Comments on: Darwin at Home

By: Slocum

Slocum — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 18:47:07 +0000

This notion that John Emerson elucidates above reminds me of the idea that societies need to be able to support a leisure class before they begin to show significant scientific and technological advancement. The bedridden geniuses are the upper end of that curve.

And how do you shoehorn Wallace into that thesis?

By: C. Schuyler

C. Schuyler — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 15:14:23 +0000

logicguru wrote: “Shouldn’t we, rationally, try to persuade ourselves of that [i.e. survival]?”

I can only ask: why? I of course cannot insist that life after death is impossible, but it seems to me, on the basis of what I know or think I know about the world, to be unlikely in the extreme. Just what do I gain by believing in a probable illusion? I won’t be disappointed if (when) it turns out be be false, but perhaps it’s harmful to me in other ways to be saddled with such a belief. If I waste even a moment of the life I actually know I have because of the hope of another life, that hope has harmed me.

Perhaps I’m wrong, and most people are not harmed by believing a bunch of comforting illusions; but something about this idea (entertaining an implausible belief because it makes one feel better to do so) strikes me as repugnant, even though I can’t express with complete success why it does. The prejudice in favor of “eyes wide open,” “life without illusions” and so on has just been too strongly instilled in me.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 17:15:44 +0000

:-)

By: gary

gary — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 16:13:07 +0000

post #19: “He was paid to do be a genius.”

And Sinatra was paid to doo be doo be doo a singer!

By: David B

David B — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 14:29:37 +0000

If I recall correctly, Darwin’s late work on plant movement was criticised by the leading German authority on the subject, who disagreed with Darwin’s attempts to bring different kinds of movement under a single theory. But the later discovery of plant growth hormones to some extent vindicated Darwin.

By: gaw3

gaw3 — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:44:01 +0000

I have to agree with y81 that the crisis that Darwin provoked in Victorian society is not historically unique- Augustine’s society had a comparable amount of trouble dealing with the sack of Rome, hence City of God . What makes the crisis downstream of Darwin so interesting is its continuity with current events in America.

By: eudoxis

eudoxis — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 21:55:09 +0000

Regarding Darwin’s homelife not intruding, surely the illnesses and deaths of his children were profoundly intrusive. As I understand it, the death of his daughter, Anne, provided the motivation to fully explore naturalists explanations and leave behind a belief in a benevolent god.

Speaking of a benevolent god, (“Depends on which God you choose to believe in, of course.”) a popular argument against IDists, imperfect design, assumes a god with specific attributes.

I also think that Darwin was far more rigorous in a scientific sense than many scientists today.

By: Jake

Jake — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 19:18:03 +0000

Darwin was also the first person to discover that basic emotional expressions are the same across all human cultures—again, owing to that networking ability of his and the willingness of his more well-travelled friends to gather data for him.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 14:08:08 +0000

Darwin suffered a great deal from these health problems, but it’s also clear that they buffered him against unwanted obligations of all sorts.

Or look at Nietzsche. Max Weber and William James also had “nervous breakdowns” lasting a year or more. Mendel apparently was a monk primarily because there was nothing else he was capable of doing in his society.

My theory is that the “madness and genius” cliche picks it up from the wrong end. It’s not that madmen are geniuses or that geniuses are madmen. It’s that people who dutifully fulfill all of their normal obligations are terribly cramped and overwhelmed. (Normal duties expand to fill the space). Those who are lucky enough to be absolved from normal duties for health reasons had the option of developing their genius if they actually were geniuses, though the vast majority were quite mediocre. (There was a XIXc belief that TB and epilepsy were signs of genius, I think partly for this reason.

ALternatively, of course, maladies like mania and schizophrenia could be thought of as genius-enhancing but normality-destroying forms of illness. (This would be the original form “madness and genius” hypothesis). The common thread of both hypotheses is just that the normal obligations of life can be suffocating.

But then you have geniuses like J S Bach who were awesomely normal. He was just lucky that in his society music was valued enough that being a musical genius was regarded, in itself, as satisfying the normal obligations of life. He was paid to do be a genius.

By: agm

agm — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 10:08:29 +0000

Darwin is now a screen saver?

By: Pablo Stafforini

Pablo Stafforini — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 05:33:00 +0000

I don’t get it, John. How on earth are you going to promote a secular worldview if you are not ready to challenge the belief that the world was created a couple thousand years ago?

By: John Landon

John Landon — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 04:51:26 +0000

Janet Browne is too hagiographic, Desmond and Moore’s Darwin is much better, and goes into the ideological bias in Darwin the Whig, Darwin, not just Spencer, the Social Darwinist. The question of evolution and faith is mostly a mass delusion, since the theory of natural selection was exposed almost at once. No self-respecting atheist, contra Dawkins, should claim this theory for his views. Darwin’s theory, in the final analysis, notwithstanding its obvious influence on secularization, gave ammunition to religious critics and these chickens have come home to roost once again. If Darwin’s theory was so decisive why are we still debating the issue? Better to base secular beliefs on something else than natural selection. Why is the whole academic world stuck on this? The ID camp may not make a dent in core secular culture, but as it loses battles it wins the war, and that is going global already. What a dumb strategy to promote secular views on natural selection, guaranteed to fail in the end. So I don’t share the respect for Darwin given him by the ‘bright crowd’ of half-baked Darwin atheists. I have no religious beliefs or agenda in saying so, and can only bemoan the way Darwinists have handed traditionalists their postmodern comeback, with a vengeance.

By: Darwiniana » Darwin Bio’s

Darwiniana » Darwin Bio’s — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 04:48:24 +0000

[...] Comment at Crooked Timber thread, Darwin at Home Janet Browne is too hagiographic, Desmond and Moore’s Darwin is much better, and goes into the ideological bias in Darwin the Whig, Darwin, not just Spencer, the Social Darwinist. The question of evolution and faith is mostly a mass delusion, since the theory of natural selection was exposed almost at once. No self-respecting atheist, contra Dawkins, should claim this theory for his views. Darwin’s theory, in the final analysis, notwithstanding its obvious influence on secularization, gave ammunition to religious critics and these chickens have come home to roost once again. If Darwin’s theory was so decisive why are we still debating the issue? Better to base secular beliefs on something else than natural selection. Why is the whole academic world stuck on this? The ID camp may not make a dent in core secular culture, but as it loses battles it wins the war, and that is going global already. What a dumb strategy to promote secular views on natural selection, guaranteed to fail in the end. So I don’t share the respect for Darwin given him by the ‘bright crowd’ of half-baked Darwin atheists. I have no religious beliefs or agenda in saying so, and can only bemoan the way Darwinists have handed traditionalists their postmodern comeback, with a vengeance. [...]

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 03:20:44 +0000

Hmm, yes: JS and MrN, with MrN as Darwin and JS as Arthur Russell Wallace …

By: Kenny Easwaran

Kenny Easwaran — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 03:18:39 +0000

I just read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell a month or so ago, and although I (of course) thought of it as an interesting parable for philosophical research, it probably makes at least as good sense of the scientific breakthroughs of the times. In fact, the shift in the way the characters think of magic is probably similar to the shift from “natural philosophy” to “science”, though I’m sure the most significant parts of that shift occurred a couple centuries earlier.

Sorry for the tangent, just the whole “amateur scientist” thing suggested the “gentleman magician” notion to me.