Thursday, May 08, 2008
If Darwinism is True, it Can’t Be
And when I say “Darwinism,” I am making a sharp distinction between the modest claims of natural selection versus the impossibly grandiose claims of reductionistic Darwinism, just as I always distinguish between science and philosophy of scientism, the latter of which far exceeds what is warranted by the evidence, and is only believed by a who’s hooter of philosophical boobs & rubes.
Naive Darwinism is a subset, or variety, of scientism. Only an immature mind could believe it, since it requires the simultaneous gullibility and grandiosity of a child. Or, to turn it around, if you can believe that, what won’t you believe? For it is pure magic, the kind of magic that always rushes in to fill the void where a coherent metaphysic should reside as an anchor and axis for the intellect. In the absence of real adult religion, people become either superstitious or substitious, but either way they miss the mark, for scientism is just a more sophisticated way of being stupid. It is primitivism for sophisticates, neopaganism for urban barbarians. ...”
Continued: http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2008/05/if-darwinism-is-true-it-cant-be.html
In the absence of real adult religion, people become either superstitious or substitious,
***Over at Dictionary.com:
No results found for substicious.
No results found for substitious.
What does it mean?
“...This idea actually goes to the very heart of Polanyi’s critique of positivism in particular and of scientism in general, something I’ll be discussing in more detail in subsequent posts. That is, he did not regard scientific theories as objectively true; but nor are they merely subjective. This represents a false dichotomy. In actuality, subjective and objective are complementary and operate in a dialectic fashion to extend the human mind into the unknown, thus expanding the interior (and therefore exterior) horizon of the cosmos.
That might sound overly abstract, but it’s not. Polanyi compared scientific theories to the cane of a blind man. Imagine if...”
Continue: http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2007/11/probing-vertical-unknown.html
That guy is a good writer. I’ll have to finish reading his essay later.
One Cosmos
Circumnavelgazing the Whole Existentialada of Lumin Development with Mental Gymgnostics, Verticalisthenics, Freevangelical Pundamentalism, Dilettantric Yoga, Laughty Revelations, Wide Angle Pneumography, Isness Ministration, and Darwhiggian Evolution, all in a Reluxing Atmasphere of Omade Jehovial Witticisms and deep levitas