writes:
Subject: Darwin was innocent--but wrong about history. Debriefing Historical
Darwinism
Comment on article below in Biomednet, "Darwin was innocent"
LINK: http://news.bmn.com/news/story?day=010622&story=1
The Eonic Effect, Debriefing Darwinian Historical Theory
Darwinists just don't get it. The heroic instant replay of the Wilberforce
debate is getting a bit tiresome, and this genre is running on empty.
Huxley won the debate, but not the argument. In any case, Huxley changed
his story on evolution and ethics, later in life.
Noone is complaining about trying to apply the idea of evolution to social
science. But the attempt to carry out this feat in Darwinian terms always
results in the glaring discrepancies between Darwin's theory and the hard
reality to be explained. We cannot pretend anymore natural selection is the
truly significant factor in the complex evolution of man, let alone the
total explanation. It is not surprising then that social scientists sense
that something is wrong with this Darwinist idee fixe of trying to fit
human anthropology into a bed of procrustes. But they are hampered by their
own methodological assumptions, and the assumption so strictly enforced is
that the basic theory is correct, which it almost certainly is not. But
whatever the case with Darwinian accounts in general, they fall out of
range in the realm of history, and that includes the derivative theories of
social evolution that are based on Darwin's basic theory. The gung-ho
'let's take the social sciences' rife in the more cocky sociobiologists is
simply vacuous.
The problem is that we have more evidence of social evolution, direct,
visible evidence, than we do of earlier evolution. (This shouldn't be a
problem! )The point is to understand it. And noone can produce a theory,
because the complexity is overwhelming, and doesn't correspond to what
students of Darwinism expect to find. It is more convincing to make claims
that noone can refute about unobserved times. Natural selection is visibly
destructive if not counter-evolutionary in many crucial historical
instances, where macroevolution must compensate for the destructive force
of selectionism. The imposition of this wrong thinking has gone on too
long. Noone seems to suspect just how far off they are. And the result is
the perfect case of 'bad cultural software', the reason for the resistance
to this unsound and ultimately dangerous methodology.
Creationists perhaps have confused the issue. But at least they are aware
that there is a problem and that they are under no obligation to take the
theory as established. And they are often an excuse for Darwinists to
denounce all criticism. No assumptions about transcendentalism are required
to see that Darwinism doesn't work as an historical theory.
The mismatch of cultural with biological evolution never seems to dawn on
anyone in the scientific field. "We've put a man on the moon, how could we
be complete idiots on the subject of evolution?" Now sociobiologists are
bringing their unique form of one-dimensional stupidity to historical
study, claims about ethics, selection, and the complete mythology of
game-theory altruism. This view is highly promoted, but fictive, and
demonstrably so, looking at history. We see the evolution of ethics, for
example, in direct fashion, and it isn't amenable to natural selection,
reductionism, numerical models, or economic ideology.
We should grant that the 'evolution of civilization' as higher culture is
not easily compared to, say, the 'evolution of dinosaurs'. But the point
remains, a theory of cultural evolution must deal with the evidence of
history, and there we see the evolution of consciousness, values,
religions, philosophy, the arts, political forms, an indeed science
itself, and these have a demonstrable pattern of emergence (higlighted by
so-called the eonic effect) that does not conform to hypotheses of natural
selection. It simply does not. And we have never observed in proper
fashion at the level of millennia or centuries the fact of natural
selection in the descent of man able to produce the truly distinct advances
of brain, intelligence, culture, or consciousness, and certainly not at the
level of centuries, the latter point is crucial. We can catch a glimpse of
macroevolution as soon as we have properly mapped the data of real
transformation at close range, and that doesn't exist before the invention
of writing.
The extrapolation of speculative fictions to the descent of man is one of
the most unjustified steps in the whole of Darwinism, as both Wallace and
Huxley began to suspect. The whole Darwin scheme is simply a paradigm out
of control here. And yet, the point simply fails to register with
Darwinists. This ostrich regime would be a form of humour if the matter
were funny. But the reduction of all forms of culture to this kind of
demonstrably false reasoning is destructive and conceals a series of
agendas, methodological and/or ideological that are the real primemovers in
this strange rigidity of theoretical confusion.
