Michael Ruse

Do universities still need departments in the humanities—philosophy, history, languages, and so forth? Many today, particularly legislators with control over the funding of public universities, feel that the emphasis should be on, and only on, departments in the STEM field. Willem B. Drees, a former dean of humanities, makes a spirited defense of the worth of the humanities and of their continued place in higher education. This essay looks at Drees's arguments in a critical, yet appreciative, fashion. It is a debate we need to have.

This Element is a philosophical history of Social Darwinism. It begins by discussing the meaning of the term, moving then to its origins, paying particular attention to whether it is Charles Darwin or Herbert Spencer who is the true father of the idea. It gives an exposition of early thinking on the subject, covering Darwin and Spencer themselves and then on to Social Darwinism as found in American thought, with special emphasis on Andrew Carnegie, and Germany with special emphasis on Friedrich von Bernhardi. Attention is also paid to outliers, notably the Englishman Alfred Russel Wallace, the Russian Peter Kropotkin, and the German Friedrich Nietzsche. From here we move into the twentieth century looking at Adolf Hitler - hardly a regular Social Darwinian given he did not believe in evolution - and in the Anglophone world, Julian Huxley and Edward O. Wilson, who reflected the concerns of their society.

Why do we think ourselves superior to all other animals? Are we right to think so? In this book, Michael Ruse explores these questions in religion, science and philosophy. Some people think that the world is an organism - and that humans, as its highest part, have a natural value. Others think that the world is a machine - and that we therefore have responsibility for making our own value judgements. Ruse provides a compelling analysis of these two rival views and the age-old conflict between them. In a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion, he draws on Darwinism and existentialism to argue that only the view that the world is a machine does justice to our humanity. This new series offers short and personal perspectives by expert thinkers on topics that we all encounter in our everyday lives.

Most of us agree about the rules or norms of morality, what philosophers call substantive or normative ethics: be kind to small children, do not cheat on exams and return your library books on time. The big disputes come over foundations, metaethics. This article considers the four main positions. Firstly, religious ethics : Here you appeal to the will of God. The problem is not everyone believes in God, and could God make it okay to mark up library books and not return them? Secondly, platonic ethics : Ethics exists eternally in a super-sensible world, along with mathematics. The problem is why it should appeal to us and how do we know about it? What if different people have different intuitions? Thirdly, objective naturalised ethics : Here, value is found in nature, probably in the processes that led to the beings of greatest value, humans. The problem is how this happened because the main theory of evolution, Darwinism, denies that there is any direction to the developmental process. Fourthly, subjective naturalised ethics : It is all a question of the emotions that evolution has given us to get along in life and produce more humans. The problem is that this makes ethics relative. If we had evolved like bees, females’ greatest imperative would be to kick their brothers out of the house as winter approaches. What to do? What to do? Next time ask a preacher not a philosopher! Contribution: The time has come for philosophers generally and students of ethics particularly to come to grips with the fact that human beings are modified monkeys (evolution) not modified mud (Genesis). This essay compares two approaches to ‘evolutionary ethics’ – Social Darwinism and moral non-realism – expressing a decided preference for the latter.

Is debate on issues related to faith and reason still possible when dialogue between believers and non-believers has collapsed? Taking God Seriously not only proves that it is possible, but also demonstrates that such dialogue produces fruitful results. Here, Brian Davies, a Dominican priest and leading scholar of Thomas Aquinas, and Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science and well-known non-believer, offer an extended discussion on the nature and plausibility of belief in God and Christianity. They explore key topics in the study of religion, notably the nature of faith, the place of reason in discussions about religion, proofs for the existence of God, the problem of evil, and the problem of multiple competing religious systems, as well as the core concepts of Christian belief including the Trinity and the justification of morality. Written in a jargon-free manner, avoiding the extremes of evangelical literalism and New Atheism prejudice, Taking God Seriously does not compromise integrity or shy from discussing important or difficult issues.

Several years ago, I was asked to participate in a forum on evolution. Flattered, I accepted, only discovering later that I was to participate in a “debate”, involving me and a scientist squaring off against two Creationists, Henry M. Morris and Duane T. Gish. The topic for discussion was which doctrine has the greatest scientific merit: organic evolution through natural processes set against the background of a very old earth, or special instantaneous appearance of all organisms, about 6000 years ago, followed shortly thereafter by a world-wide flood? I very much doubt that many minds were changed on that particular evening—the bleachers were packed with ardent Baptists bussed in from all over Wisconsin and Illinois. The 10 or so in the audience who believed in evolution went on believing in evolution. The 5000 in the audience who took the early chapters of Genesis absolutely literally went on taking the early chapters of Genesis absolutely literally. But, people's time was far from wasted. Morris and Gish got the attention they crave. Their supporters were thrilled by the sight of heretics publicly proclaiming doctrines for which they would surely earn eternal damnation. And, I learnt what a hollow sham modern day Creationism really is: crude, dogmatic, Biblical literalism, masquerading as genuine science, in order to avoid the strictures of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bars the teaching of religion in schools.

