I better correct a response to a question of Jois I made in my last post. I was forgetting that the term ‘Social Darwinism’ was used by some neo-Eugenicists. My original statement that brought on this query, of course, had nothing to do with this, and my affirmative answer to Jois’ question as to my acceptance of Social Darwinism, in the sense of this definition:
“Another such view is “Social Darwinism”, which holds that social policy should allow the weak and unfit to fail and die, and that this is not only good policy but morally right.”
, stated at:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/social.html
, did definitely not represent what I was thinking of at the time I typed it. I have total distaste for any such active philosophy; I thought I was merely stating that, yes, I felt human behaviors, expressed either objectively or subjectively, certainly obeying the Darwinian notion of having the greatest survival value in cases where they appeared to accomplish what seemed to be their ends, i.e., the notion of Dawkins’ ‘memes’. But I noted that I didn’t credit such thinking, as to subjectively described behaviors, as being scientific. Actually, as far as I’m concerned, all Darwinian thought pretty much begs the question, if you take it very far; but that which is objectively described satisfies an immediate scientific need. The idea that individuals or groups can decide, in even a subjective pseudo-scientific sense, at any point, what complex human behavior is on the right track, in the long run universally/globally and should take action accordingly doesn’t compute in my mind, in association with any scientific context.
For example, I don’t think I can call on a Social Darwinism religion to make a claim that mountain bikers destroying the trails on Mt. Tamalpais (across the Gate from SF) is a practice that, if allowed to continue, will lead to the extinction of the human race (even though I hike there and am a member of Sierra Club). Certainly, the human race, as we know, is what it is, in good part, and maybe only exists because members of it did a lot of things that presently seem very nasty. ‘Nastiness’ is a subjective concept, anyhow, which is to be abhored by science per se, in my view.
But I understand Darwinism has even marched further these days, to the point of annoying some hardnosed scientists, when it claims that even science itself is not a given reality, but rather a mere evolution of historical accidents – one that appears to work fairly well, but really only one model (or more than one) out of an infinity of such that could’ve evolved and worked just as well or better. For example, the physicist, Steven Weinberg, seems to be bothered by this notion.
Ray (Just ain’t no terra firma nowhere to plant my feet on these days.)
“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” – Steven Weinberg, Physicist
), perhaps, in some cases, by serving up its families’ odd-number offspring at Thanksgiving Dinner and baying at the moon from the tops of poplar trees. Since I don’t even discount that phlogiston or ether are less “real”, in some absolute sense, than atoms and electromagnetic energy – its just that modeling around other concepts arrived at much more elegant results, given how thinking in physics had evolved – I wouldn’t be apt to find anything acceptable in interventionist Social Darwinism. I see science as properly applied, only where there is some agreement based on existing, non-scientifically derived ethical stances, in only the short terms of projected event schedules – in those cases in which it supports an outcome favorable within those stances.