Originally posted on sciy.org by Rich Carlson on Thu 02 Apr 2009 09:24 AM PDT
100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution
by
Richard Carlson
As the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origins of Species take place this year, it is easy to overlook the fact that 2009 also marks the 100th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo's first major text on evolution and consciousness. In Process and Evolution and Yoga and Human Evolution (1909) Sri Aurobindo begins to comprehensively articulate his vision of human evolution. Just as Darwin's book became the foundation for a science of evolution, what has been called evolutionary spirituality can be traced back to Sri Aurobindo's work. Many are acknowledging this bicentennial year of Darwin's birth with a reassessment of his work in light of what we now know about evolution it therefore, also seems to be a good time to reassess Sri Aurobindo's vision of human evolution in terms of our contemporary understanding of the phenomena.
To do this in any systematic way requires a consideration of the development of Sri Aurobindo's perspective on biological evolution, human progress, and human unity. Although his view of science and its limits does not seem to have change appreciably during the period from 1909 to 1949, his view of “human progress†seems to have become decidedly less optimistic and chastened over time. While not denying that the “yoga of the divine mother†or “nature's yoga†is still striving to achieve human unity in latter years his tone becomes decidedly anti-humanist as he declares human progress to be most probably an illusion! Even though his view of history is essentially cyclic he starts his consideration of evolution by writing in Yoga and Human Evolution the following:
“ Whether we take the modern scientific or the ancient Hindu standpoint the progress of humanity is a fact.â€(Aurobindo 1909)
However, by the early1940s when he is revising the last chapters of The Life Divine he writes:
“the idea of human progress itself is very probably an illusion, for there is no sign that man, once emerged from the animal stage, has radically progressed during his race-history; at most he has advanced in knowledge of the physical world, in Science, in the handling of his surroundings, in his purely external and utilitarian use of the secret laws of Nature “ (Aurobindo 1949 p832)
In his 1949 postscript to The Ideal of Human Unity however, he seems to contradict the last quote in acknowledging the drive of nature toward human unity is inevitable:
“We conclude then that in the conditions of the
world at present, even taking into consideration its most disparaging
features and dangerous possibilities, there is nothing that need
alter the view we have taken of the necessity and inevitability of
some kind of world-union; the drive of Nature, the compulsion of
circumstances and the present and future need of mankind make it
inevitable. “(Aurobindo 1949)
How does one reconcile the idea of an evolution
toward human unity which seems to be progressive with the development of human progress that is in Sri Aurobindo's view circular? This is
one issue that will be explored in this paper which attempts to
reconcile Sri Aurobindo's seemingly contradictory claims that while
nature is propelling human society toward unity that human progress itself at best is circular and probably an illusion.
Before beginning however, it is important is to understand that the language and many of the concepts about evolution Sri Aurobindo employs are borrowed from the early 20th century. If one does not allow for this some serious misunderstandings can arise. For example, although his view of society and civilization is always tempered by the voice of the subaltern, the colonialist subject demanding liberation, it is also true that in his earlier writing Sri Aurobindo's perspective on evolution seem to reflect the Edwardian values of the day. His evolutionary theories at times echo the voice of Herbert Spencer with regards to the progressive advance of civilization and the benefits it bestows on the “backward†races.
This paper seeks to penetrate the language and
concepts Sri Aurobindo employs by making explicit a hermeneutic
approach that attempts to extrapolate his thoughts from the early
20th century to the present. While interpreting Sri Aurobindo's
writing in terms of contemporary theory is wrought with problems, it
is essential if we are to develop a platform for dialog between his
writings and today's complex understanding of evolution.
There are several contemporary perspectives on
evolution that will be compared and contrasted to Sri Aurobindo's
work. The extremes of these positions are the orthodox Darwinian
view that essentially reduces evolution to genes and algorithms and
the theory known as Intelligent Design, that supposes a
transcendental creator stands behind the phenomena of the world.
While orthodox Darwinism has roots in modernism, Intelligent Design,
although borrowing arguments from modern science, finds it
intellectual predecessors in the pre-modern era.
