Category Archives: Darwinism

Heres a fair question: Why do I prattle on so much about scholastic philosophy? Of what genuine relevance is it to intelligent design, and how is it of help in our twilight struggle with Darwinism and materialism?

My quick answer (and quite honest) is that I love it. The metaphysical perspective of the great scholastic philosophers hylomorphismis the best idea anyone ever had. At least, the best secular idea anyone ever had. There is a deep beauty and encompassing rationality to the Aristotelian-Thomist way of understanding the world. It can be said that Aristotle was the last man to know everything that could be known in his time, and that Aquinas was the last great systematic philosopherthe last philosopher/theologian to put together a coherent system for understanding all of reality. It is a way of understanding the world that is at once true and beautiful (and St. Thomas would say that truth and beauty are really the same thing). And I think that he pretty much got it right.

How does this help in the struggle between design and Darwinian materialism? Do beauty and truth really play a role in this fight in the trenches of 21stcentury science and culture? I think they do, in a practical way.

The fundamental modernist error is Nominalism. Nominalism, which is a philosophical school that had a foreshadowing in antiquity but fruition in the 14thcentury, is the belief that universals dont exist independently of the mind. It is the view that such general things as justice or humanity or mathematics are merely concepts, with no real instantiation in the extra-mental world. Nominalism is the view that universals are just names, without instantiated reality. It is a view in contrast to the radical realism of Plato, who believed that universals existed in perfect Forms in a realm more real than our own, and to the moderate realism of Aristotle, who believed (in characteristically moderate fashion) that universals had an extra-mental reality in this world, but not in the Platonic world of Forms.

The problem with Nominalism is that it detached and eventually isolated the mind from the world, and evolved over time into the Cartesian dualist model of the mind that man was a composite of two separate substances, mental and physical. Modern materialists simply discarded Descartes mental substance, and built their metaphysical structure (tottering as it is) on matter merely a substance extended in space. It is through matter, and matter alone, that materialists try to explain the world. And of course stuff extended in space left no necessary room for God, which pleased newly emboldened atheists no end.

Materialism, the witless spawn of Nominalism and Cartesian dualism, provided passable grounding for some aspects of modern science, especially after Bacon discarded teleology as a principle of nature and Newton developed a rather successful cosmology based on the analogy of nature to a machine. Mechanical philosophy, the ideological substrate of materialism, became the default metaphysical stance of modern science.

But an explanation for life seemed beyond the reach of even most passionate materialist. Stuff extended in space seemed (to the unreflective atheist) adequate to investigate rocks and such, but living things manifest a breath-taking complexity and purpose that no one in their right mind could attributed to just extended stuff. Richard Dawkins got it right: materialism left an atheist intellectually unfulfilled.

Fulfillment came in 1859. Darwins survivors survived theory put life into the machine of nature, and seemed (if you dont really think about it) to explain the uncanny adaptation of living things to the natural world. If they didnt adapt, theyd die! thats how it all happened! The non-adaptive ones are dead, the adaptive ones are alive! Biology is explained! Atheisms shiny new creation myth put out pseudopods into science and culture, degrading both in ways painful to examine. Fairy tales became scientific explanations, and they werent even nice fairy tales. In the Darwinian myth, mans highest attributes evolved due to his lowest dispositions. Eugenics was and is the inevitable outcome of Darwins sanguinary anthropology.

If we are to defeat this madness, for the sake of science and culture and humanity, we must do more than grind Darwinism to dust, as necessary (and satisfying) as that is.

We must replace it. And the replacement must be something true and moral. Hylemorphism, the metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas, is the metaphysical system that Nominalism and Mechanical Philosophy and materialism and Darwinism replaced, yetit remains the one metaphysical system utterly opposed to the idiot and ugly errors of Darwins fairy tale.

My hope is that the ID movement can move toward an Aristotelian and Thomist critique of Darwinism. It is the most effective way I think the only really effective way to kick out the foundation of Nominalism and Mechanical Philosophy on which Darwin and his children built their fiction.

Photo: Carving of Aristotle, Chartres Cathedral, by Wellcome Images, via Wikicommons.

