Michael Ruse

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection, explaining geographical distributions and the fossil record, is rightly regarded as one of the greatest scientific theories of all time, taking its place alongside Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitational attraction, explaining the Copernican heliocentric world picture. There is, however, a tendency to think that Darwin’s work is finished. It belongs to Victorian history rather than as something that has crucial social relevance today. This essay shows how mistaken it is to make this assumption. Through a series of case histories―foreigners, class, sexual orientation, and women―Darwinism is shown to be as vibrant and important today as it was when Darwin was young. It is an essential tool for analyzing and solving some of the biggest and most pressing social issues facing us in the twenty-first century.

La teoría de la evolución por selección natural de Charles Darwin, que explica las distribuciones geográficas y el registro fósil, se considera, con razón, una de las teorías científicas más importantes de todos los tiempos, y ocupa su lugar junto con la teoría de la atracción gravitacional de Isaac Newton, que explica la imagen heliocéntrica del mundo de Copérnico. Sin embargo, existe una tendencia a pensar que el trabajo de Darwin está acabado. Que pertenece más a la historia victoriana que a algo que tenga una relevancia social crucial en la actualidad. Este ensayo evidencia cuán equivocada es esa suposición. A través de una serie de casos históricos (extranjeros, clase social, orientación sexual y mujeres), se demuestra que el darwinismo es tan vibrante e importante hoy como lo era cuando Darwin era joven. Es una herramienta esencial para analizar y resolver algunos de los problemas sociales más importantes y apremiantes que enfrentamos en el siglo XXI.

Charles Darwin, the leading evolutionist, introduces and discusses his key mechanism, natural selection, in Chapter IV of his On the Origin of Species (1859). He shows how the mechanism follows from the struggle for existence, together with random variation, and he argues that it not only explains change, but change in the direction of features of adaptive worth. He introduces the secondary mechanism of sexual selection and then, through examples, shows how selection might be expected to work in nature. He argues, based on the economic notion of the division of labor, that this shows how selection can lead to there being different species. He ends the chapter by showing how the overall result is a tree of nature, with the primitive at the bottom and the complex at the top.

Bergson never dared to entitle his own work in such a fashion. However, his philosophical contribution on the workings of intelligence deserves such a high title. This article seeks to elucidate Bergson's contribution to philosophy in terms of his anticipation of several developments in human understanding. The work begins by investigating the relation between thought and the world (reality) by reviewing a series of constructivist concepts. In many ways, constructivism is related to both structuralism and post-structuralism, however this work does not seek to detail these interrelations in any overt way. Instead, these concepts lay the groundwork for a review of Bergson's discussion of intellect in relation to life, psyche, and modern physics. Central concepts include limitation, circularity, and complementarity. Ultimately, the article seeks to display how Bergson's work is not only a precursor to constructivism but lays the foundation for a modified constructivism that can achieve a rigorous philosophical level. The proposed ground for the intellect is in the organic. Such an epistemological foundationalism would ultimately justify an evolutionary epistemology, in that, the structuring of the organic is evolving and thus the structuring of intellect would likewise evolve. Clarifying such an epistemology may aid in developing Delueze's an-organic bergsonism.

This introduction outlines the vision and scope of The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. While, historically speaking, the academic study of atheism has not always and everywhere received the attention it deserves, that does not mean that there is not already a significant body of scholarship on the subject. In particular, a great deal of new and exciting work—in a wide range of disciplines, and from scholars in many different countries—has emerged within the past decade. The Oxford Handbook of Atheism seeks to bring much of this together in one volume, not only as a synthesis and survey of what is already out there, but as an aid and prompt to current and future researchers going ever further. This introduction also includes an overview of the contents of the Handbook.

With the coming of evolutionary speculations in the middle of the nineteenth century, there was much interest in the possible implications of these ideas for ethical thinking and action. Two basic approaches can be discerned, that of Herbert Spencer who saw ongoing progress in life’s history and used this to promote and justify proper conduct and that of Charles Darwin who used his theory of evolution through natural selection to explain moral thought and behavior. Both approaches found supporters and critics, and there has been much subsequent confusion through mistaken conflations of these very different forms of evolutionary ethics.

