Could it really be the (proper) place of historians to interpret the influence of Plato's conceptualization(s) of physicality and idealism? Does 'anti-evolutionary' equate with anti-fixed or anti-fixed ideal? It seems to me that Plato's thought goes beyond organicism to the heart of changeology's problematic.
Survive. Survive! Survive? Was it Darwin or Malthus or Spencer who first argued this? Notice that none of the three were from the N. American continent (i.e. evolution is an imported ideology/science)!
Is it now a matter of 'pick your dichotomy'? 'Statics' are mentioned, but not 'dynamics' (c.f. process philosophy/theology). This was a foundational discussion for A. Comte's positivistic philosophy. Even in the text below the terms 'static ideal' are used surprisingly together, yet seemingly as pejoratively or as an 'impossible dream.'
Physicalism shan't be applied to morality - can that be a consensus conclusion that debating/reasoning about cosmological evolution/design and biological evolution/design has led us to?
Geologists (and process philosophers/theologians) 'look for evolution everywhere' and they seem to find it!
Arago
David Campbell <pleuronaia@gmail.com> wrote:
Any historians out there have an idea as to the extent to which Plato's concept of physical objects as approximations of a fixed ideal might have influenced the antievolutionary concept of fixed kinds of organisms? If one assumes static ideals, then evolutionary change suggests that an organism is less than ideal and needs to fix something, which raises questions about why it wasn't made right to start with. However, recognition that the environment is not static helps show that a static ideal is not what organisms need to survive over the long term (among other problems with the idea). Conversely, the fact that static ideals don't work well for physical aspects of organisms says nothing about whether or not there might be fixed ideals in other areas, e.g. morality.
-- Dr. David Campbell 425 Scientific Collections University of Alabama "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams" --------------------------------- All new Yahoo! Mail --------------------------------- Get news delivered. Enjoy RSS feeds right on your Mail page. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.Received on Tue Oct 10 13:30:29 2006
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