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REEDINGS . . .
Notes on Books by Gerard Reed
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AUSSIE
ACADEMICS: Biology; Philosophy;
History
Though
Australia stands, in many ways, on the periphery of Western Civilization, some
of her scholars deserve careful reading.
In part this is because as “outsiders” they often bring a
refreshing perspective to their respective disciplines.
Indeed, Michael J. Denton’s Evolution:
A Theory in Crisis (c.
1984) helped launch the
challenging “Intelligent Deign” movement in biology.
More recently Denton has published a sequel, titled Nature’s
Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe (New York: The Free Press, c. 1998).
He aims, he says, cogently outlining his thesis:
“first, to present the scientific evidence for believing that the
cosmos is uniquely fit for life as it exists on earth and for organisms of
design and biology very similar to our own species, Homo
sapiens, and second, to argue that this ‘unique fitness’ of the laws
of nature for life is entirely consistent with the older teleological
religious concept of the cosmos as a specially designed whole, with life and
mankind as its primary goal and purpose” (p, xi).
The cosmos appears as if were precisely designed to enable intelligent
beings to flourish on a very special place, planet earth.
The more we learn about our world, the more it reveals a “deeper
order” that orchestrates all that is.
Though teleology—the
Aristotelian notion that there is purpose and design to the world—has been
discarded by many modern thinkers, Denton insists it makes sense.
Indeed, as Fred Hoyle (no friend of theism) acknowledged, “’a
commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has
monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no
blind forces worth speaking about in nature’” (p. 12).
This is evident in elementary matters, as Denton makes clear in a
lengthy, fascinating discussion of the marvelous properties of water.
“What is so very remarkable about the various physical properties of
water . . . is not that each is so fit in itself, but the astonishing way in
which, in many instances, several independent properties are adapted to serve
cooperatively the same biological end” (p. 40).
Without water there would be no life—and its unique composition
serves to facilitate life. Joining
water, light is likewise essential for life on earth.
The sun’s radiation, screened by intricately coordinated atmospheric
gases, stimulates and sustains living creatures.
That the right amount of the right kind of light reaches earth is a “staggering”
coincidence. That water is
transparent to this light is equally amazing.
Indeed, we should “be awed
and staggered” by such “coincidences,” defying mathematical
probabilities, that are absolutely necessary for the world to be as it is.
Denton
then peruses the presence of radioactive substances, the movement of tectonic
plates, the marvelous rightness of the atmosphere and atmospheric pressure,
the role of carbon and iron in the processes of life, the positive influence
of planets such as Jupiter on the earth, the unique properties of oxygen and
carbon dioxide in sustaining life, the mysterious power of photosynthesis, the
incredible information contained in DNA, the sophisticated functioning of
proteins within the cell, the life-sustaining efficiency of hemoglobin in the
blood, the marvel of the cell’s membrane, and the brain’s computing power.
“The emerging picture is obviously consistent with the teleological
view of nature. That each constituent utilized by the cell for a particular
biological role, each cog in the watch, turns out to be the only and at the
same time the ideal candidate for its role is particularly suggestive of
design. . . . .
The prefabrication of parts to a unique end is the very hallmark of
design. Moreover, there is simply
no way that such prefabrication could be the result of natural selection”
(p. 233). So too for man.
Denton finds the cosmos perfectly designed for our flourishing.
He notes our unique capacity to see and speak, our hand’s marvelous
dexterity, our fire-making and using capacities, our suitability for our place
in the cosmos, and our propensity for mathematics and abstract thought.
All things considered, the “chain of coincidences underlying our
existence . . . is simply too long and the appearance of contrivance too
striking” (p. 261) to be attributed to naturalistic chance.
Having devoted the first part of the book to “life,” he turns to
the question of “evolution.” That
life should appear on planet earth is, quite simply, miraculous.
Denton emphasizes that few living creatures existed before the Cambrian
Explosion—a 5 million year sliver of time, 600 million years ago—which
witnessed the “great and never-to-be-repeated
burst of creative growth” responsible for all the main branches of the tree
of life. Thenceforth occurred an
apparently “inevitable unfolding of a preordained pattern, written into the
laws of nature from the beginning’ (p. 282).
Indeed, given the “immensely complex” composition of living
organisms, “it is hard to understand how undirected evolution via a series
of independent changes could ever produce a radical redisgn in any sort of
system as complex as a living organism. “In
effect,” Denton says, “modern biology has revealed us a watch, a watch
with a trillion cogs!—a watch which wonderfully fulfills William Paley’s
prophetic claim in this famous section from his Natural
Theology; or Evidence of the
Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Aoppearances of
Nature, published in 1800, that ‘every indication of contrivance, every
manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of
nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more
and that in a degree which exceeds all computation’” (p. 350).
