Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
transcendent reality. In spite of the variable ways in which this has been
performed in human history, the general pattern is always the same. In an
aboriginal society, a tribe might stabilize its identity by regarding itself as
the distinctive model of some more permanent macrocosm, or it might, by
regarding its chiefs or priests as both men and gods, imbue the top rung of
its social hierarchy with a sacred essence that then seeps down into every
subordinate tier. In the bookish religions that have superseded such tradi-
tions in the West, sacred revelation provides these linkages. Theistic soci-
eties affirm their realness by emulating the social representations encoded
in the Gospels, the Torah, or the Qur'an. The sacred substance that many
aboriginal cultures attach to natural objects is found by these people of
the topic in patterns of symbolization breathed into human consciousness
by God.
From this theoretical standpoint we may predict that new modes of
linking
nomos
with
cosmos
will spontaneously arise, even in secular settings,
simply because the necessity of maintaining a volatile social consensus
presses in upon every human culture. Because every society is a “precari-
ous symbolic hypostatization,” as Berger describes it, “a product of human
activity that has attained the status of objective reality,” the bases by which
such social formations are tied to this reality must be constantly reaffirmed
or reinvented.
38
The normative features of a group's social consciousness
remain dependent upon belief in the external reality from which it derives
its being.
39
Nature and society must reflect each other, so that in every
human society, as Geertz puts this, the “powerfully coercive 'ought' is felt to
grow out of a comprehensive factual 'is.' ”
40
This also implies that religious ideas will evolve in step with the soci-
eties they constitute. It is from this standpoint that I wish to interpret
various forms of public communication that sustain evolutionism. Evolu-
tionism is not some mere coincidental adjunct to evolutionary science. So
long as the aspiration to possess a priestly social identity remains attractive
to scientists as a way to justify their place in the world of their cultural
patrons, the scientific identity will depend upon evolution to affirm its
extra-human foundation. Evolutionary science has revealed this scientific
cosmos
, and evolutionism, accordingly, sustains a counterpart
nomos
. The
“powerfully coercive 'ought' ” that would compel the world to cherish sci-
entific learning as an absolute good, is the “comprehensive factual 'is' ” of
evolution. Evolutionism could never stand entirely apart from evolution-
ary science for this reason, for to doubt evolution would be to doubt the
scientific identity.