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Why Aristotle and Aquinas? - Discovery Institute

70 years in a nations timeline is substantial. Time is fleeting, so are political ideologies, ideologues, instruments and applications. The theory of Darwinism is applicable not just to living beings but also to live institutions.

Survival of the fittest applies even to political parties in democracies across the world Those who adapt survive, those who wont perish. I strongly believe this evolutionary challenge is currently underway in the political ecosystem of India.

Indian National Congress is a pre-independent political entity. It was primarily set up as a common platform for fighting and achieving freedom. Prior to 1947, freedom from the British was a singular ideology and objective for all Indians.

Mahatma Gandhis advice to Nehru to shut down Congress party was in the true spirit of democracy. Bapu did not see the relevance of Congress party in its old form after independence. However, the decision to outrun Bapus advice and continue Congress party was driven out of a well-conceived dynastic plot by Jawaharlal Nehru. In retrospect, the contemporary history is a testament to that pre-conceived plot. India today has the 5th generation of Nehru scions at the helm of Congress, the dynastic party.

First things first. A dynasty was irrelevant even in 1947 right after independence; as we are a democratic republic, its even more irrelevant today. The irrelevance incremented all the way till 2014, with every generation of Nehrus dynasty experiencing power.

Congress party was rendered irrelevant in 2014 General Election, where it won just 44 MP seats from across India and that pattern continues till date in almost all the subsequent state or local body elections. Indian voters message is very clear to Congress party: your politics wont work anymore.

However, Congress continues to ignore that message, in the dynastic arrogance that it has been stuck for over 70 years. Anyone else would have understood the anger and disenchantment, Congress party wouldnt and it refuses to acknowledge even today.

It has over the period turned into a thick-skinned, unscrupulous, self-serving and un-empathetic political formation, which lost its ability to be sensitive to its immediate environment. It happens, when you outgrow your relevance and purpose. No wonder it is naturally progressing itself to possible extinction. It proves the relevance of Darwinism in the political ecosystem.

I foresee an unprecedented extinction of Congress party from the mainstream political system of India. It will be quite tough for Congress to accomplish even a double-digit tally in the next General Election. This is not my partisan pre-electoral assessment 2 years in advance, but an outcome of incisive analysis of changing mindscape of the Indian voter.

If Congress has to correct its course, the time is now. If it has to survive, it has to reinvent itself as a new political organization under non-Nehruvian regime. Theres no other way out, no other cosmetic correction will save this dinosaur from extinction.

BJP is blessed with regeneration and re-adaptation intrinsically, owing to a professionally managed, democratic, political organisation. That is how, just under two decades the first of its political formation, Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS), merged into Janata Party for a contextual fight against rampant corruption in 1970.

Being a listening and feeling organisation, it re-emerged in 1980 as Bharatiya Janata Party with a progressive ideology of integral humanism and nation first. BJP has a built-in organisational mechanism through its core values to be grounded and to eternally have its ear to the ground.

BJP further evolved and adapted to the needs of changing India, through a change of old guard and redrawing its ideology to focus on the larger needs of Indians and India. Inclusive development, transparent governance, corruption-free administration and global leadership are the aspirations of 1.25 billion people. Thats exactly what is being promised and delivered by the BJP government under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi.

BJP understands, empathises and redirects its political agenda, adapting to the changing needs of the electorate. This singular competence is enabling BJP to lead the entire political ecosystem of India.

Parties like Congress are incapable of natural progression and evolution owing to their dynastic liabilities, highly centralised leadership, numbed and dumbed political leadership through incessant corruption.

These contrasting natural strengths and weaknesses of these two national political organisations, is the reason for the steady and steep rise of BJP, which is bound to continue till a credible alternative evolves in the national scene. However, it seems unlikely that a credible alternative evolves, even in the next decade.

Communist parties have no relevance in a democracy. Original Communist ideology is of single party rule. Communist system of governance is a clear alternative model to the democratic system of governance. Its imperative that Communist parties are fundamentally irrelevant in a democracy. The local fusion of democratic values and Communist ideology is a disastrous model.