Soon, he hopes, science will increasingly side with natural theology
and defend of the “anthropocentric faith” Isaac Newton envisioned two
centuries ago.
Denton’s two treatises provide persuasive building blocks for the
Intelligent Design movement. Though
personally agnostic, he remains open to and respectful of religious
perspectives. And he certainly
thinks nature’s design reveals its underlying intelligence.
*
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The
late philosopher David Stove had an amazing ability to cogently refute shoddy
logic, especially in the philosophy of science.
Largely unknown outside Australia, a Stove sampler has been edited by
Roger Kimbell and titled: Against the Idols of the Age (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Publishers, c. 1999).
In the book’s prefeace, Kimball commends Stove as a healthy antidote
to the intellectual cowardice and pernicious illogic that pervades far too
many fashionable theories.
In the book’s first section, “The Cult of Irrationalism in Science,”
he deals with “Cole Porter and Karl Popper:
The Jazz Age in the Philosophy of Science.”
The mood of jazz—“anything goes,” as Cole Porter
crooned—provides “the key to Popper’s philosophy of science”
(p. 5). In the philosophy of
science, Popper spawned thinkers such as Thomas Kuhn (of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions fame) who amplified and made
respectable Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all values.”
Rather than discovering truth, they alleged, science merely advances
theories and probabilities, all of which decay like fallen leaves.
The best example of such Jazz Age nihilism is P.K. Feyerabend, a
University of California professor who called himself “a ‘Dadaist’ and
his philosophy ‘epistemological anarchism.’
He maintains that science knows, and should know no
rules of method, no logic” (p. 14). Thus
witchcraft and astrology and even the sorcery of Carlos Casteneda’s Don Juan fictions, as well as Newton and Pasteur, have “scientific”
standing.
Confronting such blatant irrationalism, Stove simply asks if Popper,
Kuhn, Feyerabend, et al. make sense. He
examines their words. They
assert, for example, that “unfalsifiable” and “irrefutable” statements
are the same. This is, however,
patently untrue. An “unfalsifiable”
statement means “consistent with every observation statement,” whereas an
“irrefutable statement” means “known for certain” (p. 21).
“They are no more related in meaning than, say, ‘weighty’ in ‘weighty
thinker,’ and ‘overweight.’ Someone
who identified weighty thinkers with overweight thinkers, and took himself to
have gained a new insight into the nature of thinkers, would be guilty of a
stupid enough pun. Someone who
identifies irrefutable propositions with unfalsifiable ones, and takes himself
to have gained a new insight into the nature of scientific propositions is
guilty of no better” (p. 210).
In “Idols Contemporary and Perennial,” Stove deals with some social
and political issues. He attacks
Harvard University Professor Robert Nozick in “’Always apologize,
always explain’: Robert Nozick’s
War Wounds.” Following WWII the
only nation able to resist Communism’s march toward world domination was the
United States, so Nozick illustrates how during the Vietnam War “America’s
capactity for such resistance remained intact, [but] her willingness did not.
For that war was lost, not through defeat of American armies in the
field, nor yet through treachery among them, but through a massive sedition at
home” (p. 93). Consequently,
Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations reveals “the gruesome and disabling
wounds which were inflicted on American life, and on American intellectual
life in particular, by the defeat in Vietnam” (p. 94). Yet Nozick, strangely, wore such wounds as badges of honor.
He celebrated the defeat of America as a “moral” advance. The U.S.
learned, he claimed, the signal virtue of “non-coerciveness.”
Just be nice to everyone and tolerate everything!
Impose nothing, especially anything as controversial as universal
truth, on anyone.
Philosophizing in a non-coercive manner, Nozick foregoes rigorous
proofs and indulges in pleasing “explanations,” an exercise that “is as
insubstantial intellectually as it is over-charged emotionally:
in fact it is like nothing so much as a paper kite driven by a fifty
horsepower motor” (p. 99). Nozick’s
views, Stove shows, are rooted in the notions of Kant, who declared that our
experience “’constitutes’ nature. If
this is not madness, and more specifically the self-importance of the human
species run mad, it will do so until the real thing comes along” (p. 103).
While declaring his intent to address tough questions in Philosophical
Explanations, Nozick instead indulges
in verbal gymnastics that enable him—and philosophers like him—to “sound
nicer: that is, ‘gentler, softer, more considerate of others, respecters of their rights,
and so forth’” (p. 107).
To Stove, such spinelessness cannot be considered philosophy.