A brief, accessible history of the idea of purpose in Western thought, from ancient Greece to the present Can we live without the idea of purpose? Should we even try to? Kant thought we were stuck with purpose, and even Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which profoundly shook the idea, was unable to kill it. Indeed, teleological explanation—what Aristotle called understanding in terms of “final causes”—seems to be making a comeback today, as both religious proponents of intelligent design and some prominent secular philosophers argue that any explanation of life without the idea of purpose is missing something essential. In On Purpose, Michael Ruse explores the history of the idea of purpose in philosophical, religious, scientific, and historical thought, from ancient Greece to the present. Accessibly written and filled with literary and other examples, the book examines “purpose” thinking in the natural and human world. It shows how three ideas about purpose have been at the heart of Western thought for more than two thousand years. In the Platonic view, purpose results from the planning of a human or divine being; in the Aristotelian, purpose stems from a tendency or principle of order in the natural world; and in the Kantian, purpose is essentially heuristic, or something to be discovered, an idea given substance by Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. On Purpose traces the profound and fascinating implications of these ways of thinking about purpose. Along the way, it takes up tough questions about the purpose of life and whether it’s possible to have meaning without purpose, revealing that purpose is still a vital and pressing issue.

There is something distinctively different about explanation in the biological sciences, as opposed to explanation in the physical sciences. In the former one has functional arguments, arguments making reference to what Aristotle called “final causes.” As in: “The function of the plates on the back of the Stegosaurus was to keep the body at a constant temperature.” Since the Scientific Revolution, such explanations have been forbidden in the physical sciences. Does this then mean that biology is second rate, as is suggested by many including Immanuel Kant? It is argued that the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection explains why there is need of functional explanation in biology and that once this point is grasped, there is no reason to judge biology second rate.

It took a long time to convince people of the reality of extinction, especially since it seemed to imply that God created organisms and then just let them die out – even worse, created organisms and let them die out before humans appeared. But it did happen and today people of religion accept this. What about humans? Are we going to go extinct? Are we going to be wiped out, for instance by global warming? Or are we all going to change into new beings? And if so, will they be better or worse than the beings we humans are today? Great questions, with no easy answers, either for the scientist or the theologian.

The homologies of process within morphogenetic fields provide some of the best evidence for evolution—just as skeletal and organ homologies did earlier. Thus, the evidence for evolution is better than ever. The role of natural selection in evolution, however, is seen to play less an important role. It is merely a filter for unsuccessful morphologies generated by development. Population genetics is destined to change if it is not to become as irrelevant to evolution as Newtonian mechanics is to contemporary physics. (Gilbert, Opitz, and Raff 1996, 368)

Does human life have meaning? Ever since Darwin, there has been great skepticism about whether a "meaning of life" was possible outside of religious belief. Is it possible to find meaning in human life? Philosopher of science Michael Ruse examines the question of meaning in life within Darwinian views of human nature. He argues that 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.

Several years ago, I was asked to participate in a forum on evolution. Flattered, I accepted, only discovering later that I was to participate in a “debate”, involving me and a scientist squaring off against two Creationists, Henry M. Morris and Duane T. Gish. The topic for discussion was which doctrine has the greatest scientific merit: organic evolution through natural processes set against the background of a very old earth, or special instantaneous appearance of all organisms, about 6000 years ago, followed shortly thereafter by a world-wide flood? I very much doubt that many minds were changed on that particular evening—the bleachers were packed with ardent Baptists bussed in from all over Wisconsin and Illinois. The 10 or so in the audience who believed in evolution went on believing in evolution. The 5000 in the audience who took the early chapters of Genesis absolutely literally went on taking the early chapters of Genesis absolutely literally. But, people's time was far from wasted. Morris and Gish got the attention they crave. Their supporters were thrilled by the sight of heretics publicly proclaiming doctrines for which they would surely earn eternal damnation. And, I learnt what a hollow sham modern day Creationism really is: crude, dogmatic, Biblical literalism, masquerading as genuine science, in order to avoid the strictures of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bars the teaching of religion in schools.

Is organicism inherently Christian-friendly, and for that matter, is mechanism inherently religion nonfriendly? They have tended to be, but the story is much more complicated. The long history of the intertwined metaphors of nature taken as an organism, versus that of nature as a machine, reveals that both metaphors have flourished in the endeavors of philosophers, scientists, and persons of faith alike. Different kinds of Christians have been receptive to both organicist and mechanistic models, just as various kinds of nonreligious scientists have been receptive to both holistic and machine metaphors. Although, it is true, organicism has been generally more attractive to persons of faith than mechanism, an overview of the rich and varied history of allegiances to these metaphors—religious and nonreligious alike—shows that debate is much more interesting and complex. A brief inspection of conversation surrounding recent scientific discoveries shows that this debate between metaphors is still very much alive today.