Revolution, devolution, evolution

Orangeville Citizen ^ | March 26, 2009 | William Bothwell

[Alex Murphy]

The Honourable Gary Goodyear has not been having a good year. He is the Member of Parliament for Cambridge ON and federal Minister for Science and Technology. The research community attacks him for the Government's reduced funding that will cripple scientific work in Canada. He at first declined to answer a Globe and Mail editorial board question as to whether or not he believed in evolution. That, he said, was an unwarranted inquisition into his religious beliefs. Then he told CTV's "Power Play" that "Of course, I believe in evolution but (that) is an irrelevant question". Irrelevant, that is. to the way Ottawa allots research funds.

James Maloway, the NDP science critic, thought that the minister's personal opinion might carry weight in official decisions. The Liberal, astronaut Marc Garneau, said that belief in evolution by random natural selection was not a requirement for Goodyear's job.

We live in revolutionary times. An epoch that began 10,000 years ago is coming to an end. More than science, religion and the capitalist system are involved in changes that are as basic as our progress from being hunters and gatherers to becoming farmers and city dwellers. An age that had lasted for hundreds of thousands of years thus came to an end and new ways of being human developed.

The agricultural, mercantile, industrial and now the information revolutions then followed one another. In the past 100, indeed, the past 50, years the traditional foundations of civilised life have been shaken. As with the current economic collapse, no one knows what the duration or the outcome will be of the changes through which we are living. What we do know is that institutions that had remained unchanged for centuries - the family, education, law and order, religion and urban life - are crumbling.

Until from 50 to 100 years ago everyone knew that the nuclear, genetically related, family was the basis of society. Only the children of eccentric, and usually wealthy, social rebels had a succession of step-parents and multiple 'grandparents'. Most had aunts, uncles and cousins by the dozens, most of them living closely nearby. Our smaller and broken families are now less closely bonded either emotionally or economically. Someone said last month that we should have a Family Day in Ontario more than once a year. We used to have one once a week.

Education was understood to be the transmission to the young of the learning and culture of the adult world. Job training was a different thing. Some students rebelled against some teachers but the importance of the educational process was not doubted and its professionals were popular and respected members of the community. Parents knew their children's teachers and often entertained them in their homes.

Sunday was a day on which people were free from all but necessary work. Few were not associated with one or other of the local churches which both taught a system of received values and were community centres. A few saw Sabbath freedom as unnecessarily restrictive and in some cases it was. Presbyterians often forgot that John Knox had been a Sunday bowler. But few died or were maimed in weekend accidents.

The police who are now chiefly in evidence at collision scenes, at school 'lockdowns' or at cases of domestic violence were, back then, walking the streets or directing traffic at busy intersections. Since permissive or absent parents no longer discipline the young and since the 'parental' role of teachers has been removed, the police service has come to resemble the role of peacekeepers in unruly tribal territory. In the urban areas where 90% of us now live the guardians of the peace must sometimes use unusual force against law breakers who see them as the enemy.

Devolution, the handing down of power from a higher to a lower level - say, from a national to a provincial authority, threatens problems at a time of uncertainty and social change. The Canadian 1867 balance of powers between federal and provincial jurisdictions was designed to avoid the kind of secession that had recently caused civil war in the U.S.A. Especially after a succession of minority governments there are always those who can be convinced that things are better managed at the regional level. Weak administrations are vulnerable.

A continent-wide confederation such as Canada that includes wide-ranging geographic, ethnic and economic differences is especially vulnerable to devolutionary demands and concessions as the need for new approaches to changing times becomes evident. Economically there are nine 'nations', and linguistically there are at least three, in North America. Devolution of power to them will become more attractive if national governments, especially those challenged by powerful pressure groups or weakened by a succession of minority governments, prove unequal to their unitive responsibility. Administrations with a weak grasp on centralised power are tempted to try to bolster it by devolutionary bartering.

Evolution, the word, is the antonym of devolution. It involves things that pass on to a higher, more advanced stage of existence. When I consider how each of us developed 'in utero' and through 'post partum' response to experience and education, I have no problem in thinking that a similar process produced the human race. Even pre-scientific Hebrew writers understood that we were very late comers to the unfolding drama called "Creation".

The dimension of experience that we call 'faith' gives to human life the ability to "think outside the box" into which some scientists try to put it. Mankind is, in fact, but a small part of the vast universe but it is till we who look up with wonder and curiosity at the stars, not they that "look down" on us.

You and I are, indeed, part of the animated world but we are the only part that can change it for better or for worse. Both experimental and speculative philosophy are tools we use to understand ourselves and the world but as Hamlet said to Hortatio, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy".

Most natural scientists, philosophers and theologians would agree. Spare us both angry atheist authors and brittle, belligerent believers.

[Alex Murphy]

Presbyterians often forgot that John Knox had been a Sunday bowler.