Excerpts from Michael Ruse
by MikeGeneAfter my recent blog about Robert Chambers, it has occurred to me that I have not sufficiently plugged a very good book: The Evolution-Creation Struggle, by Michael Ruse. If I get the opportunity, I would like to write up a review. Suffice it to say that Ruse's book is extremely helpful for seeing the current debates about intelligent design in a much larger and richer historical context. Here is something to whet your appetite, where Ruse discusses the leading scientists who gave birth to the Modern Synthesis:
"How were Fisher and Wright able to get away with it? They were producing professional quality, evolutionary biology and yet they were as much influenced by progress as Lamarck, Chambers, or Spencer. The answer is that they tried to have it both ways. In principle, the fundamental theory and the adaptive landscape do not have to be interpreted in a progressionist fashion. The upward path can get reversed. As landscapes change, everything might get taken back down to a lower point. We humans could become Eloi or Morlocks. So neither Fisher nor Wright made cultural values a necessary part of their evolutionary picture.
But this said, if one wanted to continue with a progressionist evolution, the opportunities were there to be grasped. For the English, it meant a kind of souped-up Darwinism, with progress really incorporated into the causal picture in a way that eluded Darwin himself. For the Americans, it meant a kind of souped-up Spencerianism, with progress really incorporated into the causal picture in a way that Spencer beyond the grave must have applauded. From Fisher's and Wright's theories of population genetics, it was but a few easy steps to a metaphysics of evolutionism. [p. 182]
Like Ford, Dobzhansky and his followers realized that any hint of cultural values as a driving force behind their work would be fatal to its prospects for becoming a respected professional discipline. They set out deliberately to purify their own work and anything to which they gave their seal of appeal. As part of their campaign to revitalize evolutionary studies, they founded a new journal, Evolution.
Ernst Mayr, a German born ornithologist, was the first editor, and his letters to prospective contributors made very clear the need to stay away from dangerous ideas"¦.Was the progressionist coloring of Wright's theory a deep embarrassment to these American supporters of the synthetic theory of evolution (as they labeled the project)? Had progress become a phylogenetic relic in science, like the appendix? Absolutely not. To a person, all the new professional, American evolutionists were ardent progressionists, and for most of them that was precisely why they had been attracted to evolutionary studies in the first place. Like Cuvier over a hundred years before, they realized that for professional reasons they had to play the game of being culture value-free, otherwise there would be no grants, no prestigious university posts, no students, no respect. Evolution was their profession. But evolutionism was their obsession.
Their strategy was clever and simple. They would publish two sets of books. One professional, with no hint of progress. One popular, with much talk of progress. Two messages, for two audiences. Most instructive was the example of paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson. In 1944 he published Tempo and Mode in Evolution, in which he applied population genetics, specifically Wright's shifting balance theory, to the fossil record. The work was spartan in its avoidance of anything extrascientific. In 1953 he published a revision of this work, with the new title Major Features of Evolution. Again, not a hint of progress or any other cultural value. But in between, in 1949, Simpson delivered a set of public lectures at Yale University which were collected into a book, The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man. Biological progress was the connecting thread throughout, and the basis of life's major social directives. "[pp. 186-188]
January 6th, 2006 at 11:06 am
It's a good thing they didn't have the internet back in the ol' days. It may have even led to a book, Evolution: The Progressionist's Trojan Horse.
Comment by MikeGene — January 6, 2006 @ 11:06 am
January 6th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Mike - A question, if you please (because I'm curious). At what point in the process did evolutionary theory become NON-progressivist? What caused the position-flip? I'm wondering if this was due to sociopolitical pressures after the eugenics 'Movement' got a bad rep from Hitler, or if it was a result of the incorporation of reliable particulate inheritance. Does Ruse address this?
Comment by Joy — January 6, 2006 @ 11:51 am
January 6th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
I did a review of the book last spring. Since you're stirring up interest in the book, I've put my review up on my blog:
http://ragesossscholar.blogspot.com/2006/01/review-of-evolution-creation-struggle.html
In short, it's definitely a good one to plug, especially right now with all the abuse of history going on in the wake of the Dover trial.
Comment by ragesoss — January 6, 2006 @ 10:36 pm
January 6th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Ragesoss,
Thanks for writing up that nice review. Yes, the section on Huxley was indeed quite interesting. Let me provide another excerpt from Ruse:
Fascinating (and very revealing) is the fact that Huxley, the arch-evolutionist, taught virtually no evolution to his own students. He was a brilliant teacher, whose lectures spread over two years and required over a hundred and fifty classes (not to mention practica where one dissected specimens). Yet during this course, which was a marvel of detail and instruction, evolution was lucky to get half a lecture, and natural selection five minutes! This fact amazed not a few students themselves. "One day when I was talking to him, our conversations turned upon evolution. "˜There is one thing about you I cannot understand,' I said, "˜and I should like a word in explanation. For several months now I have been attending your course, and I have never heard you mention evolution, while in your public lectures everywhere you openly proclaim yourself an evolutionist." The answer is that evolution just did not fit into Huxley's vision of science education. In class he had time "to put facts fully before a trained audience. In my public lectures I am obliged to pass rapidly over the facts, and I put forward my personal convictions."
You also note the following:
Yes, you can clearly see the progressivist philosophy/values in E.O. Wilson's vision. But Dawkins militant atheism is also of the same mind "“ in Dawkins world, using science/evolution to eliminate religion is progress.