Small wonder Mr. Giddens is puzzled. Better luck next paradigm.
--------------------------
Patterns of macroevolution are said to not exist in history, A little
frequency analysis shows that 'it ain't so'. This is not some New Age
Alternative Science, simple periodization will show how little we look at
our own history, and how Darwinism almost seems designed to deflect our
attention from the facts. The study of the eonic, or 'on-off', effect, as a
type of pattern analysis or time and motion study of world history,
quickly exposes a 'macro factor' and shows what is probably the only
candidate for macroevolutionary theory about world history, however we
explain it. The reality is far more sophisticated than we had expected, and
won't yield to simplistic methods or reductionist methods. That's that.
You can repent of being wrong for century and a half, or repent later of
being wrong for a century and a half plus. Controlling the mass media can
delay the inevitable but will only make it worse in the end.
John Landon
http://eonix.8m.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more on the light the 'eonic effect' throws on the evolution of
culture,
go to
http://eonix.8m.com
A Theoretical toolkit for debriefing the misapplication of Darwinism to
historical evolution.
New selections on line
Coming soon online: an introduction to eonic theoretical history
The Article
http://news.bmn.com/news/story?day=010622&story=1
Darwin Was Innocent, from Biomednet
Social scientists' on/off affair with evolutionary biology came under the
spotlight last night in London when two of Britain's leading sociologists
begged to differ over the importance of Darwin in their work. Before a
packed and humid auditorium that included some of the world's most eminent
biologists, and the odd renegade local politician, the debate was hyped as
a return match between the forces of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and those of
Thomas H. Huxley."Who needs Darwin? The relevance of evolutionary theory to
the social sciences" is how the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social
Science (CPNSS) at the London School of Economics (LSE) billed the
battle.In 1860, Huxley won hands down. This time round, no-one even
bothered to ask the audience to vote.In the neo-Darwinist corner was Garry
Runciman, president-elect of the British Academy, an independent learned
society for the humanities and social sciences. "I have little doubt that
within this paradigm, there are going to be important and fascinating
discoveries about individual and social behavior over the coming
decades."Runciman is on the record as claiming that to try to do sociology
without reference to the theory of evolution is like trying to do physics
without the theory of gravity.Opposing him was Anthony Giddens, director of
the LSE. Although Giddens was prepared to concede that "it is highly
implausible to suppose ... that thousands of years of evolution do not
influence how we behave today," he made it clear that he regarded Darwinian
explanations of human behavior as little more than "plausible
ideas."Giddens, who has long held out against what he sees as reductionist
thinking, maintains that evolutionary theory can at best make modest
contributions to the understanding of human society and at worst is likely
to be dangerously misleading.There followed a lively input from the
400-strong audience, which included the philosopher Dan Dennett,
game-theorist Ken Binmore, neurobiologist Steven Rose, sociologist Hilary
Rose and evolutionary theorist and co-director of the CPNSS Helena
Cronin.London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, was also present. "It was so much
better than the debates I have to put up with in the London Assembly," he
quipped to BioMedNet News afterwards.Much of the discussion focused on the
work of Martin Daly and Margo Wilson of McMaster University in Canada, who
argue that human evolution in "ancestral environments" can explain why, in
modern society, males are statistically more likely to abuse their
stepchildren than their biological offspring.Giddens was scathing. "When
you are depending on evidence from a million years ago there are not many
secure statements you can make," he said. Binmore offered support. He
warned that "applying too much rationalism to human behavior is a really
bad mistake."After the debate, Dennett was conciliatory but unconvinced.
Giddens "was careful not to pick on just embarrassingly bad examples [of
evolutionary theory applied to human behavior]," he told BioMedNet News.
"In going after the Daly and Wilson example, [Giddens] was going after a
highly regarded example. [But] I am not sure that their work has been dealt
the blow that he claims to have dealt it," he said.In summing up, Nicholas
Humphrey, theoretical psychologist at the LSE, remarked on the tougher time
that Giddens had experienced during the debate. "It was not quite what I
expected from an LSE audience, but perhaps that shows that something's
changing."
