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In Search of a Living Reason: Or: Why You Can't Get There from Here
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Code, Murray |
| Copyright Year | 2016 |
| Abstract | 'Will the reader bid me wake with him to a world of chance and blindness? Or can I persuade him to dream with me of a more living faith than either he or I had as yet conceived as possible? As I have said, reason points remorselessly to an awakening, but faith and hope still beckon to the dream. ' Samuel Butler: Luck, or Cunning? 'If you think about it, you will see that it is true. ' An old Sioux chief, quoted by Vine Deloria, Jr. 1. EVOLUTION AND HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT Despite the tendency of many serious thinkers to assume that thinking is an aspect of experiencing which is unique to the human organism, it is not hard to believe that all living organisms are capable of thought. An organism's very survival in an unpredictable and dangerous world attests to an ability to make sense of its immediate surroundings-if only to garner the next meal or to escape becoming someone else's. One might even have thought that the very idea of an organic 'species' presupposes significant differences between differerent ways of coping with the world. But if this is so, it is not a big leap to the view that evolution alludes to a cosmic process of development of a great variety of ways of world-making which bear witness to a vast range of forms of sensibility. How to think about this wonderful fact must surely stand near the forefront of the would-be naturalist's concerns. In any case, one would have thought that the ancient philosophical question of the meaning of experience would be uppermost on the minds of those who think about the evolution of consciousness. This particular problem is moreover part and parcel of the now urgent question how best to conceive the role of the human organism in Nature, especially now that we have entered a new, anthropogenic stage of evolution. It takes a good deal of faith, in other words, to believe that modern science is up to the task of dealing with the urgent question of how best to depict the human condition. That this is no minor philosophical quibble is evident from the fact that how we live influences how we think, and vice versa. However, a good many self-styled modern naturalists are committed first and foremost to upholding the scientistic credo that science can, in principle, explain everything worth explaining, such as the emergence of conscious thought itself. In this case, one may reasonably ask whether something akin to religious fundamentalism in involved in the tendency to conflate rational thinking with scientific methods of reasoning. (1) This situation warrants asking anyway why so many laypersons are willing to subordinate their sense of the sheer complexity of daily experiencing to the reductive pronouncements of scientific experts. The irony is that a culture that prides itself on its 'modernity' is also one that appears proud of its narrow one-sidedness. (2) Consider the common tendency to deny the immaterial side of experiencing, a tendency that is entrenched by the emphasis placed on logical precision in philosophical inquiry. When combined with an emphasis on the practical side of education, the result is a suppression of the capacity for wonder, such as at the extraordinary emergence of a creature able to reflect upon its own ability to think. As for wonder itself, what logical argument could possibly do justice to the emergence of this apparently completely impractical mental capacity? Whyever think that this capacity could be 'explained' by methods that were initially designed to control certain physical aspects of Nature-or better, the naturing of Nature, assuming that science has accumulated sufficient evidence to show that evolution is indeed one of the most salient characteristics of this cosmos? Once one has accepted evolution as a virtual 'fact,' does not this extremely vague notion refer in general to an ongoing creation of many different kinds of sensibility? If these range from virtually dead bits of organized 'matter' to the self-conscious thinking of the human organism, there is reason to wonder whether the popularity of the neo-Darwinian interpretation of evolution is itself evidence that homo sapiens is infected with a peculiar streak of irrationality that evidences a secular faith in the unlimited explanatory powers of science. … |
| Starting Page | 1 |
| Ending Page | 1 |
| Page Count | 1 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 12 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/485/888 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