It is like Indian Chinese fusion fast food recipes, which are far from any authenticity and originality. Communist parties have been in Indian political ecosystem for over a century and have made zero impact on the composite governance model of India. Relevance of these parties in New India is not even a point of discussion. Communist parties today are at the bottom of the food chain and are left with no survival opportunities. Extinction is imminent.

Regional satraps are what they are, satraps to national parties. The extinction of one leads to the other naturally. The current situation of UPA exemplifies this evolutionary trend. This coalition of losers is left with just 5 parties, with only DMK as a noteworthy partner.

Congress party, the primary host of almost all the regional parties in India in the last five decades, finds itself deserted by its foster children. Most of the regional parties are micro models of Congress party, they are mom & pop stores. While their original origins are through much proclaimed differentiation from the national entities, their post power equations are quite similar to their mother model dynastic politics.

The agenda of regional partisanship, protection of regional identity, development of the regional parties gets quickly diluted to their eternal quest to stay in power, no matter what. It leads to family control, nepotism, massive corruption, misgovernance and divisive appeasement politics. Regional parties which seemed to control the national governments for over two decades in the past have lost their strength, with their loss of regional credibility.

In 2014, Indian voters gave BJP and PM Narendra Modi a decisive new mandate with their changing priorities. They have removed any dependence on regional parties for delivering the governance agenda. As I see, this mandate will only get more decisive going forward to 2019.

This consistent voter pattern against regional satraps has been established in state elections across India, where the electorate chose BJP against very popular regional parties. Regional parties are fast losing their credibility. Its the rigidity built into their political model, which works against their basic survival in a rapidly transforming new political environment across India.

New India needs inclusive development, progressive policies, citizen-centric administration, transparent governance, corruption-free and accountable leadership. New India aspires for credibility, respect, results and global leadership. Congress and regional satraps are being oblivious to these rising standards for public office, growing aspirations over public leadership.

Unacceptable, petty and divisive politics for family control, survival politics for relevance, is being rejected across India. Darwinism is more relevant than ever in Indian politics. Those who adapt will survive, others will perish.

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Darwinism: Old politics will perish - The Hans India

Intellectual discovery is often a matter of rediscovery: revivinginsights that were available before but overlooked, forgotten, or neglected. Think of the European Renaissance with its rediscovery of ancient Greek philosophy and other classical ideas.

In the context of arguments for intelligent design, historian Michael Flannery has pointed to the precedent for design thinking in Alfred Russel Wallaces break from Charles Darwin, after the two scientists had together revealed the theory of evolution by natural selection. Biologist Michael Denton draws in his books on a tradition represented by thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Harvard biological chemist Lawrence Henderson (1878-1942). And so on.

In his important forthcoming book, Purpose & Desire: What Makes Something Alive and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It(HarperOne),State University of New York biologist J. Scott Turner recovers the thought of French physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878), another Darwin contemporary.

Dr. Turners book is a riveting instance of intellectual and scientific rediscovery, highlighting Bernards insight on the phenomenon of homeostasis, buried by the craze for materialism, what evolutionist Ernst Mayer called physics envy, which reduced life to mechanism and fatally misunderstood it in the process.Professor Turner writes:

The story of how Bernards fundamentally vitalist conception of homeostasis because transformed into its modern anodyne, tame, and neutered form of mechanism a clockwork homeostasis, if you will illustrates the most pernicious feature of epistemic closure: its ever-increasing reliance on narrative, rather than evidence, to sustain it.

Note that Turner isnt a proponent of intelligent design theory, but of a different yet still profound alterative to shallow Darwinism. His book, delightfully written for the general reader, is fascinating evidence of the ferment driving the search for something to take the place of fast-failing evolutionary theory.

The book wont be released till September 12, so now is the time to pre-order. If you do, then we are offering two excellent free e-books to go with it and enhance your own intellectual discovery. They are Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet, by Dr. Denton, andMetamorphosis: The Case for Intelligent Design in a Chrysalis, which I edited with contributions from Paul Nelson, Jonathan Witt, Ann Gauger, and more.