Subject: Darwin was innocent--but wrong about history. Debriefing Historical
Darwinism
Comment on article below in Biomednet, "Darwin was innocent"
LINK: http://news.bmn.com/news/story?day=010622&story=1
The Eonic Effect, Debriefing Darwinian Historical Theory
Darwinists just don't get it. The heroic instant replay of the Wilberforce
debate is getting a bit tiresome, and this genre is running on empty. Huxley
won the debate, but not the argument. In any case, Huxley changed his story
on evolution and ethics, later in life.
Noone is complaining about trying to apply the idea of evolution to social
science. But the attempt to carry out this feat in Darwinian terms always
results in the glaring discrepancies between Darwin's theory and the hard
reality to be explained. We cannot pretend anymore natural selection is the
truly significant factor in the complex evolution of man, let alone the total
explanation. It is not surprising then that social scientists sense that
something is wrong with this Darwinist idee fixe of trying to fit human
anthropology into a bed of procrustes. But they are hampered by their own
methodological assumptions, and the assumption so strictly enforced is that
the basic theory is correct, which it almost certainly is not. But whatever
the case with Darwinian accounts in general, they fall out of range in the
realm of history, and that includes the derivative theories of social
evolution that are based on Darwin's basic theory. The gung-ho 'let's take
the social sciences' rife in the more cocky sociobiologists is simply
vacuous.
The problem is that we have more evidence of social evolution, direct,
visible evidence, than we do of earlier evolution. (This shouldn't be a
problem! )The point is to understand it. And noone can produce a theory,
because the complexity is overwhelming, and doesn't correspond to what
students of Darwinism expect to find. It is more convincing to make claims
that noone can refute about unobserved times. Natural selection is visibly
destructive if not counter-evolutionary in many crucial historical instances,
where macroevolution must compensate for the destructive force of
selectionism. The imposition of this wrong thinking has gone on too long.
Noone seems to suspect just how far off they are. And the result is the
perfect case of 'bad cultural software', the reason for the resistance to
this unsound and ultimately dangerous methodology.
Creationists perhaps have confused the issue. But at least they are aware
that there is a problem and that they are under no obligation to take the
theory as established. And they are often an excuse for Darwinists to
denounce all criticism. No assumptions about transcendentalism are required
to see that Darwinism doesn't work as an historical theory.
The mismatch of cultural with biological evolution never seems to dawn on
anyone in the scientific field. "We've put a man on the moon, how could we be
complete idiots on the subject of evolution?" Now sociobiologists are
bringing their unique form of one-dimensional stupidity to historical study,
claims about ethics, selection, and the complete mythology of game-theory
altruism. This view is highly promoted, but fictive, and demonstrably so,
looking at history. We see the evolution of ethics, for example, in direct
fashion, and it isn't amenable to natural selection, reductionism, numerical
models, or economic ideology.
We should grant that the 'evolution of civilization' as higher culture is not
easily compared to, say, the 'evolution of dinosaurs'. But the point remains,
a theory of cultural evolution must deal with the evidence of history, and
there we see the evolution of consciousness, values, religions, philosophy,
the arts, political forms, an indeed science itself, and these have a
demonstrable pattern of emergence (higlighted by so-called the eonic effect)
that does not conform to hypotheses of natural selection. It simply does
not. And we have never observed in proper fashion at the level of millennia
or centuries the fact of natural selection in the descent of man able to
produce the truly distinct advances of brain, intelligence, culture, or
consciousness, and certainly not at the level of centuries, the latter point
is crucial. We can catch a glimpse of macroevolution as soon as we have
properly mapped the data of real transformation at close range, and that
doesn't exist before the invention of writing.
The extrapolation of speculative fictions to the descent of man is one of the
most unjustified steps in the whole of Darwinism, as both Wallace and Huxley
began to suspect. The whole Darwin scheme is simply a paradigm out of
control here. And yet, the point simply fails to register with Darwinists.
This ostrich regime would be a form of humour if the matter were funny. But
the reduction of all forms of culture to this kind of demonstrably false
reasoning is destructive and conceals a series of agendas, methodological
and/or ideological that are the real primemovers in this strange rigidity of
theoretical confusion.