The tension between subject and object achieved importance in the modern era; indeed, this schism can be seen as the fundamental dispute between empiricists and rationalists. In fact, it can be claimed that this particular problem is what truly caused the current bankruptcy of metaphysics. ;One of the major themes of "post-modernism" is the attempt to develop a discourse which escapes this dualism. Likewise, in Matter and Memory, Bergson seeks to find the in-between of things and representations. The term by which he designates this in-between is the 'image'. An image is more than a representation which resides in the mind, and less than a thing residing in the container which we call space. The image is both self-generating and self-perpetuating, existing entirely as movement. ;By changing the framework of philosophical discourse from a spatial perspective to a mobile perspective, Bergson solves two nagging problems of philosophy in one stroke. The first is the relation between our bodies and our minds. Mental images are akin to physical things in that both can be considered images. The problem no longer is that of the relation between the unextended and the extended, but rather between the direction of memory and the direction of the body-image. The relation between these flows is known and experienced as tension. ;Secondly, the gulf between ourselves as subjects and the world as objects is bridged by the idea of the image. As images, we and the world are of a like kind. Our knowledge of the world is based upon our interaffective movement within the world. It does not stand in a relation of appearance and reality, but rather, in one of part to whole. In this way our access to reality is immediate and absolute . ;The dissertation itself argues for and explores the affects of the doctrine of images as paramount in the philosophy of Henri Bergson as well as the ramifications of this doctrine as it pertains to metaphysics and the philosophy of history

Humans are by nature social. And yet, we humans can be so cruel to each other. The dreadful wars of the last century: the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and so the list expands. Then there is the prejudice that members of one group show to members of other groups. Americans and slavery come at once to mind. So how do we explain the paradox? Why do such nice people do such awful things? I am an evolutionist, so I believe that the answers to the present are to be found in the past. Simply put, we humans were hunter-gatherers, and natural selection made us highly suited to our lifestyle. Then came agriculture and all changed. Our formerly efficient adaptations were too often not adequate for our new circumstances and lifestyles. Conflicts, group and individual, arose. I shall ask whether we can reconcile the tensions in our position. Can we move forward, bringing the knowledge of our biological past combined with the awareness of our cultural present to speak positively and creatively to the challenges that lie before us? I am ever an optimist. Is my optimism justified?

La ética evolutiva tiene (merecidamente) mala reputación. Sin embargo, no deberíamos permanecer prisioneros de nuestro pasado. Los avances recientes en biología evolutiva darwiniana allanan el camino para un vínculo entre ciencia y moral que es más modesto pero, al mismo tiempo, más profundo que las excursiones anteriores en esta dirección. Al mismo tiempo, no hay necesidad de repudiar las ideas de los grandes filósofos del pasado, particularmente de David Hume. De ahí que los orígenes simiescos de los seres humanos realmente importan. La pregunta no es si acaso la evolución debería relacionarse con la ética, sino cómo. Nosotros los seres humanos somos monos modificados, no la creación favorecida de un Dios benévolo, en el sexto día. Por lo tanto, ha llegado el momento de hacernos cargo de nuestra naturaleza animal, particularmente en relación con nuestra interacción con los demás. Es cierto que la llamada ética evolutiva tiene mala reputación. Sin embargo, la pregunta no es si la evolución está conectada con la ética, sino cómo. Afortunadamente, gracias a los avances recientes en las ciencias biológicas, el camino se está volviendo más claro. Comienzo esta discusión con una breve introducción histórica al tema. Luego voy al núcleo de mi caso científico y filosófico. Concluyo retomando algunas objeciones centrales.

Biologists are remarkably visual people. Yet, the classics of logical empiricism never raised the general question of scientific illustration. Moreover, one suspects that the silence was, if anything, actively hostile. People did not talk about biological illustration, because they did not judge it to be part of “real science”. This enterprise produces statements or propositions, ideally embedded in a formal system. It may beaboutthe real world, but it is not in any senseofthe real world, in being a copy or mirror image. Philosophers recognized that regretfully human weakness demanded the visual. But it was judged at best a prop. (See, for instance, Braithwaite 1953, Hempel 1965, and Bunge 1967; although see also Achinstein 1968. The best discussion of scientific illustration that I know is Rudwick 1976.)

The objections to evolution were always more philosophical than scientific, in particular the needed explanation of the design‐like nature of organisms. Charles Darwin supplied the answer with his mechanism of natural selection. There are still major issues about the relationship of Darwinism to religion, to Christianity specifically. These include the problem of miracles, the problem of evil, and the needed progress to produce humankind. The issues continue to be more philosophical than scientific.

Originally published in 1979, The Darwinian Revolution was the first comprehensive and readable synthesis of the history of evolutionary thought. Though the years since have seen an enormous flowering of research on Darwin and other nineteenth-century scientists concerned with evolution, as well as the larger social and cultural responses to their work, The Darwinian Revolution remains remarkably current and stimulating. For this edition Michael Ruse has written a new afterword that takes into account the research published since his book's first appearance. "It is difficult to believe that yet another book on Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution could add anything new or contain any surprises. Ruse's book is an exception on all counts. Darwin scholars and the general reader alike can learn from it."--David L. Hull, Nature "No other account of the Darwinian Revolution provides so detailed and sympathetic an account of the framework within which the scientific debates took place."--Peter J. Bowler, Canadian Journal of History "A useful and highly readable synthesis...skillfully organized and written with verve, imagination, and welcome touches of humor."--John C. Greene, Science.