Dominic:
I assume you know that you're peddling bullshit here. Social Darwinism has
about as much to do with to do with Darwin and biology as Baked Alaska has
to do with the place. It was a metaphoric extension of one phrase in
Darwin, taken out of context--"survival of the fittest"--and it was
discredited a long time before Social Text was founded. There is virtual
unanimity among scientists about Darwin's basic ideas--the exceptions are
all religiously motivated--though there have been various proposed
refinements--like "punctuated equilibrium"--about the physical mechanisms
by which evolution works.
The Darwinian theory of evolution is elegantly simple. The idea that
there's an intelligent agent guiding it all is considerably less so.
Mark
At 07:36 AM 8/21/2005, you wrote:
>Most political ideologies, both of the right and of the left, entail
>some commitment to "intelligent design". What do you think all that
>stuff about the power of democratically controlled economic planning
>is about? I seem to remember being told repeatedly by people who
>appeared to know what they were talking about that the alternative was
>a particularly callous and wicked option-for-the-rich, known as
>"social darwinism".
>
>I suppose you can make a case for democratically controlled economic
>planning having an improvisatory and empirically responsive character
>(rather than being the imposition of a timeless and extra-mundane
>will), but I'm sure you could cook up some blend of ID and process
>theology and end up saying much the same sort of thing. The variant of
>ID that requires the Designer to be making continuous
>micro-interventions in the unfolding of natural processes (a series of
>"swerves", or catachreses), pretty much *is* saying that sort of
>thing.
>
>Either way, it isn't just backed-into-a-corner right wing fundies who
>loathe "Darwin". I bet you could dig out more than a few old articles
>in Social Text...
>
>Dominic
|