While rejecting that either of these extremes would resonate with Sri Aurobindo other contemporary theories are found to be not so distant. Regards biological evolution we discover that in fact Sri Aurobindo seems to have anticipated recent developments in theories of evolution that concern punctuated equilibrium, symbiosis, complexity and emergence. With respect to his view of evolution, science and society his thoughts do not stray far from the constructionist approach to science that incorporates a dialectical approach to systems theory. One prominent example of this approach to science is called dialectical biology. I find common ground between the two in their understanding of the dialectics between science and culture. In this respect Sri Aurobindo can be shown as having anticipatated some post-modern theories of science.
Although separated by the epistemic gap between
modernism and post-modernism both Sri Aurobindo's dialectic of spirit
and matter and the dialectic of science and culture share a common
attempt to pry open the binary dimensions of whole/part
organism/environment matter/mind. Both appreciate differences then
through observation and experience set about to re-integrate
contraries within a vast web of interconnections. The sense of
interconnectedness is an underpinning of both dialectical approaches to systems theory and
Sri Aurobindo.
While spirit and matter do not meet in this paper, I believe it is possible to follow a few threads that do intertwine to get at an intelligible scientific account of evolution by reflecting on how spirit and biology both intersect through culture. By referencing dialectic essays on science that highlight the grave problems implicit in the claims of, what can be called, Darwinian fundamentalist which reduce organism to gene, nature to algorithm, culture to analogs of natural selection I believe one can find patterns consistent with the principle social text of Sri Aurobindo to enable the evaluation of today's scientific truth claims in context of a contemporary practice of integral yoga.
I also show that in the way he situates science within the dialectic of history and culture that Sri Aurobindo's perspective remains complex enough to fold within it a contemporary dialog on science and culture given by today's most brilliant theorist. To do this it is indispensable to find common intellectual genealogies both share, these I believe can be traced back to Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche.
The correspondences of the above philosophers with Sri Aurobindo's work I find to be as follows: Hegel with the Ideal of Human Unity, Marx with references to science and culture in the Human Cycle, Nietzsche with his formulation of the Superman in the Life Divine and other texts. Although I do not ignore the qualitative differences between these thinkers the goal of this paper is to find mutual platforms of understanding to begin a wider dialog between Sri Aurobindo's work and contemporary theory.
Although not ignoring the incommensurable dimension of discourse or the gulf that separates the meta-physician from the biologist, the cosmic from the empirical, I will avoid reducing either spiritual or scientific perspectives in terms of one another. That said while being careful to honor and separate the domains of the scientific from the spiritual my hope is that it will be possible to open up a cultural space for dialog between two otherwise "nonoverlapping magisteria".
This paper has six chapters and due to its length
will be serialized on SCIY. These chapters are :
Intelligent Design versus Real-Idea (Why Sri Aurobindo would not believe in intelligent design)
Darwinian Fundamentalism, reductionism, pluralism, play
Anticipating Science and Society
Complexity: the Dialectics of the Visible and Invisible
Human Unity and the Illusion of Human Progress
The Dialectics of Biology and Culture
The purpose of this paper is not to determine an ultimate truth. Rather I offer an interpretation based on my own readings and sensibilities. That said I welcome any ideas, beliefs, or comments that can contribute to its project of shedding light of the contemporary relationship between Sri Aurobindo with science and culture.
Authors note:
I personally find it disconcerting that while
thousands claim to be devoted followers of Sri Aurobindo and hail him
as either a spiritual master and tens of thousands more regards him as a major cultural figure in India,
that I have not seen one paper yet that acknowledges this 100th
anniversary of his writing on evolution or any systematic comparative
study between his work and contemporary ideas on the matter. The
relevance of someones cultural legacy after their death is only kept
alive by others who find inspiration in their work. This is
especially true in writings on evolution, a subject that by its very
nature changes over time. If this paper merely serves to begin a
wider dialog on this issue then it will have served its purpose.
