Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - The philosophical problems with theories of evolution

roachboy · 02-01-2005, 08:28 AM

darwin's work was overlaid almost from the outset with spenser (social darwinist) "logic"--which set up a curious hall of mirrors between texts--the latter was explicitly positivist and relied upon enough information from darwin to recode the narrative--and the darwin narrative was amenable to such re-interpretation.

at the level of theory, darwin/evolution is a framework for making inferences. it is a descriptive theory. the correlate in the arts would be art history, the system of selecting/legitimating/classifying of art production in general. in both cases, notions of "progress" (a favorite bourgeois phantasm) would be a second-order description, one that characterized particular results of a prior classification. questions about progress, like questions about what is and is not included in prior classifications, would operate at a third level.

logic shift: besides, it is obvious that notions like "progress" also work at the ideological level, and that theories outlined within the genre "science" do not operate outside a general ideological climate, either in themselves or (particularly) as objects which circulate in particular cultural spaces. given that we operate in a capitalist environment, and given that one of the stronger and more persistent tendencies within that environment has been to route ideological claims through scientific theory to legitimate the claims (regardless of the violence this might do to the theories, which in the end are secondary), that darwin would have provided a playground for bourgeois political triumphalism is not a surprise, really.

the notion of progress also sucks precious bodily fluids from previous narratives, like the one about the second coming of christ. as capitalism in its nation-state oriented form continues its process of collapse, some of the older narratives resurface as such, maybe because they are not falisifiable, maybe for alot of other reasons.....

02-01-2005, 08:28 AM	#10 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	darwin's work was overlaid almost from the outset with spenser (social darwinist) "logic"--which set up a curious hall of mirrors between texts--the latter was explicitly positivist and relied upon enough information from darwin to recode the narrative--and the darwin narrative was amenable to such re-interpretation. at the level of theory, darwin/evolution is a framework for making inferences. it is a descriptive theory. the correlate in the arts would be art history, the system of selecting/legitimating/classifying of art production in general. in both cases, notions of "progress" (a favorite bourgeois phantasm) would be a second-order description, one that characterized particular results of a prior classification. questions about progress, like questions about what is and is not included in prior classifications, would operate at a third level. logic shift: besides, it is obvious that notions like "progress" also work at the ideological level, and that theories outlined within the genre "science" do not operate outside a general ideological climate, either in themselves or (particularly) as objects which circulate in particular cultural spaces. given that we operate in a capitalist environment, and given that one of the stronger and more persistent tendencies within that environment has been to route ideological claims through scientific theory to legitimate the claims (regardless of the violence this might do to the theories, which in the end are secondary), that darwin would have provided a playground for bourgeois political triumphalism is not a surprise, really. the notion of progress also sucks precious bodily fluids from previous narratives, like the one about the second coming of christ. as capitalism in its nation-state oriented form continues its process of collapse, some of the older narratives resurface as such, maybe because they are not falisifiable, maybe for alot of other reasons..... __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 02-01-2005 at 08:33 AM..