Small wonder Mr. Giddens is puzzled. Better luck next paradigm.
--------------------------
Patterns of macroevolution are said to not exist in history, A little
frequency analysis shows that 'it ain't so'. This is not some New Age
Alternative Science, simple periodization will show how little we look at our
own history, and how Darwinism almost seems designed to deflect our attention
from the facts. The study of the eonic, or 'on-off', effect, as a type of
pattern analysis or time and motion study of world history, quickly exposes
a 'macro factor' and shows what is probably the only candidate for
macroevolutionary theory about world history, however we explain it. The
reality is far more sophisticated than we had expected, and won't yield to
simplistic methods or reductionist methods. That's that.
You can repent of being wrong for century and a half, or repent later of
being wrong for a century and a half plus. Controlling the mass media can
delay the inevitable but will only make it worse in the end.
John Landon
http://eonix.8m.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more on the light the 'eonic effect' throws on the evolution of culture,
go to
http://eonix.8m.com
A Theoretical toolkit for debriefing the misapplication of Darwinism to
historical evolution.
New selections on line
Coming soon online: an introduction to eonic theoretical history
The Article
http://news.bmn.com/news/story?day=010622&story=1
Darwin Was Innocent, from Biomednet
Social scientists' on/off affair with evolutionary biology came under the
spotlight last night in London when two of Britain's leading sociologists
begged to differ over the importance of Darwin in their work. Before a packed
and humid auditorium that included some of the world's most eminent
biologists, and the odd renegade local politician, the debate was hyped as a
return match between the forces of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and those of
Thomas H. Huxley."Who needs Darwin? The relevance of evolutionary theory to
the social sciences" is how the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social
Science (CPNSS) at the London School of Economics (LSE) billed the battle.In
1860, Huxley won hands down. This time round, no-one even bothered to ask the
audience to vote.In the neo-Darwinist corner was Garry Runciman,
president-elect of the British Academy, an independent learned society for
the humanities and social sciences. "I have little doubt that within this
paradigm, there are going to be important and fascinating discoveries about
individual and social behavior over the coming decades."Runciman is on the
record as claiming that to try to do sociology without reference to the
theory of evolution is like trying to do physics without the theory of
gravity.Opposing him was Anthony Giddens, director of the LSE. Although
Giddens was prepared to concede that "it is highly implausible to suppose ...
that thousands of years of evolution do not influence how we behave today,"
he made it clear that he regarded Darwinian explanations of human behavior as
little more than "plausible ideas."Giddens, who has long held out against
what he sees as reductionist thinking, maintains that evolutionary theory can
at best make modest contributions to the understanding of human society and
at worst is likely to be dangerously misleading.There followed a lively input
from the 400-strong audience, which included the philosopher Dan Dennett,
game-theorist Ken Binmore, neurobiologist Steven Rose, sociologist Hilary
Rose and evolutionary theorist and co-director of the CPNSS Helena
Cronin.London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, was also present. "It was so much
better than the debates I have to put up with in the London Assembly," he
quipped to BioMedNet News afterwards.Much of the discussion focused on the
work of Martin Daly and Margo Wilson of McMaster University in Canada, who
argue that human evolution in "ancestral environments" can explain why, in
modern society, males are statistically more likely to abuse their
stepchildren than their biological offspring.Giddens was scathing. "When you
are depending on evidence from a million years ago there are not many secure
statements you can make," he said. Binmore offered support. He warned that
"applying too much rationalism to human behavior is a really bad
mistake."After the debate, Dennett was conciliatory but unconvinced. Giddens
"was careful not to pick on just embarrassingly bad examples [of evolutionary
theory applied to human behavior]," he told BioMedNet News. "In going after
the Daly and Wilson example, [Giddens] was going after a highly regarded
example. [But] I am not sure that their work has been dealt the blow that he
claims to have dealt it," he said.In summing up, Nicholas Humphrey,
theoretical psychologist at the LSE, remarked on the tougher time that
Giddens had experienced during the debate. "It was not quite what I expected
from an LSE audience, but perhaps that shows that something's changing."
