Michael Ruse - The Philosophy of Human Evolution

General editor

Florida State University

Associate editor

University of Toronto

Other titles in the series Derek Turner , Paleontology: A Philosophical Introduction

R. Paul Thompson , Agro-Technology: A Philosophical Introduction

Michael Ruse , The Philosophy of Human Evolution

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Cambridge University Press

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ISBN 978-0-521-11793-7 Hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-13372-2 Paperback

The ancient Greeks did not believe in evolution (Sedley require an intelligence of some kind to make them. Hence, evolution the epitome of blind chance is impossible.

The coming of Christianity reinforced this mind-set. The early Christians were not at first sure that they needed to accept the Hebrew Scriptures after all, it was the Jews who rejected Jesus. But, particularly under the influence of St. Augustine (354430 CE), they realized that it is only through the Jewish narratives that sense can be made of Jesus and his fate. Why did he have to die on the cross? For our sins. Why are we sinful? Because of the acts of Adam and Eve, as told to us in Genesis. Augustine particularly cautioned that one should not necessarily interpret Scripture literally, especially if it conflicts with modern science. But then, and for many centuries later, no one had reason to doubt the authenticity of the Genesis creation story, which puts all down to miracle, not that long ago.

It was only at the beginning of the Enlightenment, the flowering of science and philosophy that is generally dated from the beginning of the eighteenth century, that people first started to speculate seriously in the direction of developmental origins (Ruse a). It is true that increasingly there were empirical discoveries that today we would think evidence of evolution fossils and strange transitional creatures, particularly but then and for many years afterwards the chief attraction of evolution was ideological. The Enlightenment was the time when many people first began seriously to adopt the philosophy of Progress the belief that through unaided human talent and effort the human condition, science, medicine, teaching, culture, and more, can be improved. The Enlightenment was the time when many people began to reject the older philosophy of Providence the belief that we humans unaided can do nothing without Gods help and to think otherwise is presumptuous and doomed to disaster. Evolution now, without qualification, meaning the evolution of organisms was caught up in this debate about Progress and Providence, with supporters of the former arguing that as we see Progress in the cultural world, so likewise we see progress in the biological world, going all of the way from blobs to humans, from monads to man as the saying went. (Progress with a capital P will refer to cultural notions of upward change; progress with a small p to biological notions of such change.)