Look here for details about pre-ordering Purpose & Desire! The deal with the free e-books is of limited duration. Dont miss out on it!

Photo: Location ofClaude Bernards laboratory in Paris, 1847-1878, by Jebulon (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Biologist J. Scott Turner's Rediscovery How Darwinism Fatally Overlooks What Life Is - Discovery Institute

The evolutionary biologist, Jerry Coyne,writes a blog entitled, Why Evolution is True.

One would think that by choosing that title, Coyneshould restrict his discussions to questions of science that touch on questions and explanations abouthow and why life changes over time.

But Coyneas many Darwinists dotakes the question beyond science, and extrapolates evolutionary theoryinto questions of morality, philosophy, and ethics.

And now, he is promoting the propriety of infanticide. From, Should One be Allowed to EuthanizeSeverely Deformed or Doomed Newborns?:

If you are allowed to abort a fetus that has a severe genetic defect, microcephaly, spina bifida, or so on, then why arent you able to euthanize that same fetus just after its born?

I see no substantive difference that would make the former act moral and the latter immoral.

After all, newborn babies arent aware of death, arent nearly as sentient as an older child or adult, and have no rational faculties to make judgments (and if theres severe mental disability, would never develop such faculties). It makes little sense to keep alive a suffering child who is doomed to die or suffer life in a vegetative or horribly painful state.

Coyne makes the boringly predictable claim that since we euthanize our sick pets, we should also kill seriously ill and disabled babies. He then explains why he thinks the reasons we resist that meme are wrong, and indeed, irrational.From his blog:

The reason we dont allow euthanasia of newborns is because humans are seen as special, and I think this comes from religionin particular, the view that humans, unlike animals, are endowed with a soul.

Its the same mindset that, in many places, wont allow abortion of fetuses that have severe deformities. When religion vanishes, as it will, so will much of the opposition to both adult and newborn euthanasia.

Well, no. As I have written repeatedly, human exceptionalism can include religious views, but it definitely does not require them. As Coynes advocacy proves, once we reject human exceptionalism, universal human rights becomes unsustainable, and we move toward the manufacture ofkillable and exploitablecastes of people, determined by the moral views of those with the power to decide.

Moreover, some of the most vociferous opponents of infanticide are disability rights activistswho are generally secular in outlook, liberal politically, and not pro-life on abortion. But they see the euthanasia and infanticide agendas as targeting people with disabilities. The advocacy of Coyne, Peter Singer (see below), and others of their materialistic ilkproves they are correct.

Besides, if allowable abortion is the lodestar, then any baby could be killed. At the very least, the killable categories of infants would include babies with Down syndrome, dwarfism, and even, cleft palateall reasons given forlate term abortion.

Adding heft to that argument, Coyne cites the advocacy ofSinger to validate his own position. Singerbelieves all babies are killable as so-called human non-persons, and moreover, he has infamously used Down babies and newborns with hemophilia as examples of acceptable infanticide subjects.

Coyneconcludes with the believe thatcontemporary times will be looked down upon as brutal for not allowing infanticide:

In the future well look back on our present society and say, How brutal not to have been allowed to do that.

Coynes odious advocacyis the logical outcome ofaccepting the following premises:

Many scientists bemoan the fact that so many people refuse to accept evolution as a fact. Without getting into that controversy, perhaps they would be better off ruing the fact that ever since Darwin published The Origin of Species,so many of the promoters of that view also couple it with anti-humanism and a moral philosophy that was judged a crime against humanity at Nuremberg.

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Does Darwinism Lead to Infanticide Acceptance? | National Review - National Review

The Spectator's view: Don't erase Ryerson's name TheSpec.com To blame him for the evils in a system largely built and operated after his death is as unfair as blaming Charles Darwin's writings on evolution for the vicious social Darwinism of the Nazis. Moreover, focusing on this aspect of Ryerson's career ...

