Book reviewed in this article: Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature. By R. C. Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin.

Michael Ruse’s new anthology Philosophy After Darwin provides great history and background in the major impacts Darwinism has had on philosophy, especially in ethics and epistemology. This review focuses on epistemology understood through the lens of evolution by natural selection. I focus on one of Ruse’s own articles in the collection, which responds to two classic articles by Konrad Lorenz and David Hull on the two major forms of evolutionary epistemology. I side with Ruse against (...) Lorenz’s account of the necessity we think our principles of reasoning have, though I disagree with Ruse’s particular example. I also argue that Ruse’s alternative explanation is lacking. Against Hull, I side with Ruse in his doubts that a sociobiological approach to science will prove fruitful, though I point out that it has certain advantages other approaches do not have. Although I side with Ruse on the issue, I conclude that the two views do not really come into direct conflict and so one needs not reject either. Finally, I discuss Ruse’s positive view and raise questions for his conception of evolutionary epistemology. I conclude that his arguments are insufficient to overcome opposing views and his view has at least as many unintuitive conclusions as the alternatives. (shrink)

Does human life have any meaning? Does the question even make sense today? For centuries, the question of the meaning or purpose of human life was assumed by scholars and theologians to have a religious answer: life has meaning because humans were made in the image of a good god. In the 19th century, however, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution changed everything-and the human organism was seen to be more machine than spirit. Ever since, with the rise of science and (...) decline of religious belief, there has been growing interest - and growing doubt - about whether human life really does have meaning. If it does, where might we find it? The historian and philosopher of science Michael Ruse investigates this question, and wonders whether we can find a new meaning to life within Darwinian views of human nature. If God no longer exists - or if God no longer cares - rather than promoting a bleak nihilism, many Darwinians think we can convert Darwin into a form of secular humanism. Ruse explains that, in a tradition going back to the time of Darwin himself, and represented today by the evolutionist E. O. Wilson, evolution is seen as progress - "from monad to man" - and that positive meaning is found in continuing and supporting this upwards path of life. In A Meaning to Life, Michael Ruse argues that this is a false turn, and there is no real progress in the evolutionary process. Rather, meaning in the Darwinian age can be found if we turn to a kind of Darwinian existentialism, seeing our evolved human nature as the source of all meaning, both in the intellectual and social worlds. Ruse argues that it is only by accepting our true nature - evolved over millennia - that humankind can truly find what is meaningful. (shrink)

Many agree that philosophers of knowledge and of moral behavior should take into thoughtful consideration the findings of contemporary evolutionary biology but how to do this is not always clear. Ruse makes useful suggestions on how such scientific results should be incorporated.

he history of evolutionary theory is a little bit of a puzzle. Charles Darwin, the author of the Origin of Species in 1859, was the man who made evolutionary ideas reasonable—ideas that were generally accepted—and it was Darwin who provided the major mechanism of natural selection. He was not the first evolutionist, however. For at least one hundred and fifty years, starting with people like the French encyclopediast Denis Diderot, people had been speculating that organisms had a natural origin, from (...) primitive forms. But why did these speculations have to wait this long? It is true that Christianity, incorporating as it did the creation stories of Genesis—what the nineteenth-century English essayist Thomas Carlyle called "Jewish old clothes"—was not going to be friendly towards evolution. But what about the Greeks? Did not they get into such ideas?As a matter of fact we all know that they did, a bit. Empedocles had some fanciful ideas about pieces coming together to make functioning organisms, but these were ideas for which he was roundly scolded by Aristotle. Why? Ernst Mayr, the distinguished, twentieth-century evolutionist, used to argue that Plato was the culprit. Supposedly, the theory of forms precluded any sort of developmentalism. Jellyfish are jellyfish and cows are cows and humans are humans, and that is an end to it. But many have long suspected that Mayr is probably not. (shrink)

This is a book about laws. Not, however, about the laws of which we learned in science classes at school: “scientific laws”. It is rather about those universalities which govern the world of facts, what Swartz calls “physical laws”—although this language is slightly misleading because the term is intended to cover the living as well as the non-living world. Of course, it may well be that a scientific law does capture the essence of a physical law, but not necessarily or (...) usually. A physical law by definition can never be false, whereas almost paradoxically nearly all scientific laws are false. (shrink)

In The Evolution-Creation Struggle, Michael Ruse seeks to answer, ‘Why is there so much controversy surrounding evolutionary theory?’ He does so by tracing the historical development of the theory and the two major reactions to it. These major reactions, for and against, are not just views about science, but full blooded ‘rival religions.’ They each have a system of origins, morality, and eschatology. So the conflict over evolutionary theory persists because it is a clash between incompatible worldviews. This (...) review praises Ruse’s analysis on a number of points but also argues that he stumbles in three ways. First, he fails to explain that a key aspect of the origins debate concerns disagreement about the definition of science. Second, Ruse improperly uses his own definition of science, with little argument, in order to rule competing views out of science. Third, Ruse misrepresents the epistemology of non-Darwinians as relying on faith, emotion, and mystery instead of evidence and reason. (shrink)