Michael Ruse on Purpose: The Flies in the Ointment – Discovery Institute

Photo: Flies in amber, by Manukyan Andranik, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

I have been reviewing philosopher Michael Ruses book,On Purpose. (See my post yesterday,here.) I turn now to certain problems with his work. First, Ruses dismissal of all other teleological positions save his own presumes that science has moved on (153) since current evolutionary theory has ruled all transcendent forms obsolete. Anything else has to remain your opinion trumped by todays Darwinian science (153). Such scientistic reductionism is troubling, revealing a fallacy that C. S. Lewis has calledchronological snobbery,the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited([1955] 1991, 114). This occurs elsewhere, as when Ruse dismisses debates over intelligent design and the anthropic principle because they have a very old-fashioned look about them. A bit like arguing about whether it is moral for women to use the pill (128).However, arguments for the kind of external teleology and vitalism in biology along with cosmic fine-tuning that Ruse so glibly dismisses hardly belong to a bygone era (Denton 1998; Gonzalez and Richards 2004; Schnborn 2007; Sheldrake 2012; Lewis and Barnes 2016; Turner 2017). Ruses comparison with the pill seems more silly and strained than clever and convincing.

Ruses chronological snobbery might be forgiven if the claims he makes for Darwinism can be unequivocally substantiated. But add to scientistic reductionism and chronological snobbery a third interrelated objection:Whiggishness. The obsessive Darwinian triumphalism on almost every page suggests Herbert Butterfields coinage as the unfortunate tendency . . . to praise revolutions provided they have been successful. . . and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present, an unwarranted factual abridgment causing presentist extravagance to fly into the sky . . . when in reality it requires to be brought to earth ([1931] 1965, v, 99). For example, Ruse applauds DawkinssThe Selfish Gene(1976) for demonstrating that humans are simply survival machines taking God and vital forces and those sorts of things out of the equation. Molecules in motion is all we have (86). But the selfish gene concept has received harsh criticism then and now for its many misconceptions and untestable assertions (Langley 1978; Wade 1979; Noble 2011). As Charles Langley noted, Everything is revealed to Dawkins [and apparently to Ruse] by a glimpse of Darwinian theory, but the concept is untrue to the science of evolutionary biology (1978, 692). Chapters nine on Human Evolution and ten on Mind form the core of Ruses Darwinian infatuations. Darwins hedgehog follows Darwins bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley, in showing that comparisons of human and chimp brains prove that we did come from monkeys (156). These monkey-to-man links are nonetheless at best superficial and at worst (particularly in Huxleys case) calculated subterfuges (Cosans 2009). Ruses proclaimed significance of our genetic affinities with chimps is equally overrated (Cohen 2007). In fact, Alfred Russel Wallaces insistence that it is difficult to explain human exceptionalism those unique human capacities for abstract thought, mathematics, music, art, etc. by the conventional operations of natural selection, the very principle he cofounded, is still very much in play (Varki, Geschwind, and Eichler 2008; Diamani 2009). While easy extrapolations of bonobo and other primate-to-human behaviors might be the preferred answer in that freshman biology exam, some very good scientists would favor different answers (Penn, Holyoak, and Povinelli 2008;Bolhuis and Wynn 2009; Shettleworth 2012). Yet Ruse blithely asserts his Darwinian monism as if an undisputed fact.

Of course if it serves to make his point, Ruse readily abandons his chronological snobbery in favor of Noam Chomskys sixty-odd year-old research that showed convincinglythat language is not something purely cultural but that all languages . . . share certain innate deep structures a kind of biological ground plan on which everything is based (173). But Chomskys much-touted universal grammar or grammatical recursion is in serious doubt. The Pirah people of South America vis--vis Daniel Everett have taught Chomsky his most important linguistics lesson, namely, that language appears to indeed be a cultural tool of human invention rather than a product of evolutionary determinism (Everett 2011; Wolfe 2016; Wood et al. 2017).

Additional examples of such fallacies could be heaped upon Ruses head, but any more might invite charges of cruelty to hedgehogs. In fairness, despite Ruses adamant convictions and his constant use of science as a synecdoche for Darwinism, he has always exhibited a surprising sense of proportion. For example, he chides his fellow Darwinians for their Darwin Day excesses, complaining, The next thing is they will be putting him in a manger (210-211). For more on this see hisDarwinism as Religion(2017). Ruse is true to his Darwinian progenitors. One is reminded of Huxleys recoiling against the Comtian positivists of his day passionate enthusiasts like Frederic Harrison and John Henry Bridges for trying to make science a religion. Ruse is also well aware that Darwinian evolution has become an authors playground and a publishers paradise, admitting some years ago that Darwin and his ideas are being co-opted for all sorts of ends (Ruse 1996, 231). The Darwin Industry shows few signs of reducing production. Although you will not find it here, he has been pretty hard on the so-called New Atheists too.

Tomorrow, MichaelRuse on Purpose: A Conflicted Response.

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Michael Ruse on Purpose: The Flies in the Ointment - Discovery Institute