On Evolutionary Theory
I've never been a big fan of Evolutionary Theories. This is partly due to the contrarian nature in me which tends towards rebelling against readily accepted dogma, but that's not the mere basis of my rejection of, or rallying against, theories of evolution.
One serious point of contention is the idea of "survival of the fittest." However, my ire here, it seems, is more towards the misinterpretation of this idea than towards the idea itself. The common way of using this idea seems to imply that it is the strongest that survive or that 'fittest' equals 'most able'. And, I suppose, the latter is closer to what is meant by "survival of the fittest," but still not quite what the phrase intends to convey.
A further objection I have to Evolutionary Theories is with regards to their assumption regarding time. Under such theories time is linear and flows only in one direction. The past is concrete whereas the future is open and has yet to manifest. This, to me, seems to assume way too much about something we really have only the slightest hold upon.
And don't even get me started on off shoots of Evolutionary Theory, such as so-called "Evolutionary Psychology." As if "psychology" itself is not a tenuous "scientific" discipline to begin with, then take that and try to connect it with a further dodgy theory. Shit, if you ever attend any sort of lecture or read any sort of literature that stems from a position of "Evolutionary Psychology," well, you'll never hear so many "just-so" stories peppering a supposedly "academic" and "scientific" endeavour.
While I feel there is some merit in the ideas that stem from Darwin's original formulation of Evolution, I also feel that it needs some serious overhaul to more readily describe the situation as it appears. I believe that such an overhaul can be undertaken if we describe evolution in terms of dispositions, specifically dispositions as laid out by C.B. Martin.
This is simply a rough sketch at present in order to get some thoughts down about the matter so as not to forget what I've been thinking about over the last few days.
The formulation of dispositional manifestation seems to me as readily capturing the idea of "survival of the fittest." This expression refers to the ability of an organism to adapt to its environment. This entails that the environment has certain attributes or presents specific needs to an organism, and, in turn, the organism can change in order to take advantage of these environmental conditions. We can picture this as the environment having specific slots or places that can be filled by an organism's own potential attributes and abilities. Put differently, and in terms of a dispositional account, an environment offers specific sets of dispositional opportunities which, if a given organism has dispositions that are able to partner with the environmental dispositions, then manifestation as mutual dispositional partnering in turn creates the "evolution" or "adaptation" of the specific organism.
(Christ, ever repeat a word over and over again until it becomes meaningless?)
Hmm...that's all for now.
One serious point of contention is the idea of "survival of the fittest." However, my ire here, it seems, is more towards the misinterpretation of this idea than towards the idea itself. The common way of using this idea seems to imply that it is the strongest that survive or that 'fittest' equals 'most able'. And, I suppose, the latter is closer to what is meant by "survival of the fittest," but still not quite what the phrase intends to convey.
A further objection I have to Evolutionary Theories is with regards to their assumption regarding time. Under such theories time is linear and flows only in one direction. The past is concrete whereas the future is open and has yet to manifest. This, to me, seems to assume way too much about something we really have only the slightest hold upon.
And don't even get me started on off shoots of Evolutionary Theory, such as so-called "Evolutionary Psychology." As if "psychology" itself is not a tenuous "scientific" discipline to begin with, then take that and try to connect it with a further dodgy theory. Shit, if you ever attend any sort of lecture or read any sort of literature that stems from a position of "Evolutionary Psychology," well, you'll never hear so many "just-so" stories peppering a supposedly "academic" and "scientific" endeavour.
While I feel there is some merit in the ideas that stem from Darwin's original formulation of Evolution, I also feel that it needs some serious overhaul to more readily describe the situation as it appears. I believe that such an overhaul can be undertaken if we describe evolution in terms of dispositions, specifically dispositions as laid out by C.B. Martin.
This is simply a rough sketch at present in order to get some thoughts down about the matter so as not to forget what I've been thinking about over the last few days.
The formulation of dispositional manifestation seems to me as readily capturing the idea of "survival of the fittest." This expression refers to the ability of an organism to adapt to its environment. This entails that the environment has certain attributes or presents specific needs to an organism, and, in turn, the organism can change in order to take advantage of these environmental conditions. We can picture this as the environment having specific slots or places that can be filled by an organism's own potential attributes and abilities. Put differently, and in terms of a dispositional account, an environment offers specific sets of dispositional opportunities which, if a given organism has dispositions that are able to partner with the environmental dispositions, then manifestation as mutual dispositional partnering in turn creates the "evolution" or "adaptation" of the specific organism.
(Christ, ever repeat a word over and over again until it becomes meaningless?)
Hmm...that's all for now.