Comment by MikeGene — January 6, 2006 @ 11:39 pm
January 7th, 2006 at 12:03 am
Joy,
I'm no expert, but I would say that Fisher/Wright, and their disciples, came up with good science that allowed evolution to steer clear of the progressivist philosophy that had long been coupled to it. I'm sure that eugenics/Nazism had an impact also, especially when the Modern Synthesis was being hashed out in America and Britain. Unfortunately, Ruse doesn't give much attention to the eugenics movement. His argument is that the progressivist philosophy had so thoroughly tainted, and thus thwarted, evolution for so long that many scientists deliberately cut it away.
As SageRoss points out, the parallels between this and the ID movement are striking.
ID obviously comes with its own social/philosophical baggage that must be cut loose if it is ever to become a science. The arguments of Behe and Dembski have taken the first steps in cutting away design from such baggage, but unfortunately, the political activity put it right back. As long as ID proponents keep attaching ID to socio-political agendas, it will never develop into a science.
But even though the cynic can view their arguments as a Trojan horse, it is the direction to go. In fact, one reason some of the more clever critics may insist on the Trojan horse argument is that they know if ID is cut away from the baggage, its chances of becoming a science become much greater. This is why, for some, there will always be Trojan horses all the way down. The Trojan Horse accusation is a way to keep any idea attached to its baggage. That's why I mentioned it was a good thing for science that there were no blogs back in the 50s.
Comment by MikeGene — January 7, 2006 @ 12:03 am
January 7th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Journal of the History of Biology 37: 25"“38, 2004.
© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Michael Ruse's Design for Living
ROBERT J. RICHARDS
http://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles/Richards%20on%20Ruse.pdf
This is Richards' published review of Ruse's Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose?
See also Richards on "Historiography and the Cultural Study of Nineteenth-Century Biology"
http://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles/Cahan–Final%20Draft%20(August).doc
And to be fair
The Romantic Conception of Robert J. Richards by Michael Ruse
http://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/Reviews/Ruse%20on%20Richards.pdf
Journal of the History of Biology, Volume 37, Number 1, 2004, pp. 3-23(21)
Comment by Rock — January 7, 2006 @ 4:34 pm
January 7th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Thanks!
Comment by MikeGene — January 7, 2006 @ 7:21 pm
January 9th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
Thanks for this gem!
Glad to see Mike Gene is still applying his sociological imagination to 'the controversy' over ID. This displays a type of triangular logic at its best and freshest, since the topic is so hot in America these days. Connections with "˜telic thinking' are however, not explicitly evident (steps forward and back?).
The sociological relevance Mike suggests I take to mean this: it is the environment/society (directly or indirectly) acting on scientists, philosophers and theologians that ultimately determines the content of theories, methods, and ID 'developing into a science,' not the individuals themselves.
Drs. Behe and Dembski try to be 'purely objective,' i.e. scientifically (innocent) detached from the baggage and agendas by 'just doing' science, mathematics and statistical philosophy. Yet in so doing, they choose concepts from natural theology (first from Paley and more recently to contradict/mock Dawkins), religious apologetics (i.e. argument from design), invoke the 'information age,' molecular machines, irreducibility (far older than bio-chem), the science and theology discourse and voila! "“ there is a(nother) controversy over origins in America.
Mike's paragraph and my sociological imagination lead to a basic question about ID, also since Dr. Behe wrote that "intelligent design theory has implications for virtually all humane studies, including philosophy, theology, literary criticism, history and more." (1999) The question is as follows:
On topic since the topic of 'progress' and 'progressivism' came up…?
Comment by g arago — January 9, 2006 @ 7:30 pm
January 14th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
g arago,
So that we can read the quotation in its context, where exactly did Behe say this?
Comment by Bilbo — January 14, 2006 @ 6:13 pm
January 16th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
I suspect Mr. arago has quoted Behe out of context, or misquoted him altogether, which is why he has yet to furnish us with the source and context.
Comment by Bilbo — January 16, 2006 @ 1:19 pm
January 16th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
g arago kinda makes Mike's point: "Drs. Behe and Dembski try to be "˜purely objective,' i.e. scientifically (innocent) detached from the baggage and agendas by "˜just doing' science, mathematics and statistical philosophy. Yet in so doing, they choose concepts from natural theology"¦" Etc.
And it has worked both ways though, hasn't it? E.g., Dr. Dembski has described his method as an extension or further refinement of Fisherian statistics. I am not "professionally" qualified to evaluate what Dr. Dembski has described as his contribution. I do know however that the very subject of statistical methods is the source of endless controversy amongst scientists and mathematicians, and probably everyone and his dog Rover has made their own contributions (to the haze if not the light). I have yet to see anyone (qualified to) evaluate the method itself, purely on the grounds of its methodological merits, its utility and effectiveness. Everyone seems to assume (mostly because it has seemed convenient to do so, for the sake of argumentation) that the method is derived from the conclusion, and therefore any "methodological" issues are false and obfuscating. Creationists are almost neuropathologically inclined to reach the wrong conclusions and we don't need to very closely examine how they reach those conclusions. We know they are wrong regardless because we are "purely objective." LOL
So what? Why should we? What's the point? Creationists (like everyone else) can invent "methods" to support their a priori conclusions or beliefs. And of course, that is exactly why we, scientists, require some evaluation of methods independently of the theoretical conclusions derived from employing them. (Which is not to say that methods are theoretically-neutral.)
We seem to quite happy with our conclusion that Dembski's conclusion is false regardless of any method.
If there is no method to effectively detect design where it was not previously thought to exist then everyone's "metaphysical" baggage weighs the same.
Comment by Rock — January 16, 2006 @ 3:01 pm
January 19th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
[...] I couldn't resist these quotes from Ruse's The Evolution-Creation Struggle, on Telic Thoughts. Ruse's book, much praised by MikeGene, is breezy enough, but I don [...]
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