User:Conservative/EvolutionAsSocialConstruct
From Conservapedia
Evolution and culture affecting the school of evolutionary thought
Fact check the influence of culture and acceptance of Darwinian vs. non-Darwinian evolutionary thought.
Suzan Mazur interview with Dr. Lynn Margulus
Dr. Margulus: "It must be deeply understood that the term "evolution," which is not used by Charles Darwin -- he called the process "descent with modification" -- is Anglo-Saxon. It is very much a British-American "take" on the history of life, traditionally limited to Anglophones.
Most English-speaking scientists think in hushed hagiographic terms when they mention Charles Darwin, comparable to English thought about physics before Einstein when Newton was the only game in town. It's a very English nationalist phenomenon, especially as Darwin was later interpreted."[1]
Suzan Mazur: But there is significant research on evolution taking place in India and Japan. Hundreds Of Natural-selection Studies Could Be Wrong, Study Demonstrates
Symbiogenesis and Russian evolutionary thought
Russian evolutionary thought has been more receptive towards symbiogenesis due to the antipathy of many Russians intellectuals to Malthusian thought and the Darwinian notion of natural selection via competition.[2] In a April of 2009 interview with the writer Suzan Mazur Dr. Lynn Margulus stated: "In the Russian equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica, some 250 pages describe symbiogenesis."[3]
Michael Ruse and Mystery of Mysteries : Is Evolution a Social Construction
Publisher's Weekly review:
In a signal contribution to the debate about the nature of science, Ruse, a professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, tackles a central question: Is science a report on objective reality with special standards of truth finding, as Austrian-born philosopher Karl Popper maintains, or is it a culturally bound enterprise, a sequence of paradigms that subjectively mirror our ever-shifting view of the world, as American physicist Thomas Kuhn insists? Ruse's intriguing answer, likely to satisfy no one fully, is that both Popper and Kuhn are correct. He uses evolutionary biology as a case study, starting with physician-poet Erasmus Darwin, a deist who regarded evolution as set in motion by a remote, nonintervening God, then moves on to grandson Charles Darwin, whose theories, according to Ruse, strongly reflected Victorian attitudes about progress, gender, race and capitalism, as well as Malthus's notion of the "struggle for existence." In a handsome, scholarly probe, Ruse argues that Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) advances a "secular theology" rooted in 18th-century laissez-faire capitalism's belief that things work best when everybody is following his or her self-interest. Harvard sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, in Ruse's view, replaced the religious fundamentalism of a Southern Baptist childhood with an ardent faith in what Wilson calls "the evolutionary epic," neo-Darwinism as a fertile "myth." And paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould's hotly contested theory of "punctuated equilibrium" owes a debt to Marxism (Gould's father was a Marxist) and to German idealism, in Ruse's analysis. Ruse's ultimate verdict: science remains embedded in cultural values, even as it improves its quest for objective knowledge.[4] Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Michael Ruse and evolutionary thought and progress
Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology: http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780674582200?&PID=33477
Uncommondescent
"The second debate is between classical neo-Darwinians and non-Darwinians i.e. scientists that claim that Darwinian mechanisms are not the main forces driving evolution. There are in France, Italy and England two main schools of thinking in this area. One believes that there is a goal in the process of evolution and so randomness is just apparent, not real, in the mechanism of evolution. At a much deeper level evolution is more or less predictable because it has a purpose. The other supports the idea of self organization, autopoeisis and emergence. For them these concepts are just as important, if not more important than Darwinian concepts in our understanding of evolution. In our first part we will describe these debates and the main scientists whose positions differ from the classical non-Darwinian one, but who are, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, evolutionists. It is of special interest for an American audience because it will show how the debate is much wider in this field than the narrow controversies between Darwinians on one hand and ‘crazy creationists’ or the proponents of Intelligent Design on the other.
It could be very surprising and interesting for an American audience to discover that there are non-Darwinian scientists who claim they support evolution more strongly than Darwinians! The reason is epistemological: Teilhard supporters who form the majority of non-Darwinian scientists in Europe, claim that the existence of purpose and directionality is better evidence for the reality of evolution than any demonstration using Darwinian concepts."[5]
Liberal theology and anti-supernaturnalism and evolution
Liberal are more likely to believe in evolution than creationism or creation science: Theory of evolution and liberalism
Liberal theology is anti-supernaturalistic:
Liberal theology and evolution: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i4/double.asp
College professors
American College professors and atheism/agnosticism:
23.4 percent of American college and university professors describe themselves as either atheists or agnostics.[6]
American college professors and liberalism:
"By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative."[7]
