Philosophical Issues
What is the philosophical significance of Darwin's theory? In what ways did Darwin's theory influence or affect philosophical thinking?
Required
- Dennett, DDI, Ch. 1 Tell Me Why
- Dewey, ”Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy” PDF here.
- Aristotle selections from Metaphysics, Book V and Physics, Book 3
- Paley's formulation of the design argument PDF here.
- Browne, J. (2009). Darwin the Young Adventurer.
Recommended
- Mayr, E. (2000) Darwin’s influence on modern thought. Scientific American, 283(1), 66-71. PDF here.
- Mayr, E. (2001). The Philosophical Foundations of Darwinism. PDF here.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Philosophy of Biology (Griffiths); Darwinism (Lennox)
Outline
What is the philosophy of biology? What can philosophy contribute to the study of biology? And can biology contribute anything to the study of philosophy? The first half of the course will be devoted to questions and problems in biology to which philosophers of biology have contributed: What is natural selection? What are the units and levels of selection? What is an adaptation? and What is a species? In the second half of the course we will explore possible ways in which philosophers can use Darwinian thinking to address traditional philosophical questions about the nature of the mind, morality and politics, and cultural change.
What is Darwinism? Does Darwin present us with a peculiar vision of evolution and is that vision relevant today (given all that we've learned since Darwin)? What is a neo-Darwinian? Does Darwinian thinking mark an advance in science generally, in terms of its methodology or consequences? Can Darwin's thinking be formalized and applied to areas outside of biology? In other words, can we take a “Darwinian” approach to X, where X is is not restricted to evolutionary change in an area normally studied in biology proper. We follow Dan Dennett's suggestion that Darwinian evolution presents us with an algorithm that can be applied in numerous situations to help us understand issues outside the traditional scope of biology.
What specific philosophical questions or problems are challenged or addressed by Darwin's theory? Is there a particular alternative philosophical worldview provided by Darwin's theory? Are there assumptions that we can identify and evaluate? John Dewey, in a lecture fifty years after the publication of Darwins Origins, writes that
the combination of the very words origin and species embodied an intellectual revolt and introduced a new intellectual temper is easily overlooked by the expert. The conceptions that had reigned in the philosophy of nature and knowledge for two thousand years, the conceptions that had become the familiar furniture of the mind, rested on the assumption of the superiority of the fixed and final; they rested upon treating change and origin as signs of defect and unreality. In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the “Origin of Species” introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion.
Ernst Mayr concludes this about the philosophical foundations of Darwin's work:
He was responsible for the replacement of a world view based on Christian dogma by a strictly secular world view. Furthermore, his writings led to the rejection of several previously dominant world views such as essentialism, finalism, determinism, and philosophical foundations of darwinism the suitability of Newtonian laws for the explanation of evolution. He replaced these refuted concepts with a number of new ones of widereaching importance, also outside of biology, such as biopopulation, natural selection, the importance of chance and contingency, the explanatory importance of the time factor (historical narratives), and the importance of the social group for the origin of ethics. Almost every component in modern man’s belief system is somehow affected by one or another of Darwin’s conceptual contributions. His opus as a whole is the foundation of a rapidly developing new philosophy of biology. There can be no doubt that the thinking of every modern Western man has been profoundly affected by Darwin’s philosophical thought.
We can note several important shifts in philosophical thinking that are supported by Darwin's theory of evolution. These shifts also reveal the source of critique from early (and some contemporary) thinkers.
- A shift away from typological thinking, according to which abstractions (types or kinds that are fixed, eternal and sharply delineated) are real and individuals (tokens, particulars) are mere approximations, to population thinking, according to which different individuals are ultimately real and kinds are understood in terms of statistical values within a population.
- A shift away from absolutism and immutability to an emphasis on gradualism and change.
- A shift away from species as fixed and eternal essential natures to the notion of species as groups of morphological similarity and (more importantly) historical relatedness.
- A shift away from traditional notions of first and final causes to algorithmic processs operating on chance (undirected) variation. Purposive regulative principles are replaced with blind processes in nature.
- A shift away from a mind-first ontology to materialism.
- A shift away from a priori metaphysical speculation (with its rationalist commitment to “transcendent and supernal” concepts and causes) in the biological sciences to an emphasis on naturalism and empirical methods (observation, experiment, hypothesizing, inferences to the best explanation).
- A shift away from authoritarian (divine command) models for moral behavior to more naturalistic accounts.
Is Darwin's idea dangerous? In what sense and for whom? Dennett suggests that
[f]rom the outset, there have been those who thought they saw Darwin letting the worst cat out of the bag: nihilism. They thought that if Darwin was right, the implication would be that nothing could be sacred. To put it bluntly, nothing could have any point.