I) Why Sri Aurobindo would not believe in Intelligent Design
(Intelligent Design vs. Real-Idea)
While the purpose Sri Aurbindo gives to evolution lends it directionality and transcendence. The fact that he presents a teleology as central to his views does not necessarily mean that his perspective squares with the contemporary theory known as Intelligent Design. Sri Aurobindo's teleology does not square with the fundamentalist view of the religions in the Abrahamic tradition, all of whom have found a common cause in the ideology of intelligent design, and who dismiss evolutionary biology because they find it threatening to their faith.
Before going further it should be stated that in this paper intelligent design will be treated as “creationism†because, even though intelligent design is a theory supposedly put forward by disinterested scientist, it is no small coincidence that many of these scientist are being financed by people and organizations like the Discovery Institute who believe strongly in creationism and support scientific conclusions that bolster their ideology with funding. In the case of the Discovery Institute their primary goal in providing funding to scientist is to support “a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictionsâ€.
While Sri Aurobindo does not buy into
its materialist reduction of life, and openly voices his objection
to the chauvinism of science, he does keep open the possibility
that certain Darwinian mechanisms such as natural selection are at
work in evolution, even if they can not by themselves fully account
for it. While acknowledging the limitations of science he certainly
does not seem to find its theories that diverge from his own
threatening, rather he contextualizes them in accordance with his own
integral comprehension of the world. In the following passage in his
essay on Materialism (1915) he defers to science by referencing a
religious text:
“we have not to hide our face from it any
more than could Arjuna from the terrible figure of the Divine on the
battlefield of Kurukshetra, or attempt to escape and evade it as
Shiva, when there rose around him the many stupendous forms of the
original Energy, fled from the vision of it to this and that quarter,
forgetful of his own godhead. We must look existence in the face in
whatever aspect it confronts us and be strong to find within as well
as behind it the Divine.
Materialistic science had the courage to look at this universal truth with level eyes, to accept it calmly as a starting point and to inquire whether it was not after all the whole formula of universal being. Physical science must necessarily to its own first view be materialistic, because so long as it deals with the physical, it has for its own truth's sake to be physical both in its standpoint and methodâ€
Unlike religious fundamentalist one can not imagine him leading a fight to ban the teaching of Darwinian evolution in the public schools. Moreover, although one can imagine Sri Aurobindo engaging in civil disputes over the control of educational agendas with religious fundamentalist his work presents even greater metaphysical differences with those religious groups who lobby for intelligent design.
The significant metaphysical problem with intelligent design visa vie Sri Aurobindo’s accounts of evolution is in the implicit dualism that intelligent design raises. Given his appeal to Supermind or Real-Idea to reconcile the dialectic of spirit and matter, in which spirit evolves out of the heart of matter itself, one can reasonably conclude that Sri Aurobindo's metaphysical perspective would not square with anything that could be called intelligent design; at the very least it would have to be called “supra-intelligent designâ€.
Intelligent design by necessity requires an intelligent designer or the positing of a creator who stands outside of their creation, as an inventor would from her invention. By contrast Sri Aurobindo's envisages evolution as Lila, or play, that seems to place the creator square in the middle of creation; indeed creation is a game of self-finding. By combining evolution with play Sri Aurobindo introduces an element of contingency or uncertainty into the equation of creation that does not mesh with the perfect designs of creationist.
The central theme of evolution that Sri Aurobindo poses, that of the emergence from ignorance to knowledge, intuits a destining of species that is not comprehensible by reference to a designer distinct from the creation being design; as creationist account of intelligent design suggest. While intelligent design narratives maybe consistent with the creation stories of the Abrahamic tradition they do not square well with Sri Aurobindo's view in which evolution is a divine process of self-becoming.
Additionally, while Sri
Aurobindo's metaphysical perspective diverges from that of
intelligent design, one also supposes that his ability to comprehend
what constitutes its ideological social agenda would be as important
a factor in his rejection of it. Given his critical perspective on
religion and society he speaks to in such texts as the The Human
Cycle he would certainly understand the ideological dangers of
embracing current theories associated with intelligent design.
Theories of intelligent design are put forth to support an outright
attempt to further the social agenda of right wing Christian based
groups.
