Magnificently put, dearest sister in Christ!
I've been away from the forum the past 2 days or so — out bopping about with my dear Mom (who will celebrate her 96th birthday two weeks from today!). I'm just getting back, and am overwhelmed by the sheer volume of discussion that went on here while I was absent.
Where to begin? It seems that what C. S. Lewis thought about Darwin's theory, and whether or not he was misquoted, was vigorously debated. So I'll begin there.
I thought BroJoeK's remark — "This concatenation of views is clearly intended to suggest that Lewis agreed with Clarke" — was astute, not to mention just. (I wondered about the same thing myself. Not having seen the actual source, I don't think I have enough evidence to draw a conclusion yet.)
Dearest sister in Christ, I think that C. S. Lewis would have put Pinker, Lewontin, Dawkins, Singer, et al., into the category of "the Conditioners." And clearly, they are all metaphysical naturalists. I consulted his The Abolition of Man for further information.
Here is a "random selection" :^) from that work that reveals Lewis' thinking about the "scientific method" and how it deals with Nature. Presently, there are two modes: metaphysical naturalism, a/k/a "philosophy conducted under the guise of science"; and methodological naturalism, which our dear brothers BroJoeK, tacticalogic, R7 Rocket, et al., find so reasonable and for which it is so much to be admired. We're "jumping in mid-stream" here:
...When all that says 'it is good" has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains.... My point is that those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse.And thus to my way of thinking, we find in the conduct of even methodological naturalist science — leaving out of consideration here the egregious abuse of science typified by the metaphysical naturalists — an outstanding example of A. N. Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness: First we remove various aspects or sectors of reality that characterize Nature in its fullness to the human mind and experience, but which are superfluous to our scientific method. The result is the creation of an abstraction from Nature; and then we use this abstraction as a proxy for Nature. Nature is not only "shrunk" to the size of our method as a result; it is fundamentally falsified by this transformation.
We may legitimately hope that among the impulses which arise in minds thus emptied of all 'rational' or 'spiritual' motives, some will be benevolent. I am very doubtful myself whether the benevolent impulses, stripped of that preference and encouragement which the Tao teaches us to give them and left to their merely natural strength and frequency as psychological events, will have much influence. I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently. I am inclined to think that the Conditioners will hate the conditioned.... [O]ur hope even of a 'conditioned' happiness rests on what is ordinarily called 'chance'.... And Chance here means Nature....
My point may be clearer to some if it is put in a different form. Nature is a word of varying meanings, which can best be understood if we consider its various opposites. The Natural is the opposite of the Artificial, the Civil, the Human, the Spiritual, and the Supernatural. The Artificial does not now concern us. If we take the rest of the list of opposites, however, I think we can get a rough idea of what men have meant by Nature and what it is they oppose to her. Nature seems to be the spatial and temporal, as distinct from what is less fully so or not so at all. She seems to be a world of quantity, as against the world of quality; of objects against consciousness; of the bound, as against the wholly or partially autonomous; of that which knows no values as against that which both has and perceives value; of efficient causes (or, in some modern systems, of no causality at all) as against final causes. Now I take it that when we understand a thing analytically and then dominate and use it for our own convenience, we reduce it to the level of 'Nature' in the sense that we suspend our judgements of value about it, ignore its final cause (if any), and treat it in terms of quantity. This repression of elements in what would otherwise be our total reaction to it is sometimes very noticeable and even painful: something has to be overcome before we can cut up a dead man or a live animal in a dissecting room. These objects resist the movement of the mind whereby we thrust them into the world of mere Nature....
It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real. Little scientists, and little unscientific followers of science, may think so. The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost.
The modern scientific method dates back to Sir Francis Bacon, who famously wanted to banish all "metaphysics" from science, in order to place science on a firm empirical basis based on direct observation and meticulous measurement. That was pretty revolutionary!
It seems today that, for many people, Bacon's method was a rebuke to all of philosophy as a legitimate means of accessing truthful knowledge.
But I would like to know how science can even function without philosophy. Science's main operational premises rest on the philosophical insights of such great philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. It was Plato who first "isolated" the human psyche and nous — reason — rendering them proper objects of study and analysis. Aristotle systematized logic; he sought to find the causes of natural things as located in the natural things themselves (unlike Plato, who, like Max Tegmark, located formal cause in a transcendent realm "beyond" Nature); and developed universal laws of causation that operate in Nature. For these reasons, Aristotle is widely considered the father of science itself.
Not to mention that the doctrine of materialism is first and foremost a philosophical doctrine of very ancient lineage. It is very popular nowadays; though likely few people would recognize it as "philosophy." It's just "the way things are."
But it seems to me that all you have to do to falsify, to "denature Nature," is to say that physical and moral law are somehow mutually exclusive. Which to me is a ludicrous proposition: They are, rather, complementarities (in the epistemological sense articulated by Niels Bohr), in constant dynamic relation....
IMHO, one of C. S. Lewis' most striking observations was that bodies do not "have" souls; rather, souls "have" bodies. That is, "soul" has primacy with respect to the body; body is secondary; it is the temporal materialization of the soul, considered as eternal. It is "epiphenomenal" to the phenomenon, soul....
I'll just leave it there for now.
Dearest sister in Christ, thank you oh so very much for your splendid, lapidary observations in this magnificent essay/post!
I don't think it was intended as that at all. I believe Bacon simply recognized that the pursuit of science is best done in a collaborative environment, that is as inclusive as possible.
Empiricism is not a philosophy that you must assume in order to pursue scientific research. It is a protocol you follow in order to collaborate with other scientists. Admittedly it has it's limitations, but any protocol does, and it seems to provide a framework that allows research data and theories to be engaged by the widest possible pool of participants.
And a very Happy Birthday to your beloved mom!
Indeed, the quote from C.S. Lewis aligns very nicely with several of Rosen's insights in Life Itself. Interesting that a mathematician/biologist would independently find himself in agreement with points Lewis made decades earlier. I'm sure if Rosen had relied on any of Lewis' insights, he would have credited him as he faithfully did so many others.
It also brings to mind the point you often raise in these debates, namely the enormous difference between saying what a thing looks like versus what it "is."
Biologists of course rely on observation and measurement and rarely even mention the "what it is" issue - though it is of great importance to the physicists, mathematicians, philosophers, theologians, etc.
In an effort to learn a bit more about CS Lewis' views on evolution, I stumbled across this YouTube video:
I highly recommend it to everyone, with the note that I agree with almost everything reported about Lewis' outlook.
Please listen to it carefully, and indeed go back and listen again if you miss something.
One key point in Lewis' objections to evolution is the same point often stressed on this and other threads: evolution cannot have been truly "random".
I would say there is nothing truly "random" in nature -- unpredictable, certainly, and often seemingly chaotic, but those are only because we humans often just cannot grasp either G*d's methods or His purposes.
The video also emphasizes Lewis' abhorrence for atheistic-Darwinism as exemplified, we would say, by international, national and even democratic socialism.
Bottom line: Lewis was not opposed to the idea of common descent, but did reject the idea of randomness in evolution's progress.
That is also my opinion.