Just Finished Reading: The Darwin Wars – The Scientific battle for the Soul of Man by Andrew Brown.
An interesting bit of Christmas reading I thought. This was basically an overview of the infighting and disagreements within the Evolution community – mainly between the followers of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Gould together with some discussion of the ethical implications of various Darwinian theories.
This was a quick and enjoyable read. Andrew Brown writes in a clear fairly concise way though he did manage to surprise me with some of his pronouncements. One that particularly amazed me (after he admitted to being an atheist) was that the Universe must either be benevolent or malevolent and that a benevolent Universe made more sense. I was astonished that he failed to see a more logical third alternative – that the Universe is indifferent. Despite such lapses he certainly gave me some things to chew over and a helpful list of books to check out. He even prompted me to read the Stephen Gould books that have been collecting dust on my bookshelves. I can recommend this book for anyone interested in the Darwinism debate.
5 comments:
Sounds interesting, and now that I'm not consumed with reading those seat-riveting text books, who knows...
On another topic -
There was a CK sighting over on crazyqueen's blog. I'll now be able to recognize you in a crowd of people shielding their faces with their hands!
Mike said: There was a CK sighting over on crazyqueen's blog. I'll now be able to recognize you in a crowd of people shielding their faces with their hands!
CQ likes taking pictures... I *hate* having my photograph taken. I've even refused the BIG boss when he ordered me to have it taken for a press release!
The book is a good light read. Nothing too taxing for the old brain cells. I know what you mean about reading text books. Its a necessity.. but its *so* good when you stop.
I've been putting off going back into higher education (again) for a while because of uncertainties with my job. But as I've now secured a new one [yeah, me] I'll probably sign up to another Masters next year. Politics this time I think.... [muses].
Not much of a sighting! lol
The book sounds interesting. I'll be picking it up right after The God Delusion. For some reason, my Christian wife wouldn't buy that one for me for Christmas. She's funny that way.
Hi dbackdad, hope you had a fine Christmas. I had God Delusion on pre-order as soon as Amazon had it. It's in the book pile waiting to be read. I guess that I'm savouring it for a while [grin]. I'd be interested to know what you think of it when you've finished it.
SO much to read - so little time... though I do expect to finish another 3 books in the next week...... [rotflmao].
The application of an adjective such as benevolent or malevolent begs the question, "...with respect to what?" Presuming that the first possibility that occurred to me in answer to that question, "Life" or possibly "Life in a form that humans could recognize to be more or less co-equal with regard to 'person-hood'", I would say that "indifferent" wasn't an interesting conclusion and that it dodged the question.
The universe, (assumed, for the sake of discussion) not having anything resembling person-hood, could still be malevolent or benevolent in that context. "Indifferent" might even be considered to be subsumed within "malevolent" because, if the universe does not encourage life (of whichever sort) in any way, then life might not form in more than one place during the entire existence of the universe.
By my guesses in the Drake Equation, there are only about 0.4 planets per galaxy currently existing where person-hood exists at the present time. I assume that the universe is pretty malevolent by most people's standards.
One of the reason that I do not think that there have been person-hoods in our neighborhood is that, if there were, there ought to be signs. Going along with the reasoning in Fermi's Paradox, since there are no signs, there probably hasn't been any.
On the other hand, the universe could be even more malevolent than I suspect it to be. It could be that person-hoodedness means a very high level of competitiveness, and that the competitiveness will grow with the passage of time as the less competitive are weeded out of the population. In the end, it could be that a population that develops enough to go interstellar (possibly only via machine scouts) is so competitive, paranoid and vicious that all other people-hoods are eliminated on a regular basis...
To me, indifference would be a blessing.
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