Sri Aurobindo who was brought up in England in the midst of a conservative Protestant household would have been very familiar with the the anti-Darwinist agenda of some conservative Christian denominations. Today the social agenda of right wing fundamentalist groups is a political force that has far reaching implications. Many contemporary commentators such as the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges and conservative political theorist Kevin Phillips have made the association between Fascism and the Christian Right. If anything Sri Aurobindo's political writings show no trace of being persuaded by any Fascist argument it should therefore, be safe to assume that he would be suspicious of the agenda of the intelligent design movement.
What follows is a passage from the Human Cycle which demonstrates Sri Aurobindo's perspective on the intolerance of Christianity in its persecution of scienceâ€
“The individualistic age of Europe was in its beginning a revolt of reason, in its culmination a triumphal progress of physical Science. Such an evolution was historically inevitable. The dawn of individualism is always a questioning, a denial. The individual finds a religion imposed upon him which does not base its dogma and practice upon a living sense of ever verifiable spiritual Truth, but on the letter of an ancient book, the infallible dictum of a Pope, the tradition of a Church, the learned casuistry of schoolmen and Pundits, conclaves of ecclesiastics, heads of monastic orders, doctors of all sorts, all of them unquestionable tribunals whose sole function is to judge and pronounce, but none of whom seems to think it necessary or even allowable to search, test, prove, inquire, discover. He finds that, as is inevitable under such a regime, true science and knowledge are either banned, punished and persecuted or else rendered obsolete by the habit of blind reliance on fixed authorities; even what is true in old authorities is no longer of any value, because its words are learnedly or ignorantly repeated but its real sense is no longer lived except at most by a few. In politics he finds everywhere divine rights, established privileges, sanctified tyrannies which are evidently armed with an oppressive power and justify themselves by long prescription, but seem to have no real claim or title to exist. “(Aurobindo 1972 p16)
As previously stated so called scientific theories of intelligent design often simply present a facade for creationist teaching. Although some Christian organizations have called on scientist not affiliated with their religious faith to discount evolutionary biology these scientist certainly represent a minority view in the scientific community at large. For instance, the faith based Discovery Institute, who is on the forefront of arguing that creationism be taught in American public school, has chosen to employ several scientist, some of whom claim to be atheist, to argue in support of their position.
In all likelihood the Discovery
Institute has chosen such scientist with special intent because
matters of faith notwithstanding, the very fact that they are
marketed as “objective scientist†lends them a certain
credibility with secular law makers. The Christian Right who are well
skilled at playing politics are certainly savvy enough to know it is
best to turn science and its inevitable conflicting theories back
upon themselves when these conflicts can serve their socio political
ends.
By in large the biologist who take apologist positions
for intelligent design are discounted by perhaps as many as 99% all
other biologist who affirm the mechanics of evolution and natural
selection. Although not all of these scientist would agree that
everything can be reduced to natural selection. This fact will be
taken up in the next section of this paper on Darwinian
Fundamentalism.
Finally, a distinction should be made between intelligent design and the anthropic principle: the theory that the presence of life on earth places limits on the many ways the universe could have developed. While the anthropic principle can be used by the intelligent design movement to support its cause it can equally be employed by non-religious scientist as a way to explain the structure of our universe from first principles. A belief in the anthropic principle does not require one to posit a theological creator and many credible scientist entertain it. In short, one can believe in the anthropic principle while rejecting intelligent design.
While it is quite possible that Sri Aurobindo might have been sympathetic to arguments for the anthropic principle, its also possible that he would have validated the principal by stating the argument that because humans exists we observe a universe consistent with our existence; perhaps he would have argued for both.
While Sri Aurobindo undoubtedly believed that human life on Earth was special, I will only add that even if we are to believe that our universal environment is uncannily adapted to evolve life, specifically human life on Earth, any specific metaphysical conclusions do not necessarily follow. The anthropic principle in itself would still not mean we humans are necessarily special in any way or signal that life on Earth was one of a kind. Why? Because science also posits an infinity of universes and we have no way of knowing what goes on in all of these. If there were life everywhere in the universe would it follow that life on Earth was necessarily special? Moreover, String Theory tell us there are multiple dimensions and one would have to first chart all these in detail to lend life on Earth any special status.
