Why Darwin Matters
POSTED BY: misbehaven
UPDATED: Monday, September 11, 2006 18:05
VIEWED: 12064
PAGE 2 of 9
Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Having read several editions of Darwin's "The Origin of Species" and Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", all I can say is ... hunhhhh ????
Whow! You really READ that stuff? Respect!
I think, the idea is: Smith worked (as one of the first in this field) with empirical conclusions in his area of tought (economics). Further he concluded, that wjhile every individuum seeks for its own good, the overal good of society is maximized. Just as every individual animal strives for its own, but at the end, its the "species", that evolves. It's just that both look at a thing (economy or biology) from the two levels (individuial and group) and draw their conclusions from it, that when we look at a system, we need to get down to the individuum, being part of it. That's how I understood it anyways.
Esther
Love my captain!
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Quote:Hi Esther!
Hi SignyM
Quote:Actually, I didn't say that relgion was a tool, it was Canttakesky.
Saying Religion is a tool for (whatever) for me sounds like love is a tool for having a cleaning woman without paying her (or having your rent paid without going to work yourself).
Quote:I don't know. If religion ISN'T a tool then what is it?
True, religion can (as everything) be used and misused, but does that mean, it IS a tool?
Quote:Yes, I mentioned social darwinism in my first post. It's a terrible misuse of Darwin's theory. However, people do insist on using science to bolster their various views of ethics... sociobiology, for example.
Do you know, that the Nazis used Darwin to argue, that some people (mainly disabled) need to be killed, to cleanse the genetic pool (it's called euthanasia)? Darwinism is a good way to explain evolution and biology, but I don't want to live in a society, which lives by Darwins survival-of-the-fittest-rules (ever heared the expression "social darwinism?)
Quote:I'm sure those aren't the only two choices.
Then I rather go back to my old bible (do onto others, as you want them to do onto you).
Quote:Needs thought
I think, there are two things, that can define a religion:
God (astrology is in a way also "supernatural", but you wouldn't call it a religion. Buddism has no "God", only principles, and they ceonsequently don't call themselfs "religion" but "philosopy")
A different use of the word is, if you just say a religion is, what you put your whole life on (Marxism could be a religion for someone, although there is nothing supernatural about it). In this definition, "Firefly" could be a religion (hey, are we the congregation of the Browncoats or what?)
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Quote:I've heard this from various different sources, but here is a link that might shed a clue.
Originally posted by rue:
What is the evidence for that statement?
Quote:
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Science/Darwin.htm
It was likely Darwin's reading of Adam Smith which led Darwin to his decisive breakthrough.3 ("Adam Smith was the last of the moralists and the first of the economists, so Darwin was the last of the economists and the first of the biologists.") Darwin read not only about those "laws" that govern the accumulation of wealth, but also those "laws" which lead to being poor. In regards to these poor "laws," Darwin read Malthus' Essay on Population:
"In October 1838, that is fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus' Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence [a phrase used by Malthus] which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be a new species. Here then I had at last got hold of a theory by which to work."4
Quote:
A more serious claim to have influenced Darwin can be made for the Scottish economist Adam Smith, in his work The Wealth of Nations of 1776. There is a clear analogy between the survival of the corporation through successful trading and the survival of a hereditary lineage through advantageous traits. It is known that Darwin read Smith and those political and social commentators that followed him, and it would be surprising if these ideas did not lodge in his thoughts.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/precursors/precursnatsel.html
Quote:
I’ve always liked Stephen Jay Gould’s revision of Malthus’s role in affecting Darwin’s thought. Consider these passages from one of Gould’s finest essays, “Darwin’s Middle Road,” appearing in Gould’s 1980 collection, The Panda’s Thumb. . .
Gould goes on:
The theory of natural selection is a creative transfer to biology of Adam Smith’s basic argument for a rational economy: the balance and order of nature does not arise from a higher, external (divine) control, or from the existence of laws operating directly upon the whole, but from struggle among individuals for their own benefits. http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2004/10/smith_and_darwi.html
Anyway, you get the idea. I've seen this sort of talk on other boards and websites, some stated more vehemently than others. Again, I'm not saying I agree--I honestly haven't looked into it.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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I love the quote from the episode of "House" with the faith healer:
"Faith... that's just another word for ignorance, isn't it?"
not to mention
"It's fine when people want to say there are holes in our knowledge *[paraphrasing i think in that part]*. The problem is most people want to live in the holes, and get angry win you try to put dirt in their holes. COME OUT OF YOUR HOLES PEOPLE!"
