Analysis Navigating the site:
"Yet even today much that is written about Darwin is simply wrong, or worse, malicious--in large part because the author has failed to understand the concepts that underlie Darwin's thought and its development, and the entrenched ideologies that his 'one long argument' was designed to oppose."
Ernst Mayr, One Long Argument, p. ix
Mistaken notions of Darwinism in the popular mind.
- contingency
- typological rather than population thinking
- perfectibility
- determinism
- descent
The Darwinian Revolution in thought:
| Social Darwinism | Reform Darwinism |
| Herbert Spencer | Lester F. Ward |
| individualism | community |
| competitive struggle | cooperative venture |
| survival of the fittest | survival of the group |
Overview of Darwinian importance
New ways to think about the natural world.
| descent | ||
| determinism |
contingency
The world is not the product of freely chosen paths from a host of opportunities, as some argue, because those creatures that existed before us influence and constrict what can occur within the further confines of chemical and physical restraints. Within these confine there is wide variability and that inpredictable vange of opportunities is called contingent probability.
population thinking correctly replaces typological thought
The world is not understood in terms of abstract groups of things, instead it is the outcome of the reproductive capacities and fertile potential of the preceding generations. Since Plato and Aristotle typological thought has dominated the natural sciences in which beings are separated into classes of things based on apparent similarities and contradistinctions. Instead descent places all creatures into lineages based on descent from common parents or the fact that beings have a similar ancestry.
perfectibility
Things in this world are not capable of being exactly meshed with other other creatures of the conditions of their existence, instead they approximate functions that meet their own and one another's needs.
determinism
The restraints mentioned above are not factors that predict the outcome of the future -- instead they are limitations dictated by the physical , chemical and biological features of the material universe.
descent
Things descend from a common ancestor from which these parents the many offspring vary enormously. They do not evolve, they do not will themselves to be for or less fit. The variability among different surviving offspring leads to subtle and even abrupt changes in the subsequent generations. Thus creatures descend sharing common origins and possessing the same basic but variable traits.
Joseph Siry, written discourses
On the conservation of natural values.
Analyses can be found in the following pages:
- Two Cultures.
- Marshes of the Ocean Shore, overview
- Synoptic Notes on Marshes of the Ocean Shore
- Our Common Challenge
- Wildlife in Peril
- Where exactly is a fifth dimension?
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