DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
"THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION"
(From Ernst Mayr, 1972, Science, vol. 176, p. 981-989)
What were the retarding concepts that blinded Darwin's forerunners?
• Creationism
• Essentialism
• (Lyellian) Uniformitarianism
What sorts of scientific logic were common to anti-evolutionists?
• Either/or alternatives only
• No effort to falsify claims
• Reality of species necessarily implied their "fixity."
Six major elements of the Darwinian revolution
Scientific Replacements
1) Earth of great age
2) Refutation of both Progressionism and steady-state organic world
3) Refutation of automatic progress
Meta-scientific consequences
4) Rejection of Creationism (i.e., an intervening Creator)
5) Replacement of Essentialism and Nominalism by population thinking
6) Anthropocentrism abolished
_________________________________________________________
The furious response which the Origin of Species received at the hands of its critics was surely a reaction to the logic of a simple argument from acceptable premises that led inexorably to an unacceptable conclusion.
-- J. Howard, Darwin, 2001, p. 24.
Those who appealed to evidence, therefore, misrepresented the question by suggesting that evidence could settle it. But belief about the miraculous, one way or another, required a prior belief, that is, an epistemic [epistemologic] commitment....Scientists do not believe one episteme is superior to another because they are in it; rather, they are in it because they believe it is superior, and this belief is a product of their experience.
-- N. C. Gillespie, Darwin and the Problem of Creation, 1979, p. 5, 150.
(From Ernst Mayr, 1972, Science, vol. 176, p. 981-989)
What were the retarding concepts that blinded Darwin's forerunners?
• Creationism
• Essentialism
• (Lyellian) Uniformitarianism
What sorts of scientific logic were common to anti-evolutionists?
• Either/or alternatives only
• No effort to falsify claims
• Reality of species necessarily implied their "fixity."
Six major elements of the Darwinian revolution
Scientific Replacements
1) Earth of great age
2) Refutation of both Progressionism and steady-state organic world
3) Refutation of automatic progress
Meta-scientific consequences
4) Rejection of Creationism (i.e., an intervening Creator)
5) Replacement of Essentialism and Nominalism by population thinking
6) Anthropocentrism abolished
_________________________________________________________
The furious response which the Origin of Species received at the hands of its critics was surely a reaction to the logic of a simple argument from acceptable premises that led inexorably to an unacceptable conclusion.
-- J. Howard, Darwin, 2001, p. 24.
Those who appealed to evidence, therefore, misrepresented the question by suggesting that evidence could settle it. But belief about the miraculous, one way or another, required a prior belief, that is, an epistemic [epistemologic] commitment....Scientists do not believe one episteme is superior to another because they are in it; rather, they are in it because they believe it is superior, and this belief is a product of their experience.
-- N. C. Gillespie, Darwin and the Problem of Creation, 1979, p. 5, 150.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
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