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The Spectator's view: Don't erase Ryerson's name - TheSpec.com

In his important new book, coming out on September 12 from HarperOne, State University of New York biologist J. Scott Turner tells the story about the Christmas pony. As a gift for a child who wants a pony, a poor family could afford only a pile of horse manure. Traipsing downstairs on Christmas morning to behold this well-intentioned mess, the child delightedly squealed and clapped.

Her parents asked her why. She answered, Because I know theres a pony in there somewhere.

In evaluating the coherence of Darwinian theory, Dr. Turner finds many of his fellow biologists in much the same mood. Squealing and clapping, they know theres a coherent theory in there somewhere.

His book, Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something Alive and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It, underlines that Turner is not an anti-Darwinist. On the contrary, he explains that I want deeply for it meaning the modern theory of Darwinian evolution to make sense. The reasons for his disillusion, which he outlines in this fascinating contribution to the evolution debate, turn upon long-ignored problems with the theory, and counterevidence from the mysterious nature of life itself.

It is still a couple of months too early for reviews of Purpose and Desire, but Kirkus welcomes it with a pre-publication starred review as an ingenious mixture of science and philosophy that points out major defects in Darwinism and then delivers heterodox but provocative solutionsa highly thought-provoking book.

Turner writes:

For the longest time, weve been able to fudge these problems, carried along on the faith that, to paraphrase the punch line of an old joke, there had to be a pony in there somewhere. But the dread possibility is beginning to rear its head; what if the pony isnt there?

The problem for modern Darwinism is, I argue, that we lack a coherent theory of the core Darwinian concept of adaptation.

It all unravels from there, thanks to unexpected insights from Biologys Second Law homeostasis and the great 19th-century French physiologist Claude Bernard, writing just six years after Darwins Origin of Species. After some delay, the crisis for the evolutionary biologist is at hand.

Without giving away any more punch lines, I recommend this: Pre-order Purpose and Desire now, because if you do so, for a limited time only, youll also get two free e-books to go along with it. The free e-books are Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet, by biologist Michael Denton, andMetamorphosis, which I edited as a companion to the Illustra Media documentary. Find the details here. (Note: When we first pointed out this offer, the web page wasnt working correctly. Its now fixed.)

Well. Turners book is a great read, and while hes not a proponent of ID, he turns a fresh new page for the case for design in nature. Promise: Well have more to say about his argument in due time.

Photo credit: Azaliya (Elya Vatel) stock.adobe.com.

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Biologist Laments, I Want Deeply for [Darwinism] to Make Sense - Discovery Institute

Shiva Ayyadurai believes a lot of odd things.

Most memorably Ayyadurai thinks of himself as the inventor of email, and to that end has sued publicationsTechdirt and Gizmodos former parent company Gawkerwhich have claimed otherwise, despite a wide consensus that electronic mail was created by computing pioneer Ray Tomlinson. Ayyadurai also thinks he has a shot at a seat in the Senate, which is why he plans to run against Elizabeth Warren in 2018.

He also believes Donald Trumps proposed policies on immigration make sense, because uhh, cellular biology, or astronomy, or something.

When hes not tying up the legal system, doing AMAs on Reddits r/the_donald, or making appearances on InfoWars, Ayyadurai posts videos to his little-watched YouTube channel which generally focus on his doomed congressional race. But, his most recent upload, for no particular reason, is an explanation of how DNA worksand, incidentally, of keeping viruses out of the US of A, nearly all of which he cribs from an earlier video entitled Build The Wall - A Scientific Explanation!

How anyone could manage to crowbar politics into a biology 101 lesson? Recall that scientific precepts have been appropriated and misapplied to all sorts of things things that serve the needs of hateful, craven ghouls through the ages: Social Darwinism hiding the vampiric acts of an oligarch class in the armor of natural order; discoveries in genetics and heredity fueling the idea of racial purity which framed ghastly forced sterilization programs as a means of assisting natural selection. Its not institutionalized crueltyits nature!

In the same way all reactionary thought pines to return to some better epoch pastwhen, specifically, was America great?ignorance cloaked in the language of science almost always employs the crutch of an imagined equilibrium in pre-civilization.