Anyway, Darwin is of course correct and very important. At least from a way of viewing how life evolves. Now humans probably less so in the near future because we will have the ability to control our own evolution through genetic engineering and such.
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Hi Esther
Quote:Yeah, well, it was decades ago. :sheepish:
Whow! You really READ that stuff? Respect!
Thanks for the reply! They do seem to be broadly analogous, but I was curious if Smith had a direct influence on Darwin.
Darwin, I think, had a wide vision of the resources of survival. He recognized that using vacant niches of food and shelter, due either to physical selection or unique behaviors, was a first step to species survival. Without sufficient resources neither the parent nor offspring survive.
But the parallel to economics is, to me, too broad to be useful. I read it as 'it either works, or it doesn't'.
Anyway, I have to get back to work.
TTUL
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Quote:
I don't know. If religion ISN'T a tool then what is it?
Point I wanted to make is, you can use everything as a tool (Religion as well as Darwinism).
I wouldn't say darwinism is a "tool", although you can "use" it as such (as explained before). But I think, it's a way of explaining the world, and for some people, it's just plain "the truth". (for others, it isn't). And so is religion.
So I guess, everybody has to decide for himself, what religion is (for him). For someone, it might be a tool (e.g. for the guy who tries to make all-believing, willing slaves out of his fellow men), for others, it might be "a lie".
For me, I guess, it's a relationship and a way of living. And like in a relationship, it's not the formalities or the name of it, that counts, but the guy I relate to.
Esther
Love my captain!
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Rue and SignyM,
One more link. Check this out.
http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/
Hehe.
As far as a direct influence of Smith, it appears there are published scholars who argue this was the case. The evidence is Smith heavily influenced Malthus, whom Darwin himself credits with influencing his thoughts on evolution. People think if Darwin admittedly credits Malthus, he must have read Smith as well.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Im a member of the natural museum in my town, and they have evolved more on the theory of "Konstruktionsmorphologie" (don't force me to put that in correct English, please). Main point is: an organism cannot be "closed for renovation". If the environment changes, the organisms cannot change to adopt, they need to have changed BEFORE, otherwise, they just die. So fish needed to have lungs BEFORE they left the sea.
Oh, comming to fish, there's an interesting thought by this theory: Fish move sideways, when they swim. Then, they became reptiles (still moving sideways - look at a lizard). Side-movement, however, is not very sensible on land (squeezes the lungs), so that gradually changed and the spine of mamals rather moves up and down. When the mamals returned to the sea, they kept this kind of spine-movement. Thats why fish move left-to-right when they swin, and wales and dolphines move up and down.
Is that cool or what?
Esther
Love my captain!
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CTS,
I did take a quick look at the links. If Darwin says Malthus was his biggest influence, I'll take it at face value. The evidence for Smith's influence is only by historical inference.
From the quotes, the biggest breakthrough seems to be in accepting natural explanations for what had previously been a religious topic.
TTUL
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CTS- last comments for today. I'm not a philosopher, so I may not be saying this in a philosophically elegant way, but it seems that when scientists use various physical observations and create hypotheses to explain and predict them around them, they HAVE to assume several things:
There is a physical world that we share. In other words, this is not some sort of fantasy or dream state.
Our senses, and the various extensions of our senses, bear some sort of relationship to the real world.
The real world operates by consistent and testable principles.
That means that there are many areas outside of science- for example, "good" and "bad". But the one area that science cannot allow is a supernatural being mucking about in an arbitrary manner. If that were the case, may as well take all predictions and chuck them out the window. Now, since I restrict MY notion of religion to the concept of a supernatural beng mucking about in an arbitrary manner, in MY system of definitions science and religion don't mix.
If you look at right-wing xtians and their resistance to evolution, that is exactly their sticking point as well. They can't stand the thought that another system might successfully explain the nature of the universe, because in THEIR mind that's what religion is supposed to do. God done it all.
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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