Indeed, Raycpa — any thoughtful person willing to investigate the matter would understand how a presumption — I prefer the word presupposition — actually can and does affect, and may actually determine, investigational outcomes.
And you’re absolutely right — we all have presuppositions about the nature of reality, whether we’re scientists, philosophers, or just your average man on the street. The Socratic instruction to “Know thyself” is specifically addressed to this problem; for a wrong presupposition ineluctably leads to untruth….
A presupposition is an assumption made in advance that is taken for granted — i.e., is regarded as “self-evident” — which is required or involved necessarily as an antecedent condition of the analysis that follows from it.
It happens that NeoDarwinism has a whole raft of presuppositions, none of which appear self-evident to me. The most obvious one is that “Nature,” not a Supreme Being, is exclusively responsible for the emergence and speciation of life on this planet, from purely “natural” (i.e., physico-chemical) processes, all subject to, and structured by, the rather simple algorithm of random mutation and replication in the face of limited resources.
As the science writer Philip Ball put it, the diversification and complexification of species are “boosted by the fact that every evolutionary step broadens and modifies the landscape in which subsequent steps are taken: evolution does not simply have to respond to a preordained landscape, but to itself.” That is, the evolutionary process is relentlessly self-recursive.
A closely related presupposition is that biology is, “from moment to moment, surely quite blind.” Note the word “surely”: This is an appeal to us to accept the claim as self-evident. But if we do, then we have to take the next step and acknowledge that living beings cannot exhibit goal-directed behavior. There is no “teleology” in nature other than the illusion of it imposed by Darwinist evolutionary theory itself.
But jeepers, even the humble bacterium has been shown to demonstrate behavior that can only be understood as “goal-directed” and purposeful, indicating the presence of intelligence, and degrees of freedom to choose “endpoints” that are conducive to its survival and well-being.
Against Ball, Attila Grandpierre, astrophysicist and senior researcher at the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Science, argues:
Recently, it has become clear that simple bacteria can exhibit rich behavior, have internal degrees of freedom, informational capabilities, and freedom to respond by altering itself and others via emission of signals in a self-regulated manner (Ben-Jacob, E. 2003…). Each bacterium is, by itself, a biotic autonomous system, having a certain freedom to select its response to the biochemical messages it receives, including self-alteration, self-plasticity, and decision making, permitting purposeful alteration of its behavior (Ben Jacob, Aharonov and Shapira, 2005…). Bacteria are able to reverse the spontaneous course of entropy increase and convert high-entropy inorganic substances into low-entropy life-sustaining molecules (ibid.). Similarly, di Primio, Müller, and Lengeler (2000 …) have demonstrated that bacteria and other unicellular organisms are autonomous and social beings showing cognition in the forms of association, remembering, forgetting, learning, etc., activities that are found in all living organisms. It is widely recognized recently that biochemical reactions are regulated by complex conditions involving practically the whole cell, governed possibly by a yet unknown principle (see Ben Jacob, Shapira and Tauber, 2006...).NeoDarwinism cannot demonstrate the origin of intelligence in nature, just as it cannot demonstrate the origin of life from inert matter.
But Ball simply dismisses the problem thusly: “To my mind, ‘intelligence in Nature’ here becomes another God of the gaps, an expression for what we do not yet understand (and what therefore astounds us) about the capacity of the physical world to generate richness and complexity.”
The point is, NeoDarwinism as presently constituted has no means to engage this problem, let alone understand it. The problem is, evolutionary theory is not a theory capable of describing the most basic, general laws of motion (behavior) of all living organisms. It does not deal with individuals, only the evolution of species in this biosphere; i.e., the biosphere present here on the Earth.
Grandpierre writes, “The theory of evolution has quite a different character from theoretical physics. The fundamental laws of physics are the most general laws of physical phenomena, while the theory of evolution considers only a special phenomenon, the evolution of species, and only within special conditions present in the Earth, and so it fundamentally lacks due generality. Biology will reach the position of a mature natural science only if it finds the most general laws of biological behavior. Once theoretical biology will develop, finding its first principle, it will be a more fundamental theory than the theory of evolution.”
I could go on, but I’ve run on long enough for now. (I’m writing a more elaborated piece for posting here later.) My point is that it is the presuppositions of NeoDarwinism that have been coming under scrutiny in recent times. And, oddly enough, from the side of the physicists, not the biologists — who are as happy as clams, insolated in the happy world of doctrinaire NeoDarwinism....
But if you attack the presuppositions, you likely will never be published in the prestigious professional journals, such as the Journal of Theoretical Biology.... The "gatekeepers of orthodoxy" will not permit it!
Thank you so very much, for your excellent essay/post and vital insights, Raycpa!
If you could replace the current scientific method, which relies on methodolical naturalism, with some other methodology what exactly would it be?
There are a number of presuppositions that are commonly recited, which few people question, but are actually absurd upon reflection. Here are a few non-negotiable presuppositions: 'every single organic being is striving to have as many descendants as it can'; 'far more beings are born that can possibly survive'; 'every single organic being is striving to the utmost to increase in a geometric ratio', etc.
None of those propositions are true. They are absurd. And yet these a priori assumptions are non-negotiable presuppositions of natural selection.
I’ve only now had the opportunity to peruse the excellent tome you posted at #474. It strikes me that, although your observations highlight the scientific, or perhaps we should say the methodological, problems, of evolutionary theory, the theory’s biggest stumbling block is an ethical problem, IMHO. You point out that NeoDarwinism does not, by its very nature cannot, deal with Human individuals. If an ant colony were the subject at hand, that might present no insurmountable obstacle. But Darwinian Theory has presented no compelling evidence to show that it is safe or proper to regard Humans as though they were a hill of ants! If fact, judging from what you report, it is not at all clear that it is safe to treat a hill of ants as though they were, well . . . a hill of ants.