Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

To: viaveritasvita
V3 wrote (some thousand or so posts ago!): I'm seriously asking: Where is evolution supposed to be taking us? It's my understanding that we are supposedly 'evolving' to a higher state physically and in our behavior. If this is a correct (albeit elementary) explanation of evolution, then what is the ultimate end? -viaveritasvita-

PH: Evolution isn't 'taking us' anywhere.

Well Patrick is only half right as usual. Supposedly - like Hegelianism with which it is indelibly connected - there is neither an end nor a specific 'goal' to evolution. The 'survival of the fittest' in the struggle for life is indeed a very close translation of Hegel's dialectic of synthesis and antithesis and evolutionists call this struggle the creator of more advanced species through a sort of 'arms race'. Hegel's "belief that individual welfare or suffering simply did not matter in the sweep of world history, advancing like a juggernaut over the corpses of individuals."(1) is abundantly replicated in Darwin's works. So like Hegel, who did not know where it all was leading up to, but knew that it was leading to something greater, Darwin too asserted that evolution was also leading to something greater. Like with Hegel, the way to progress was through the corpses of the less fit.

From: Hegel Philosophy and History

3,996 posted on 01/08/2003 8:22:29 PM PST by gore3000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3421 | View Replies ]


To: All
He's back...

I knew the civility and sense of meaningful dialogue was too good to last.

4,071 posted on 01/09/2003 2:35:44 AM PST by Junior (I got the Blues)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3996 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson