Notes on a bicentennial
- From: oriel36 <kelleher.gerald@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:13:37 -0800 (PST)
This year presents a few anniversaries of note where Galileo is
presented as the figure to represent the International Year of
Astronomy and Darwin in evolutionary biology.
They choose Galileo over Copernicus by focusing on the experimental
facet of his work and then pay lip service to astronomy via the
magnification exercise. Galileo understood the method and insight of
Copernicus while the later empiricists,through Newton,mangled the main
arguments for the Earth's motions so it is a double injustice to use
Galileo as a shill for the 'scientific or experimental method' and to
Copernicus for completely destroying his line of reasoning.This
empirical nonsense has worked for centuries but that does not make it
any less vandalism than it actually is.
Now we come to Darwin,but a short geological digression -
"I would . . . be unwilling to press the theory of relation to the
human race, so far as to contend that all the great geological
phenomena we have been considering were conducted solely and
exclusively with a view to the benefit of man. We may rather count the
advantages he derives from them as incidental and residuary
consequences; which, although they may not have formed the exclusive
object of creation, were all foreseen and comprehended in the plans of
the Great Architect of that Globe, which, in his appointed time, was
destined to become the scene of human habitation." William Buckland
http://www.strangescience.net/buckland.htm
Most geologists in the early 19th century would have held to similar
notions in an era where exciting outlines of the history of geological
and biological evolution were taking shape and their work continued on
in an unbroken chain to provide Wegener with fossil evidence he needed
to link Africa with South America.
So why Darwin and out of context with geological investigations ?,the
answer is an empirical one and can be found in the full title of his
work that severs geological evolution from biological evolution and
takes on a tone which suits the 'scientific method' by reducing life
to a branch of chemistry.
' On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life' Charles
Darwin
Humanity is treated to a whitewashed version of the discovery by the
voyage to the Galapagos islands with finches,lizards and harmless
turtles promoted as the basis for overturning humanity's understanding
of biological evolution but Darwin's reasoning is a direct affirmation
of Thomas Mathus's view on human population and race.Take another look
at the title again -
' On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life' Charles
Darwin
Now the actual statement of this in its proper context,one that
severed biological evolution from its productive use in geological
investigations -
" I was suffering from a sharp attack of intermittent fever, and every
day during the cold and succeeding hot fits I had to lie down for
several hours, during which time I had nothing to do but to think over
any subjects then particularly interesting me. One day something
brought to my recollection Malthus’s “Principles of Population,” which
I had read about twelve years before. I thought of his clear
exposition of “the positive checks to increase”—disease, accidents,
war, and famine—which keep down the population of savage races to so
much lower an average than that of civilized peoples. It then occurred
to me that these causes or their equivalents are continually acting in
the case of animals also; and as animals usually breed much more
rapidly than does mankind, the destruction every year from these
causes must be enormous in order to keep down the numbers of each
species, since they evidently do not increase regularly from year to
year, as otherwise the world would long ago have been densely crowded
with those that breed most quickly. Vaguely thinking over the enormous
and constant destruction which this implied, it occurred to me to ask
the question, Why do some die and some live? And the answer was
clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live.… Then it suddenly
flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily
improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would
inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain—that is, the
fittest would survive.… The more I thought over it the more I became
convinced that I had at length found the long-sought-for law of nature
that solved the problem of the origin of species." Charles Darwin
Very few would know about Malthus and the era of the Irish famine when
so many died and people could find scientific justification for that
tragedy but then again,things get historically airbrushed out to
leave a story of the unenlightened Christians standing in the way of
progress of science,it still happens.Darwin give the empiricists a
license to short circuit genuine investigations of biological
evolution in tandem with other disciplines such as astronomy,
geology,climatology and many other disciplines in its anti-faith
agenda.
The real bicentennial is that of Lincoln,a man who could see what
happens when greedy men become dominant in the survival of the
fittest,this is the way it is and always was -
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and
causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have
been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and
the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by
working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is
aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed." Abraham
Lincoln
.
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