Who are these left-wing critics? Do they have names?
On the other guys, providentially, there's an article in todays NYTimes,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/national/21evolve.html?ei=5094&en=0bd235262066da5c&hp=&ex=1124683200&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1124636944-E19tVgi578XKuDoGzM/oDg
I suspect that you'll have to go through the home page, nytimes.com, and
register--you get an online sub, free.
Mark
At 10:45 AM 8/21/2005, you wrote:
>Some left-wing critics of the Darwinian theory of evolution have
>explicitly criticised it for being a transliteration into the realm of
>biology of a capitalist model of competitive struggle (and an attempt
>to legitimate that model, by granting it a kind of naturalist
>inevitability). As I say, I bet Social Text (targets of the Sokal hoax
>- read: publication of drastically diminished credibility) published a
>few articles by people who subscribed to that viewpoint, or something
>like it.
>
>I guess the point Steven was gesturing towards about Intelligent
>Design, vis-a-vis "Bush" and "Iraq", is that it tries to introduce
>some notion of Providence into the workings of evolutionary history,
>and that the neo-con project in Iraq similarly tries to inscribe some
>notion of Providence (in the form of American Freedom (TM), which
>according to one popular reading of PNAC is believed by the neo-cons
>to be manifestly destined to spread throughout the globe, speeded upon
>its mission by the projection of an unchallengable military
>superiority) into geopolitical history. Both would be wilfully
>ignorant of the "facts on the ground": on the one hand the
>improvidence, the boundless loss and waste, of evolution, and on the
>other...well, we know all about the manifold inconveniences to which
>Operation Iraqi Freedom has been subject.
>
>What I wanted to say in reply was that most political ideologies
>involve some form of providential narrative, and that PNAC is not
>uniquely foolish or wicked in that regard (however foolish and wicked
>it may be in other respects). It isn't just swaggering theocratic
>buffoons who go in for that sort of thing, or who are hostile to a
>theory that shows how - in the domain of biology at least - history
>can get by perfectly well without either an inevitable final
>destination (besides the obvious...) or a guiding or helping hand to
>ensure that it arrives there. Think Lamarkism as Soviet state
>scientific doctrine.
>
>In general, I would agree that parallels between biological theory and
>social reality are at best tendentious, although information theory
>and game theory can form a kind of bridge between them.
>
>Dominic
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