ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1 , January 2018
In fact , I do not think it is what Darwin intended with his work . Today it is easy to have the casual impression that his key terms and arguments and concepts would write us into existence by writing out the basic reality of our intelligence , reflection and deliberation . On the contrary , it may be that Darwin ’ s work assures us that we are at home in the cosmos . His work is retrospective . It looks to the past and discovers no point at which nature is not creative . Species are not created independently of their habitats . Darwin was enamored of work by Alexander von Humboldt , the Romantic scientist and philosopher and explorer who attended Schelling ’ s Berlin lectures . Perhaps we can say that Darwin uses the past , for its total lack of safety net , to rehabilitate us to our shared presence . Though Schelling ’ s sights are set on the ascent of man , what Heidegger will call the destiny of being , Darwin is not an “ unflinching mechanist .” As Robert Richards puts it , “ The sensitive reader of Darwin ’ s works , a reader not already completely bent to early-twenty-first-century evolutionary constructions , will feel the difference between the nature that Darwin describes and the morally effete nature of modern theory ” ( 553 ).
Works Cited
Darwin , Charles . Origin of Species and the Voyage of the Beagle ( New York : Knopf , 2003 ). Dawkins , Richard . The Selfish Gene ( New York : Oxford University Press , 1989 ). Narvaez , Darcia . Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality : Evolution , Culture and Wisdom ( New York : WW Norton , 2014 ). Newman , John Henry . Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman , ed . Charles Stephen Dessain and Thomas Gormell , vol . XXIV ( Oxford Clarendon Press , 1973 ).
Schelling , Friedrich . “ Exhibition of the Process of Nature .” In Sämmtliche Werke vol . 10 , ed . K . F . A . Schelling , 303-390 , unpublished translation by I . H . Grant .
Schönborn , Christoph . “ Finding Design in Nature .” The New York Times , July 5 , 2005 . https :// nyti . ms / 2knop5i
▬ Evolution Doesn ’ t Eliminate , it Illuminates : A Comment for Dr . Shoppa of St . Francis College
David C . Lahti
Three common misconceptions of biological evolution are ( 1 ) that it is random , ( 2 ) that it parasitically consumes and eliminates other sorts of explanation , and ( 3 ) that its outcomes are touted as morally or normatively good by evolutionists . Dr . Clayton Shoppa ’ s piece “ Neurobiology , Intention , and Decision ” might give an impression that some evolutionary biologists today tend to think all three of these things , or any one of them . So , just as a clarification , here I would begin by mentioning that most evolutionary biologists , including Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins ( the only two mentioned in Dr . Shoppa ’ s piece ) do not hold any of these three opinions . This I will mostly just assert , because Dr . Shoppa and I and most readers will want to get quickly to figuring things out in actuality rather than discussing the opinions of people , however illustrious . But , briefly , they , by which I mean Darwin , Dawkins , and my conception of “ most evolutionary biologists ,” instead hold that ( 1 ) natural selection , the most powerful and evident mechanism of evolution , is far from random , but is in fact an
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