[narses]

Darwin was a nominalist, iirc.

The Nominalist Heresy

The doctrine of nominalism, often also called empiricism, positivism, or materialism, holds that only the individual is real. The universal is seen as a mental fiction useful in organizing the disparate aspects of reality so that they may be more easily studied or categorized. Nominalism explicitly denies any such reality as human nature being grounded outside the knowing mind. In fact, it denies the knowing mind in favor of sense perception alone. Reality is not intelligible, it is sensible only.

The implications of this doctrine are fearful. There is no order of truth in the traditional sense, there are only facts; there are no universally valid moral principles, but only relative moral standards; there is no hierarchy of meaning within reality to serve as a basis for judging which human attainments are higher than others; the denial of the intelligibility of the universe entails the denial of understanding and wisdom as the basis of authority and law, and substitutes wealth and power; the purpose of each individual human life within the created order loses its meaning, and the purpose of human life is not discovered by analysis of the real, but chosen by each individual to be whatever he wants it to be; and finally, the arts follow this downward spiral from dealing with the grand themes of medieval and renaissance art, through the sentimentalism of the romantic era, to the prevailing desire for immediacy.

Weaver traces the rise of nominalism in the fourteenth century from William of Ockham, through its further development by the British Empiricists in the eighteenth century, to its popular acceptance in the twentieth century. For its rapid spread from the end of World War I until the time of his writing of Ideas, Weaver credits what he calls “the great stereopticon.” That is, the movies, the press and the radio. Television had not achieved the status that it has today, but if Weaver had revised Ideas he certainly would have included television as even a greater force for cultural and social dissolution.

Read more: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=11-06-021-f#ixzz1mwMXMbpX

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the link, dear narses!

betty boop and I have run into that worldview repeatedly over many years of crevo debates.

The fallacy of their worldview becomes clear when we examine their claim that the mind (soul or spirit) is merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain. An epiphenomenon is a secondary phenomenon which cannot cause anything to happen!

If they really believed this then they would insist that the physical brain is legally culpable as the cause of a civil or criminal offense. There could be no personal responsibility since the "person" is just an epiphenomenon that was incapable of causing anything to happen, good or bad.

They would refuse awards or bank deposits made out to their person since it does not exist. But who could cash a check made out to "central nervous system, cranium, 123 Easy St., Anywhere, US?"

By their actions they acknowledge that the person "is" - and that he is more than the sum of his parts.

[betty boop]

Darwin was a nominalist, iirc.

Great definition of Nominalism, from Richard M. Weaver. And it seems to fit Darwin's "(unexamined) collective presuppositions" about the nature of Reality very well indeed.

What an amazingly "flat" worldview! It demands that all of Nature "reduce" to what can be directly "captured" by human sense perception. It holds that anything that cannot come to the mind other than through this sensory channel simply doesn't exist.

I really do regard this as a species of insanity. FWIW.

Even the magisterial Newton (who is usually blamed for giving us the "mechanical [machine] model" of the Universe) — kept God in the picture, Whose sensorium Dei — a/k/a Absolute Space — is a kind of universal field (in the scientific sense) that constitutes the "interface" between the Creator and His Creation. Newton's God is both Creator of the Universe, and eternally omipresent intermediator in it.

Newton's principle of Absolute ("empty") Space is, for Newton, the very medium in which God creates His creatures. (See his "Scolium Generale" which first appeared in the second edition of Principia.)

Of course, the concept of Absolute Space has been criticized by many modern scientific and philosophical commentators. But I'm only writing about what Newton thought about it, here.

Certainly Newton was not a nominalist....

But I think, narses, you are very correct in identifying Charles Darwin as one.

Darwin just dumps God down the old rathole of memory altogether. Thus: Darwin's evolutionary theory cannot even begin to address issues like the origin of Life or consciousness.

What I want to know is this: If Darwin's theory cannot deal with origin problems, then what, really, can it have to say to us about "biology?"

Plus the other thing that is maddening about it is the theory itself seems to fall almost entirely outside the scope of the scientific method. It is more a historical science (described through a philosophical nominalist filter) than an experimental one....

Of course, I do believe in evolution. But to me, Darwin's theory, qua scientific theory, is woefully incomplete, at best.

Thank you ever so much for the link, dear narses!