[lit-ideas] Popper versus Dawkins
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:27:40 -0800 (PST)
From "In Search of a Better World", Ch.1, "Knowledge and the Shaping of
Reality" (p.15-17):
"Today everyone believes in the persuasive myth of the total maliciousness of
the world and of 'society'; just as formerly everyone in Germany and Austria
believed in Heidegger and Hitler, and in war. But the mistaken belief in
maliciousness is itself malicious: it disheartens young people and leads them
astray into doubts and into despair, and even into violence. Although this
mistaken belief is essentially political, the old interpretation of Darwinism*
has nevertheless contributed to it."
* Though Dawkins is not mentioned, his "The Selfish Gene" (btw, a truly
brilliant and far-sighted book imo) might be taken as an exemplar of this "old
interpretation" which P earlier parses as offering "a picture of [an]
environment that attacks us with 'tooth and claw'". The 'nature red in tooth
and claw' view of nature is one Dawkins explicitly endorses as "it sums up our
modern understanding of natural selection admirably" ['TSG', Ch.1, p.2]. Though
the one reference to P in the main text of 'TSG' appears positive ("The analogy
between scientific progress and genetic evolution by natural selection has been
illuminated especially by Sir Karl Popper. I want to go even further..."
p.190), Dawkins - as "The God Delusion", with its key claim that God's
existence is refuted by science, indicates - is philosophically naive and
perhaps does not understand P's views that well.
[P contd.] "A very important thesis forms part of the pessimistic ideology,
namely, that the adaptation of life to the environment and all these (to my
mind wonderful) inventions of life over billions of years..are not inventions
at all, but the product of sheer chance.** It is claimed that life has invented
nothing at all, it is all the mechanism of purely chance mutations and of
natural selection; the internal pressure of life is nothing more than
self-reproduction. Everything else comes about through our struggle, indeed
_blind_ struggle**, against each other and against nature."
** Compare Dawkins' "Climbing Mount Improbable", "The Blind Watchmaker" etc.
[P contd.] "...To this ideology..belong [sic] the myth of the selfish gene (for
genes can only function and survive by co-operating), and the revived social
Darwinism that is currently being presented as a brand-new and naively
deterministic 'sociobiology'.
I should now like to put together the main points of the two
ideologies.
1. Old: Selection pressure from without functions by killing: it eliminates.
The environment is therefore hostile to life.
New: The active selection pressure from within constitutes the search for a
better environment, for better ecological niches, for a better world. It is
favourable to life in the highest degree. Life improves the environment for
life, it makes the environment more favourable to life (and friendlier for man).
2. Old: Organisms are completely passive, but they are actively selected.
New: Organisms are active: they are constantly preoccupied with
problem-solving. Life consists in problem-solving. The solution is often the
choice or the construction of a new ecological niche. Not only are the
organisms active, their activity is constantly on the increase. (The attempt to
deny activity in humans - as the determinists do - is paradoxical, especially
with regard to our critical mental activity.)
.......
3. Old: Mutations are a matter of pure chance.
New: Yes; but the organisms are constantly inventing wonderful things that
improve life. Nature, evolution and organisms are all inventive. They work, as
inventors, in the same way that we do: using the method of trial and the
elimination of errors.
4. Old: We live in a hostile environment that is changed by evolution through
cruel eliminations.
New: The first cell is still living after billions of years, and now even in
many trillions of copies. Wherever we look, it is there. It has made a garden
of our earth*** and transformed our atmosphere with green plants. And it has
created our eyes and opened them to the blue sky and the stars. It is doing
well."
***Not only is this tendered as literally true, and as part of the view that by
activity the organism changes its environment/eco-niche and thus the selection
pressures it faces, but may be seen in the context also of "a bit of decidely
non-academic philosophy" that concludes Ch.13 "How I See Philosophy" (p.186):-
"One of the astronauts involved in the first visit to the moon is credited
with a simple and wise remark which he made on his return (I am quoting from
memory)****: 'I have seen some planets in my day, but give me the earth every
time.' I think this is not only wisdom, but philosophical wisdom. We do not
know how it is that we are alive on this wonderful little planet - or why there
should be something like life, to make our planet so beautiful. But here we
are, and we have every reason to wonder at it, and to feel grateful for it. It
comes close to being a miracle. For all that science can tell us, the universe
is almost empty of matter; and where there is matter, the matter is almost
everywhere in a chaotic, turbulent state, and uninhabitable. There may be many
other planets with life on them. Yet if we pick at random a place in the
universe, then the probability (calculated on the basis of our dubious current
cosmology) of finding a life-carrying
body at that place will be zero, or almost zero. So life has at any rate the
value of something rare; it is precious. We are inclined to forget this, and
treat life cheaply, perhaps out of thoughtlessness; or perhaps because this
beautiful earth of ours is, no doubt, a bit overcrowded.
All men are philosophers, because in one way or another all take up an
attitude towards life and death...."
Donal
Top of the morning
**** Clearly only the owlish can afford the time to go and check every
quotation before publication. That includes me.
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