For
his part, as I understand it, Sri Aurobindo believes the Earth to be
unique in the special evolutionary role of the psychic being.
But even if it were found that life on our planet is special in some sense, humans share the Earth was a myriad of other life forms. If conditions on Earth make human life ideal, how much more so does it support the life of the cockroach, who has existed on it way longer than human beings. So if the anthropic principle merely argues that conditions are inexplicably favorable to support of life on Earth since we don't really have a cockroach metaphysics - other than perhaps in Kafka- it would be hard to know which forms of life our universe really favor.
As far as Sri Aurobindo is concerned the Earth is unique in the evolutionary role of the soul or psychic being.
Darwinian Fundamentalism: reductionism, pluralism, play
Good scientific theories usually have the following things:
predictive accuracy - the ability to forecast what we have not yet observed
internal coherence - the various parts of the theory should not contradict each other
external consistency - the theory should not contradict other accepted theories, or 'laws of nature'
unifying power - the theory should bring together and explain previously disparate areas of knowledge
fertility - the theory should generate novel hypotheses
falsifiability - it should be possible to construct hypotheses that could lead to the rejection of the theory - this is an especially important scientific value
simplicity and elegance - this is a value judgment i.e. it is a subjective judgment made by scientists. Consequently simplicity is a desired characteristic rather than a defining characteristic of a scientific theory (University of Plymouth)
And I would add to this:
* lead to reproducible experiments that can empirically verify the claims it makes.
For the purposes of this paper however, although not suggesting that his is an entirely fail safe system, I will use Karl Popper's falsifiability criterion as a standard for verifying truth claims. Popper put forward this criterion as a critique and replacement for the “verifiability criterion†of logical-positivism. It will be used as a method to separate what we suppose to be “good science†from “bad science†or mere ideology. To the extent that an evolutionary narrative can be considered scientific is to the extent it can be falsified or “the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment a.k.a through common experience of itâ€
The ideology of intelligent design
as well as some of the theories associated with Neo-Darwinian biology can not
be falsified so it is hard to make the claim that they are
scientific in the strict sense. While intelligent design can not be falsified because we
have no instruments to detect a designer who stands outside the
material world he/she designed, one of the central tenets of Darwinian
fundamentalism that only natural selection and genetic variation can
explain all evolutionary descent can not be falsified in the same
way.
For instance, it can not
be demonstrated that all life descended from a single primordial
cell solely by the process of natural selection and genetic variation. One can dispute the
falsifiability of the proposition, by asking, "What experiment
can be conducted to show this did not happen?" The problem is
similar to the problem of "last night I dreamed of electric
sheep." There are no other witnesses to my dream but me, just as
there are no witnesses left from the Precambrian era to account for
everything that might have gone on then. If there are no witnesses,
one can argue that there is no way to test the claim and the
assertion is therefore not falsifiable.
Worse are the falsifiability claims
of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary psychologist who claim to explain the
origins of consciousness. The tales told by them of our
psychological origins can never be falsified and so are similar to
the just-so stories of Rudyard Kipling that, as Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin reminds us, maybe useful as
a quick way to solve a child's curiosity can not be verified.
For Kipling, the elephant got its trunk because a crocodile pulled on it. Does this mean that elephant trunks occurred as an adaptation due to hungry crocodiles? Maybe, maybe not because it is a hypothesis that cant be proven. It is “just soâ€.
Evolutionary psychology seizes on a
given trait in members of contemporary society and make up a just so
story using analogs to Darwinian mechanisms -that inevitably concern
survival - . So language evolves as follows:‘ We talk by making
noises and not by waving our hands because hunter-gatherers living in
the Savannah would have had trouble seeing one another in the tall
grass.’ There is no way to falsify the above statement.
While
these just so stories discredit the attempt to explain everything by
natural selection, these tales do not entirely discredit the role
that natural selection legitimately plays in evolution. For example,
the proposition that life changes through generations, and this
change is influenced by variation and natural selection could be
tested. One could test this proposition by taking a life form,
exposing it to the pressures of natural selection, observing the
effects over time. This can be done quite easily and in fact is
observed all the time. One can gather evidence for the applicability
of natural selection and adaptation by observing bacteria evolve and
adapt resistance to anti-biotics. Closer to our own skins adaptation
by natural selection give us our shades of color.
