Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
evolutionism can only live as myth, within the confines of which the sound-
ness of its scientific counterpart is presumed, how do we know that we are
not only embracing evolution in order to make evolutionism more compel-
ling? Since I mean to stick to the premise that the merits of evolutionary
science must be weighed independently, this is not a question I would dare
to answer. While the prevalence of evolutionism and the obvious validation
it gains from its associations with science must draw attention to this prob-
lem, my only purpose here is to draw attention to how evolutionism exceeds
evolution—not to claim that it diminishes it.
The reality of this problem becomes especially apparent once we take
into account John Greene's finding that the nineteenth century's great
champions of evolution all subscribed to social evolutionary doctrines
even before they came to accept biological evolution. No less than Darwin,
Spencer, and other prominent naturalists of the Victorian era, Huxley had
been a social evolutionist even before he embraced evolution as a scientific
hypothesis.
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The arrival of a plausible mechanism for evolution in Darwin's
Origin of Species
did not convert him to evolutionism; it only enabled science
to more fully animate this preexisting worldview. Darwin brought science
into harmony with an incipient myth of origins that at first lacked a com-
pelling scientific correlate. His theory provided a symbolic catalyst capable
of more powerfully fusing the
nomos
of a preexisting positivist evolutionism
with the scientific
cosmos.
This was nothing new. Throughout Western history, if not in all times
and cultures, myth has sought to relate itself to science, simply because
mythologies that are shown to comport with technical conceptualizations
of nature will always carry greater force than those that do not. In principle
this should be all the more true for philosophical positivists, who contend
that knowledge of the universe attained through scientific means is the only
knowledge. Taken at face value, positivism professes to abolish mythologi-
cal modes of thought as speculative and unscientific, but if myth is not a
mere philosophical idol that can be voluntarily cast off, but is, in fact, as
native to human consciousness as reason, imagination, or libido, it will not
disappear merely because it contradicts the professed scientific ideals of its
adherents. If the mythic impulse endures even for the metaphysical skeptic,
this could mean that the very principle of epistemic skepticism that would
seem to cast doubt upon myth may instead be the authority structure that
masks its presence.
The fact that positivists and naturalists disparage myth cannot change
the fact that their language patterns affirm it. When they employ terms