Lets check in with Ayyadurai around the 4-minute mark:

By the way, to all of the very educated people who really think Donald Trump and people [who] are right wing or fanatics or whatever you want to call them, that theyre against borders let me just make a slight point here: you notice that the human cell has a cell membrane. This is really a border. And this cell membrane protects the cell. It determines what things go in. So for example, viruses are not allowed inhopefully, if you have a good strong immune systemand certain things are allowed in that go through proper immigration.

And by the way if you look at the universe: if the sun is here and you have the Earth over here we also have an atmosphere so gamma rays and certain things dont come into the earth. Bottom line is: biology, astronomy, teaches us that everything in nature has borders to protect us so its very simple. We also need borders. Different story, but we can learn it all from nature.

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'Inventor of Email' Compares Trump's Immigration Policy to Science - Gizmodo

While its commonplace for snooty, liberal academics to blame men for every misery to betide humanity, boffins at Yale have taken this sexist blame-game to absurd new heights.

They are claiming that modern men are too stupid or feel threatened by their success to date 30-something selfish career women, who are increasingly having to freeze their eggs until they meet men they deem worthy of siring their children.

That is the conclusion of a Yale study that interviewed 150 women at eight IVF clinics in America and Israel and experts admit the trend is identical in the UK.

With 81% having a college degree, in more than 90% of cases, these women were buying extra time because they were experiencing a dearth of educated men. Academics blamed this not on selfish career women but instead sweeping social changes and, of course, men.

The tantalisingly-named Marcia Inhorn, Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, said, There is a major gap they are literally missing men. In simple terms, this is about an oversupply of educated women.

Using all her mighty intellect, Prof Inhorn proffered, Maybe women need to be prepared to be more open to the idea of a relationship with someone not as educated.

At this point, most men will probably be face-palming to the point of whiplash, slugging scotch directly from the bottle or changing their Tinder settings to exclude late-30s careerists.

But the professor is onto something, only shes looking down the wrong end of the telescope. So, allow me to mansplain.

On the manosphere, hypergamy the concept that women will only cynically marry up in terms of status and wealth is a recurrent bone of contention.

Yet the comments under the Telegraph piece show this cynicism is bleeding hard into the mainstream.

Having forlornly waited decades for Mr Right, haunted by the tick-tock of their biological clocks, these women instead now want a Mr Right Now. Whos basically a walking sperm donor.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many men dont want to play that game especially those ultra-desirable, highly-educated, alpha males these women covet.

What the Yale team have spectacularly failed to grasp is that these men arent intimidated by these careerists. Increasingly, they just dont want them. But why not?

Firstly, they are growing wary of women who have decided Im ready! What man wants to go straight from Tinder to the kids section of IKEA without a few years fun first? Its sensible, risk avoidance: making sure shes mother material. Only she doesnt want to wait, cos fertility. So, men avoid them.

Were all increasingly making more informed choices later in life so its a bit rich to claim its a bad thing when men do it. You cant have it both ways, ladies.

Instead, these men are increasingly dating younger women, not because theyre shallow sexists, but because they dont want to have children yet. Again, their body, their choice, doubly so when their reproductive clocks can be ticking strong as they turn into grandfather clocks (see: Ronnie Wood, Rod Stewart, etc)

The report next blames terrifying demographic shifts and sweeping social changes, and here theyre onto something.

With unexpected irony, the gender education gap girls and women now outperform boys and men at every level of education from kindergarten to college is suddenly a problem for women, too.

Not because these entitled careerists suddenly care that, increasingly, boys are destined for a life of servitude, performing the low-paid, dangerous jobs nobody else wants.

But because they cant get laid by a graduate.

Its almost funny.

This problem isnt going away; in fact, its certain to grow. In the UK, there are now 60,000 more women at university than men. Men are a minority on 2/3 campuses. This gender education gap is even worse in America.

A British girl born in 2017 is 75% more likely to attend University. In the UK, women in their 20s now out-earn men.

The gender pay gap has now totally flipped, until childbirth, which is increasingly unlikely for female high-fliers. One in five women in the UK is now childless by the end of their fertile life compared to one in 10 a generation before.

