a form of
"irrationalism", and also given that Popper has written well-known stuff on the
status of Darwinism. So Stove is aware enough of Popper's philosophy to write a
book concerning it, but apparently not aware enough of it to consider Popper's
arguments on the status of Darwinism when Stove comes to write a book
concerning this.
One of Popper's key points might be reiterated (especially in the light of the
debate between Blackburn and others as to whether "Darwinism" explains
everything in a way that means it is non-falsifiable because it is compatible
with everything): we must distinguish "Darwinism" as a framework for
explanation (or as a "metaphysical research programme" in Popper's terminology)
from a specific Darwinian theory within that framework:- specific theories
within that framework may be testable/falsifiable while the framework itself is
not testable/falsifiable.
Many commentators fail to observe this key distinction when speaking of
"Darwinism", and so offer potentially confused and confusing accounts of the
status of "Darwinism", which status of course differs depending on whether by
"Darwinism" we mean examples of specific theories within the framework (which
may be testable) or the framework itself (which is not itself
testable/falsifiable, but which may show its fertility via the success of
specific theories within its parameters).
Btw, Stove's book on Popper is a too low-level to bother with: its critique
amounts to claiming that because there is, and indeed must be, "justified
knowledge", that refutes both Popper's denial of "justified knowledge" and
Popper's claim that all "knowledge" is conjectural. This claim would indeed be
sustained if Stove showed there is, or indeed must be, "justified knowledge" of
the sort Popper denies; but Stove's attempts to sustain this are little more
than feeble appeals to self-evidence in different guises and are at a low-level
intellectually. We may as well refute Popper by saying that, as Popper denies
that "knowledge" should be identified with "justified true belief", we have
refuted Popper if we accept that "knowledge" is "justified true belief". If
only refutation were so easy - we could refute almost everything in science by
this kind of argument, and no doubt "Darwinism" too.
Dnl
ldn
On Sunday, 11 May 2014, 23:59, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
David Stove
Darwinian
Fairytales
Selfish Genes, Errors of
Heredity, and Other Fables of
Evolution
http://maxddl.org/Creation/Darwinian%20Fairytales%20-%20Selfish%20Genes,%20Errors%20Of%20Heredity,%20And%20Other%20Fables%20Of%20Evolution.pdf
On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 12:47 AM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx for DMARC
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In a message dated 5/11/2014 6:36:42 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
>
>omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
>My previous comment was actually drawn from Stove, but this account of
>Stove's views doesn't seem correct. Stove says that he accepts evolution as an
>established fact, not that he accepts 'the concept of natural selection as
>an established fact. ' 'Also, his criticism of Darwinists is not limited
>to 'ultra-Darwinists' but involves Charles Darwin himself.
>
>For the record, here below the 'conclusion', I think, of Franklin's essay,
>linked in the Wikipedia entry on Darwinism -- an attack on Blackburn.
>
>"In the rest of his paper, Blackburn strives to assure us that Darwinian
>theory deals only in possible explanations, and that 'nothing in Darwinian
>theory allows you to say that because some pattern of behaviour would
>increase the amount of genetic material in future generations, therefore it
>will
>exist'. Dawkins does not
>really mean what his extreme rhetoric seems to mean, while Trivers'
>explanation of lesbianism in gulls is merely 'speculative', and it is quite
>easy
>for Darwinism to explain why some species have low birthrates, even though
>they are trying to maximize their descendants. All of which is true, and
>
>confirms Stove's central
>thesis that Darwinism can 'explain' anything."
>
>A point to the Popperian, perhaps, is that if the epitome of W1 is what we
>call the "Table of Elements" -- has this 'evolved', too? (below the
>references from Wikipedia's entry for Periodic table of elements).
>
>
>Cheers,
>
>Speranza
>
>Ball, Philip (2002). The Ingredients: A Guided Tour of the Elements.
>Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-284100-9.
>Chang, Raymond (2002). Chemistry (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Higher
>Education. ISBN 978-0-19-284100-1.
>Gray, Theodore (2009). The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known
>Atom in the Universe. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. ISBN
>978-1-57912-814-2.
>Greenwood, Norman N.; Earnshaw, Alan (1984). Chemistry of the Elements.
>Oxford: Pergamon Press. ISBN 0-08-022057-6.
>Huheey, JE; Keiter, EA; Keiter, RL. Principles of structure and reactivity
>(4th ed.). New York: Harper Collins College Publishers. ISBN 0-06-042995-X.
>Moore, John (2003). Chemistry For Dummies. New York: Wiley Publications.
>p. 111. ISBN 978-0-7645-5430-8. OCLC 51168057.
>Scerri, Eric (2007). The periodic table: Its story and its significance.
>Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-530573-6.
>Scerri, Eric R. (2011). The periodic table: A very short introduction.
>Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-958249-5.
>Venable, F P (1896). The development of the periodic law. Easton PA:
>Chemical Publishing Company.
>
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