The mechanism of natural selection to explain environmental adaptation has held up remarkably well over the past 150 years. Even the claim by creationist that one can not falsify the fossil record on which Neo-Darwinism depends is not wholly true. The fossil record is constantly under interrogation and paradigm shifts do occur. The Cambrian Explosion in which the most complex forms of animal life seem to have appeared 530 million years ago has caused much scientific debate and was thought by Darwin as the single biggest objection to his gradualist theory of evolutionary descent. Since then there have been many theories that have been proposed to account for the rapid explosion of life. Recently the theory of punctuated equilibrium developed in the early 1970s proposed a view that evolution over long intervals is nearly static and "punctuated" by short periods of rapid change.
This theory has forced many scientist to adopt more complex ways of conceiving evolution than simple reductive narratives would allow. Its must not follow that all scientist will agree on a single paradigm and in this instance the debate between reductionist and constructionist perspectives of evolution has been one of the most lively in science. Most notably, Daniel Dennet representing the former and Stephen Jay Gould the latter. However most scientist no longer view evolutionary descent as reducible to the simple selection at the genetic level.
Recently the finding of the fossil remains of the hobbit man on an island east of Bali has forced anthropologist and paleontologist to rethink human history from the relatively short span of time from ten to fifteen thousand years ago. Although there is no doubt that the paradigms that establish what Thomas Kuhn called “Normal Science†are so ideologically and professionally entrenched on the Universities as to make them hard to displace most paradigms and scientific theories do eventual fade away. This is in fact is considered the strength of science, its singular ability to demonstrate over time ever increasing understanding of phenomena.
To summarize to believe in natural
selection when falsifiable is not to foreclose the horizon of other
causes of evolution but merely to believe that: “organismic
forms have had a history there have been significant genetic changes
in species and that present life forms arose from others quite unlike
themâ€. (Lewontin 2006)
The problem most religious
people have with natural selection is with its idea of random
mutation that suggest that a series of accidents has led to our
current condition. To many the ideas that we are simply the result of
random process contains a certain nihilistic underpinning. But the
randomness of random mutation begins to take on different meaning
when we understand that it is not solely the organism that is under
study in biology but, rather the organism in context of the
environment; the part in relationship to the whole. Those who merely
see evolution as an extended phenotype or explainable solely through
phyletic speciation as Richard Dawkins attempt to reduce all life to
processes of natural selection and random mutation. This is the
reductionist paradigm but, from a pluralistic point of view, that
here means, that life must be seen from the context of both
organism and environment, randomness is better understood as
contingency. Here is Stephen Jay Gould:
I am not
speaking of randomness/, but of the central principle of all
history—/contingency/. A historical explanation does not rest on
direct deductions from laws of nature, but on an /unpredictable
sequence of antecedent states/, where any major change in any step of
the sequence would have altered the final result. This final result
is therefore dependent, or contingent, upon everything that came
before—the unerasable and determining signature of history.
...Contingency is an /unpredictable sequence of antecedent states/,
not randomness, chanciness, or accident. (Gould)
In fact
contingency is just one part of the equation, a law like quality is
equally applicable to natural selection:
My argument
in /Wonderful Life/ is that there is a domain of law and a domain of
contingency, and our struggle is to find the line between them. The
reason why the domain of contingency is so vast,
and much
vaster than most people thought, is not because there isn't a law
like domain. It is because we are primarily interested in ourselves
and we have posited various universal laws of nature. It
is
because…we want to see ourselves as results of law
like predictability and sensible products of the universe in
that sense. (Gould in Shermer 1999)
Now, to admit
contingency itself as a feature of physical evolution seems to square
well with Sri Aurobindo's view of evolution as Lila (play) In any
activity play or game there is always contingency or an element of
chance, if there were not that game would be extremely boring. So to
introduce contingency into evolution is certainly not at odds with
evolution as play, nor does the idea of Lila or contingency
necessarily discount the falsifiable of natural selection. So as we
shall later see, it is interesting indeed that Sri Aurobindo perhaps
also anticipates one of Gould's most well known thesis concerning the
non-linearity of evolution through catastrophic bifurcation.
