Nature on sociobiology and god The leading weekly science journal Nature has taken it upon itself to publish a series of articles on what science has to say about being human. The first contribution, published this week, is on religion, and I am going to quote a little from it. First, though, here is a quote from the editorial that announced the series. It talks about the difficulties for evolutionary scientists of:-
Alright, this guy - obviously an eminent science writer - can’t say that the “sociobiology wars” were really an ethnically-motivated attack on good science by Jewish race warriors. We understand that he has to have a job to go to tomorrow morning. But I was quite amazed that, in this genomic age, it is still necessary to call those monsters “scholars” and to portray their motives as “fear” of justifying inequalities. Why so? Gould and Co agitated for anti-science. If, on the contrary, sociobiology had demonstrated some aspect of human nature in a way favourable to Jewish ethnic interests, they would have been praising it from the rooftops. They were liars. They were wrong. They were divisive. They were destructive to careers. Can’t the editor of Nature plainly state that anti-science is not what is expected of supposed men of science? In the very next paragraph he regrets the damage done by these creatures. He could call for an end to fear, an end to division. But he doesn’t. Anyway, to move on to the piece on evolution and religion, by the memory specialist Pascal Boyer. He has this to say:-
There is something of the pop psychologist about this guy. He imputes control over the mind by products of the mind, but evidently he doesn’t ask himself about the passivity or quality of consciousness. I await the day when someone with a doctorate in psychology will pop up and say, “Erm ... actually the thinking mind can seem captured by external stimulii like a catchy tune because ordinary waking consciousness easily devolves into mechanical mental processes. The more mechanical processing going on, the more absent is the subject, and the closer to a sleep state. But no matter, because consciousness is intentional, and it is even possible for a time to eliminate mechanical processing altogether.” Another way of putting this is that if he had a theory of consciousness, Mr Boyer would find that “ritual, morality, metaphysics, social identity” were much more interesting in themselves from the psychological perspective, and the physical areas of the brain which process them much less. Comments:2
Posted by Tanstaafl on Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:12 | # E.O. Wilson has a new book (coming out Nov 10) called Superorganism: <quote>Wilson and Hölldobler first explored the concept of superorganisms in The Ants. Could large groups of animals function together as a single entity with distributed intelligence? Did evolution work through such groups, selecting at the group level rather than the individual? The implications were staggering, not only for bugs but also for humans. Group evolution meant that altruism and self-sacrifice — i.e., morality — might be as much a part of our genetic heritage as hair and eye color. Many prominent biologists, led by Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, said no, there was no such thing as a superorganism: Evolution worked on the genes of self-serving individuals only, not groups.</quote> Can’t wait to see the intellectually bankrupt reaction this book inspires. 3
Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:51 | # Snax, That sounds like a useful avenue of study for a future police state. If there are too many dissidents to imprison, just wipe out their “offensive” memories. Tan, I don’t know about the ants book, but the one Wilson plans to follow it, The Forces of Social Evolution, seems likely be very interesting for us. It would be a wonderful project for someone with an appropriate depth of understanding to put together a detailed reprise of the work of, among others, WD Hamilton, EO Wilson, David Sloan Wilson and Frank Salter (perhaps also Rushton and his Genetic Similarity Theory), showing how they contribute to an understanding of human group development - and, of course, what that means in an age of Western hyper-individualism and the denial of the basis for existence for European Man. Post a comment:
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Posted by snax on Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:41 | #
What do you make of this GW?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081022/hl_hsn/scientistserasespecificmemoriesinmice