For the first time in human history, reproductive destiny is slipping from womens grasp, and that is due to their own lifestyle choices.

Here, finally Prof Inhorn lays some blame with feminism, saying, As a feminist I think its great that women are doing so well but I think there has been a cost, adding many had been left in sadness and isolation.

Is feminisms greatest victory equality in the workplace starting to look like a bauble if the kickback is the prospect of loneliness and childlessness?

Yales careerists are effectively removing themselves from the gene pool. Only, Darwinism trumps feminism. For we are all mere genetics. DNA doesnt care about equality. It cares only about survival.

Tonight, the women of the have-it-all generation are being kept awake by the grim realisation that their genetics might not even be a part of the next generation.

Is this the cruellest payback of all in the great equality experiment?

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Will Darwinism Kill Feminism? - Heat Street

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and Patricia Gowaty were pioneers. Yet their work is still contentiousand their contribution all too often ignored by Angela Saini / July 6, 2017 / Leave a comment

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (left) and Patricia Gowaty (right) corrected myths about female animals. Photo: courtesy of the author/Hrdy/Gowaty

When I set out to write a book on what science tells us about womena topic as controversial as it is vastthere was one person I knew I had to meet. So I found myself on the sun-drenched road to Winters, a town in Californias western Sacramento Valley. Here, a picturesque walnut farm is home to one of the most incredible women in science, a thinker whose work one researcher told me reduced her to tears. Anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, now professor emerita at the University of California, Davis, can reasonably be credited with transforming the way biologists think about females.

Everything I am interested in, initially, its personal, she told me as we parked ourselves in deep couches outside her study. Now in her seventies, Hrdy came from a conservative American family which made its money from oil. I grew up in South Texas, a deeply patriarchal, deeply racist part of the world. The juxtaposition between this and her current liberal Californian life could not be starker. But its also no accident.

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Bluebirds, babies, and orgasms: the women scientists who fought Darwinism's sexist myths - Prospect

Yesterday on NPRs Morning Edition, the historian Jon Meacham was on to talk about the political moment. Meacham had some interesting things to say. But in the course of the conversation he said this:

You know, Woodrow Wilson once said one of the tensions in the United States would be, is the Constitution going to end up being Darwin or Newton? And its really well put. Right now, its feeling more Darwinian. Trump embodies an idea or a reality that strength is what matters. Its a struggle for the survival of the fittest in a bizarre, media-driven environment.

Readers may surmise that I dont have much of a problem with this criticism of the current president. But as a dues-paying member of Woodrow Wilson Haters International, I really cant let this stand.

Woodrow Wilson did not describe this Darwin versus Newton thing as a tension. Rather, he was emphatic that the Constitution was Darwinian and that anyone who thought it was Newtonian was a boob.

Wilson said:

The Constitution was founded on the law of gravitation. The government was to exist and move by virtue of the efficacy of checks and balances. The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can have its organs offset against each other, as checks, and live.

And:

Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop.

Meachams pejorative use of Darwinian here is very different from what Wilson had in mind. Meacham is conjuring the survival-of-the-fittest view of Darwin. What Wilson had in mind was almost the complete opposite. Wilson associated Darwinism with all social progress. He believed that all of government, and society, should harmonize and work together as one unit or body politic, to evolve into one organic entity, with no internal division. Thats what he meant by no living thing can have its organs offset against each other.

The Newtonian view, (which is really the Founders view, somewhat by way of Locke and Montesquieu) holds that conflict between different branches of government, and between the people and their leaders, are good and healthy and protective of liberty.

So, in a sense one could say Trump is Darwinian insofar as he wants everybody else to get with his program. The press should shut up and fall in line, the Democrats should stop their obstruction, the Senate should get rid of the legislative filibuster, and the whole country should unite around him. But thats not how Meacham meant it. And, to be fair to Trump, thats largely how Barack Obama saw things too. Indeed, politicians almost always think the country should be unified around them.

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Woodrow Wilson & Donald Trump's Darwinian vs. Newtonian ... - National Review