universal values?
- Thread starter gnuneo
- Start date
This is type of sheer jibberish that can only come about from a combination of pomposity and lazy, disinterested ignorance.
I'm going to deal with the lazy, disniterested ignorance - I don't mind a bit pomoposity every now then. Read the book, try to form a sensible opinion based on its contents and then we'll talk. Until then fuck off.
Why don't you follow your own advice and leave the trolling to a tiny weeny bit less obvious and more intelligent troll...
The problem isn't your lack of intelligence. The problem is despite your doomladen theories you couldn't care a less about any of this. That's why you won't read the book.
Btw, Phil read on the topics more than all of us put together, it seems to me...You silly Billy!!!!
He probably is stupid then.
Tell me something gorski, considering that Fruitloop has demolished your argument in one line, why haven't you replied? Did you not understand his point? Is it because you haven't read the book?
dilute micro
esse quam videri
I think hardly anyone would notice the difference between Darwinian evolution and any other.
bhamgeezer
Dogs bark
Threads like these are probably partially the cause of the general population's willingness to accept whatever half-baked explanation evolutionary psychology can think of.
gorski
customised free radical
The great public, by and large, is very, very badly educated and "well prepared" by their poor education, then general media [all the way to Attenborough], not to mention Capitalism itself, esp. the neo-lib/con shite version of it, to see the only version they can see...
And what can they see? As Hegel puts it: "Es ist so!" No more, most of the time... Sadly, as things stand right now...
And what can they see? As Hegel puts it: "Es ist so!" No more, most of the time... Sadly, as things stand right now...
revol68
what, fucking what?
So spoke our Philosopher King.
I've read it, taught it, written about it in print, debated it at conferences and done similar to many other books on the same subject. As you know very well. So it seems that it is you who are being lazy and dishonest.
Btw, Phil read on the topics more than all of us put together, it seems to me...
The thing is, Knotted knows this--and he knows that I know that he knows it. So I'm not sure who his peculiar debating tactics are aimed at. Knotted?
They would if they were exposed to any other.
I suppose Gould's is the best-known alternative, although that fact is disguised by his reluctance to admit that he had in fact departed from Darwinism until his final, definitive work. I think that when more people actually get around to reading The Structure of Evolutionary Theory with the care and attention it deserves, the public's perception of the field will change quite dramatically.
Oh alright then. Hang on a second...
revol68
what, fucking what?
He never claimed to break from Darwinism, infact he was always at great pains to point out the room for greater plurality within Darwinism than pan adaptationists put forward.
Ah, that's where you're wrong, see.
In his last and greatest book, he did indeed make that claim, using an elaborate metaphor based on St Mark's cathedral and a piece of coral. He was basically saying that his original theory of punk-ek was based on Darwin, but that having pushed it further and further through his career he eventually arrived at a position that cannot leigitimately be called Darwinian any more. Although he is at great pains to stress his respect for the master and so forth.
revol68
what, fucking what?
It was about Spandrels and he held that they were perfectly compatible with wider Darwinism, if anything his ideas of punctuated equilibria are more problematic in relation to Darwin.
I can't find a quote now, I'm away from my books. But the entire Introduction of The Structure of Evolutionary Theory is a detailed analysis of his relation to Darwinism. It's a subtle and detailed argument, but it amounts to a claim to have transcended the Darwinian paradigm.
If like me you don't have that text to hand, consider his lifelong use of phrases like "ultra-Darwinism" or "Darwinian fundamentalism" as terms of abuse. Or consider the immense weight he always gave to the K-T event, and his emphasis on the fact that Darwin's monocausality couldn't accommodate it. I'd say that he was implicitly post-Darwinian for a good 20 years. He just didn't want to say so for fear of giving succor to the creationists.
The first problem is that there is no notion of competative adaption to the environment in Malthus. There is a crucial aspect of natural selection which has nothing to do with Malthus and that is variation. If there is no variation across a species then there is nothing to select from.
The only thing Darwin uses Malthus for is to establish a "proof" that there is always a struggle for existence - ie. that selection takes place. Of course we can ask ourselves if we really need this proof. That there is a struggle for existence in nature is not controversial.
The main substance of Darwin's argument is not merely that natural selection exists but rather that it drives evolution. His theory explains adaption. Again this is nothing to do with Malthus. The Malthusian content of Darwin's theory is small and on a matter which is perfectly straightforward.
The influence that Malthus had personally on Darwin is another question. And yes Darwin's theory was used to reintroduce Malthusian ideas into economic and social theories - ie. social Darwinism. But as I've said social Darwinism is completly discredited now and social Darwinist looked more to Spencer than to Darwin anyway.
revol68
what, fucking what?
Now you are wriggling.
The fact he felt the need to pre-fix Darwinism with Ultra or suffix with fundamentalism when criticising others should tell any same person that he was seeking to defend a more pluralist Darwinism and oddly enough that is something he was at great pains to point out.
And in his last major book he explicitly says,
So yes whilst the changes and discoveries are not extensions which simply accumulate and extend the canon (like some whiggish notion of progress), they still remain within the domain of Darwinism. Much like how the developments within Marxism do not simply add onto the old 2nd international Orthodoxy but rather confront, subvert and deconstruct it, they still remain within Marxism.
If I remember Gould's extention to Darwinism, it is that different phyla evolve at different rates and given various examples of species sorting where species go extinct, that macro evolution cannot be reduced to micro evolution. He also sites Kimura's neutral theory.
The "ultra-darwinist" reply is that they are interested in adaption and yes they recognise all of the above, but it's natural selection that explains adaptive design.
Basically biologists in different specialist disciplines bickering over what's important. For the life of me I can't detect any substantial disagreements.
The "ultra-darwinist" reply is that they are interested in adaption and yes they recognise all of the above, but it's natural selection that explains adaptive design.
Basically biologists in different specialist disciplines bickering over what's important. For the life of me I can't detect any substantial disagreements.
revol68
what, fucking what?
Well I wouldn't reduce them to mere bickering but the difference isn't substantial enough to allow Dwyer sneak his theism in between, well not without misrepresenting Gould's relation to wider Darwinism.
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