Philosophers should seek and demand truth, a fundamentally “coercive”
notion, “since what is true is independent of what anyone wants or believes”
(p. 111). Still more:
“No ideal could be more destructive of human life than the ideal of
non-coerciveness” (p. 111). Were
not parents coercive their offspring would never survive.
Were not teachers coercive students would never learn.
Nozick’s endeavor, ultimately, reduces to an “autism” akin to
America’s withdrawal from Vietnam. “Autism
is your only non-stop guaranteed-non-coercive fun. At least, it is, if ‘fun’ is the right word” (p. 112).
Whatever it is, Stove says, it ought not be taken seriously!
Finally, in the third section of the book, Stove tackles “Darwinian
Fairytales.” Whatever one may
think of the empirical evidence, however one may respect the “authorities”
endorsing it, Darwinism’s illogic, he says, deserves pillaring.
According to Darwin,
constant competition ruthlessly weeds out the unfit and facilitates the
evolution of species. However,
Stove insists, “the facts of human life” manifestly disprove this thesis,
leaving us with “Darwinism’s Dilemma.”
For we do, in fact, cultivate religious values, help each other,
nurture each other, build hospitals to care for the sick, and even give our
lives for others. Some Darwinians
say the “Cave Man” (but not us moderns) lived according to the survival of
the fittest code; others say the ruthless “Hard Man” still reigns,
directing our species’ development; and still others, taking the “Soft Man”
approach, cheerfully contradict themselves, declaring Darwin was right about
natural selection while defending the need for welfare programs, foreign aid,
etc. What Stove insists is that
the species we know best—our own—amply illustrates the very antithesis of
Darwin’s fundamental thesis.
Darwin erred, egregiously, by embracing the demographic theory of
Thomas Malthus as the key to understanding evolution, whereas many “organic
populations” never “obey this principle” (p. 240).
Microorganisms, parasites, and insects may seem to illustrate the idea
that a species proliferates geometrically until food supplies are exhausted.
But more advanced creatures defy Malthus’ view.
Both domestic pets and “huge African wild” animals frequently “fail
to increase in numbers, or even decline, in the presence of abundant food”
(p. 241). More importantly, the
very species Malthus studied—man—easily demonstrates the “grotesque
falsity” of his thesis. Darwin’s
modern defenders similarly fail Stove’s logic tests.
In “Genetic Calvinism, or Demons and Dawkins,” he ridicules Oxford
University Professor Richard Dawkins’ portrait of
“selfish genes” guiding biological evolution in strictly
deterministic fashion, much like the predestinarian God of Calvinist theology. To call genes selfish, Stove insists, counters common sense.
To say a gene is “selfish” is akin to saying a virus is “studious,
or shy. You could just as
intelligibly describe an electron as being slatternly, a triangle as being
scholarly, or a number as being sex mad” (p. 255).
Yet Dawkins attained international eminence by propounding such
nonsense.
Neo-Darwinists like Dawkins struggle (as did Darwin himself) to explain
many things, especially the “altruism” that pervades creation, since it
ought not exist in a dog-eat-dog Darwinian world.
Some, like E. O. Wilson, promote “sociobiology” to suggest that
altruism is nothing but selfishness dictating preferential treatment for
next-of-kin. One would expect,
then, Stove insists, that in bacteria, which reproduce by fission and “have
100 percent of their genes in common,” altruism would prevail. In fact,
there is utterly “no kin
altruism” evident (p. 295). Few
animals even recognize their first cousins, much less treat them favorably.
But human beings adopt orphans, send money to unknown starving people,
and illustrate the utter folly of such “shared genes” musings.
With sarcasm and relentless logic, Stove makes his case. He admits that Darwinism may be the most persuasive theory
afloat, but it simply cannot be true.
He’s no theist. Indeed
he’s rigorously skeptical about most everything.
But he’s a truth seeker and truth teller, and one profits from the
clarity of his critiques.
*
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
In The Killing of History:
How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past
(San Francisco: Encounter Books,
c. 1996), Keith Windschuttle documented the demise of traditional history in
many realms. For
2400 years, beginning with Thucydides, historians have sought to
discern and narrate what actually happened in the past.
Mistakes might be made, interpretations might vary, but they sincerely
believed there is “truth” to tell. That
ancient endeavor has lately been discounted by thinkers swayed by Neitzsche’s
equation of history and myth. Nietzsche “wanted to replace the whole of Weswtern
philosophy with a position that held there are no facts, only interpretations,
and no objective truths, only the perspectives of various individuals and
groups” (p. 24). His disciples,
such as Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, insisted that all “history”
is merely a momentary perspective, historically shaped, and valuable insofar
as it empowers whoever constructs it. Consequently,
today’s young people are “taught to scorn the traditional values of
Western culture—equality, freedom, democracy, human rights—as hollow
rhetoric used to mask the self-interest of the wealthy and powerful” (p. 5).
