Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
them mythical significance. They now symbolize the essential supposition
of evolutionism that science is what drives progress. Darwin's courage in
overcoming the “dilemma” of the chapter's title by following a path of evi-
dence that was certain to lead this “pious man” away “from the commonly
accepted religious views,” and just as certain to undermine the privileged
standing of his own class, occurs within a story that has already conflated
the natural “change” discovered by science with the “change” of progress.
18
In the end, this narrative advances a very clear lesson: not only are natu-
ral evolution and social progress the same thing, the second also depends
upon the first. It was not until Darwin established the fact of evolution in
the biological realm that the world was set free from the oppressive ideo-
logical forces that hindered the advance of civilization. Darwin discovered
the principle of progress. In suggesting this, Levine and Miller are not
therefore denying that evolution does not equal naturalism. “Darwin knew
that accepting his theory required believing in
philosophical materialism
, the
conviction that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products.
Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless—a process
in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit.” To deny this
would undermine the whole point of evolutionism. If knowledge is not
bounded by naturalism, scientism cannot hold. But Levine and Miller also
understand, at some level at least, that determinism also undermines the
rhetorical payoff they seek, and so they round things off with this statement.
Yet as pointed out by evolutionary scholar Douglas Futuyma, seldom do
the detractors of the Darwinian world view take note of its positive impli-
cations. In Darwin's world we are not helpless prisoners of a static world
order, but rather masters of our own fate in a universe where human
action can change the future. And from a strictly scientific point of view,
rejecting evolution is no different from rejecting other phenomena such
as electricity and gravity.
19
Ordinary reasoning would see an obvious contradiction here. How can
evolution hold that thoughts are mere “by-products” of material determi-
nants and yet show us that we are “masters of our own fate”? How could free
will exist in a world bounded by philosophical materialism? But ordinary
reasoning has been trumped by premises that come prepackaged within
the larger narrative form they have appropriated; the romantic story form
that Levine and Miller have introduced to make these points derives from a
mythical tradition that belies such limits. Thus, while I claimed in chapter
1 (and still hold) that evolutionism entails both scientism and naturalism,
