Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Traipse through history: Darwinism was an illogical faith fifty years ago, and nothing’s changed

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Around 1959, the centenary year of he publication of the Origin, when neo-Darwinian triumphalism was at its height, a very astute philosopher named Marjorie Grene wrote an essay entitled “The Faith of Darwinists.” [Encounter 74 (November 1959), 48.] She observed that all the Darwinian books she had read violated a rule of logic by assuming the truth of what they were claiming to prove. And she was struck by how the theory of evolution can seem so certain to the Darwinian faithful, while being so obviously flawed to a philosopher on the outside like herself Little has changed in the past forty years. In fact, with the collapse of Marx and Freud, the intellectual establishment now clings to Darwinism with even greater fervor. It is their creation myth. And it is not clear how it will finally be retired.

– George Sim Johnston, Did Darwin Get It Right?: Catholics and the Theory of Evolution (OSV, 1998), p. 22.

Move over, Jerry Fodor, and make room for a lady.

(Note: Grene, a philosopher of biology, is said to be a key influence on Michael Polanyi, a philosopher of science the ID theorists like. Interview that discusses this here.)

Comments
OT: The Myth of Junk DNA is now available from Amazon. And, I get to go the to the book party without worrying about missing Game 5 of the Mavericks-Lakers series, because the Mavericks swept the Lakers in four games. Go MAVS!Mung
May 9, 2011
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She observed that all the Darwinian books she had read violated a rule of logic by assuming the truth of what they were claiming to prove.
There's nothing wrong with assuming some proposition is true and then testing that hypothesis.Mung
May 9, 2011
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