“Cultural studies,” focused on popular culture (especially movies
and TV), have replaced the disciplined investigation of documents and
discovery of facts. Massaging
texts and words, rather than portraying persons and locating events, enamor
historians. And everyone’s free to creatively construct his own past.
This
approach to writing history is assailed in Windschuttle’s chapter entitled
“Semiotics and the Conquest of America.”
A torrent of books re-evaluating Columbus’s landfall appeared in
1992. In David Stannard’s American Holocaust, for example, we’re told that “’The road to
Auschwitz led straight through the heart of the Americas’” (p. 39).
Tzvetan Todorov, in The Conquest of America, declared there’s no difference between
Christians ingesting the sacramental bread and wine and Aztecs cutting out the
hearts of their sacrificial victims. Hernando
Cortes and the conquistadores are
routinely demonized. But Indians,
who routinely offered human sacrifices to their gods and indulged in
cannibalism, are always treated sympathetically. They lived according to their cultures’ code.
To historians like Stannard and Todorov, cultural relativism is an
article of faith until one deals with Cortes or Christians, who are wrong all
the time in all places!
In
fact, Cortes conquered Mexico because the Aztecs’ Indian foes assisted him. And his much-lamented Spanish
brutalities were, primarily, the result of following their Indians allies’
approach to war, for the Tlascalans insisted: “’In
fighting the Mexicans . . . we should kill all we could, leaving no one alive:
neither the young, lest they should bear arms again, nor the old, lest
they give counsel’” (p. 58). The
religion and culture of the Aztecs, Windschuttle inists, “made it necessary
for Cortes to destroy Tenochtitlan and kill most of its inhabitants.
The Mexica had no concept of surrender and the transfer of power to the
victor. During the final stages
of the siege, Cortes made several attempts to negotiate with the remaining
Mexican lords but was rebuffed. They
refused any terms save a swift death. Even
with all their warriors either dead or unarmed and the people starving, they
responded to further mass killings from cannon and handgun not by surrendering
but by pressing on to destruction. Exasperated,
Cortes decided to raze the city, and unleashed his native allies who massacred
the remnants of the defenseless men, women and children” (p. 54).
Turning
to the history of Hawaii and Australia, Windschuttle shows how postmodern
historians are re-imaging and rewriting the past with little concern for
empirical data. Underlying this
approach is Michel Foucault, the anti-humanist, anti-history historian whose
theories largely shape “the directions history is now taking” (p. 131).
He’s especially noted for his rejection of the “humanism of the
modern era” (p. 134). To
Faucault, there is no “autonomous” human person, no subjective self.
Indeed, neither consciousness nor free will nor external reality are
real. Our words and the way we
interpret them are all there is.
Foucault’s
radical relativism, of course, subverts itself.
He claimed that all cultural groups have their own “truths,” none
of which is objective or universal. Histories
are mere “fictions.” Yet he
assumed, of course, that his thesis—all cultures normalize only small “truths”—is
True for all cultures at all times everywhere!
Toward the end of his life, he began back-peddling, suggesting that
perhaps one must be a “subject” of some sort, capable of real moral acts.
“He defines the basic practice of ethics as self-mastery that is
derived from ‘the thoughtful practice of freedom.’
Unfortunately, neither he nor his supporters like to admit that he has
thereby jettisoned key passages of his earlier work. But rather than admit he was mistaken or wrong, they dealt
out equivocations such as ‘shifts
of emphasis’, ‘discontinuities’ and a similar range of euphemisms”
(pp. 148-149).
With
the collapse of the USSR one would have expected a related retreat of Marxism.
Such has not, however, occurred. Tactics
have simply shifted. Rather than
hoping to overthrow capitalistic regimes through revolution, Marxists now work
to reform and ultimately transform them through “creeping socialism.”
Adopting the approach of Antonio Gramsci, this led to “leftist
participation in the upper reaches of government, education, the law and the
media, as well as lobby groups concerned with environmental, feminist,
homosexual, ethnic and welfare issues” (p. 185). Infiltrating the historical profession, they have replaced
the empirically-based narrative with
a “grand theorist” method that explains the past in terms of class
struggle and historical dialectic.
Windshuttle
finally examines efforts to kill history by reducing it to a social science or
re-casting it as imaginative literature—as did Hayden White, who declared,
in his influential Metahistory: “’The aged Kant was right, in short: we are free to conceive “history” as we please, just as
we are free to make of it what we will’” (p. 258).
And that, precisely, is our problem!
Kant’s heirs are killing history!