Although there is a huge philosophical chasm that separates Gould as a scientist who denies teleology from Sri Aurobindo's spiritual teleology, just the fact that he constructs a theory that integrates consideration of both organism with environment into it, would seem a vision of evolution closer to an integral view than the reductionist strategies of what Gould calls Darwinian Fundamentalism.
To understand the difference between the pluralist approach of Stephen Gould and his colleague Richard Lewontin and the reductionist accounts of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins is important if one wishes to know some of the stark differences between scientist who study evolution. What follows is a short but important history of the feud between Gould and Dennet in which Gould responded to Dennett in an article written for the New York Review of Books called the Pleasures of Pluralism (aka non-reductionism) and accused both Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins of being Darwinian Fundamentalist.
“Dennett had earlier written a
feisty attack on theories of Gould, Lewontin, Noam Chomsky, and
Stuart Kauffman, who reject a strict selectionist account of
evolution and the origin of mind and language. Dennett, in his NYR,
letter speaks of Gould's "non-revolutions," claiming that
Gould's alternatives to genic selectionism are empty. Gould claims
that speciation (the rise of new species) differs in its mechanism
from the sort of gradualistic changes observed in the genetics
laboratory. Gould also claims that macroevolution, the major main
trends evolution, depends in large part of species selection rather
than individual or genic selection, thus operating at a different
level from the microevolution or the sort observed with breeding
fruit-flies. Furthermore, Gould denies selectionism, claiming that
many traits have not been selected for and are not particularly
adaptive, and coins the term "exaptation" to characterize
the functioning of a trait which was not previously selected for or
adaptive. He claims this is different from the previous, orthodox
neo-Darwinist claim of "preadaptation" where a trait
previously selected for one function or adapted to one environment is
later selected for another function in a different environment.
Dennett denies exaptation differs from preadaptation and accuses
Gould of tooting his own horn by inventing a new term for a
well-known idea. Gould claims that exaptive traits were not
previously selected for, and that preadapted traits were so selected
for some other function. (Dusek)
These are the four main points that Stephen Jay Gould makes to dispute the reductionist arguments for natural selection.
contingency (see above)
structural constraints, such as basic body plans, which may become far from optimally adaptive, but which are too difficult to change by piecemeal natural selection without making many other features of the organism maladaptive
"spandrels" in evolutionary biology to mean a feature of an organism that arises as a necessary side consequence of other features, but which is not built directly, piece by piece, as a result of being favored by natural selection. Examples include the "masculinized genitalia in female hyenas, exaptive use of an umbilicus as a brooding chamber by snails, the shoulder hump of the giant Irish deer, and several key features of human mentality.
Punctuated equilibrium that instead of proceeding evenly or gradually evolution tends to happen in fits and starts, sometimes moving very fast, sometimes moving very slowly or not at all.
Here is part of a response made by Stephen Jay Gould to Daniel Dennett in a well publicized letter that followed the article that was well publicized in The New York Review of Books:
So if natural selection builds all of evolution, without the interposition of auxiliary processes or intermediary complexities, then I suppose that evolution is algorithmic too. But—and here we encounter Dennett's disabling error once again—evolution includes so much more than natural selection that it cannot be algorithmic in Dennett's simple calculational sense. Yet Dennett yearns to subsume all the phenomenology of nature under the limited aegis of adaptation as an algorithmic result of natural selection. He writes: "Here, then, is Darwin's dangerous idea: the algorithmic level is the level that best accounts for the speed of the antelope, the wing of the eagle, the shape of the orchid, the diversity of species, and all the other occasions for wonder in the world of nature" (Dennett's italics). I will grant the antelope's run, the eagle's wing, and much of the orchid's shape—for these are adaptations, produced by natural selection, and therefore legitimately in the algorithmic domain. But can Dennett really believe his own imperialistic extensions? Is the diversity of species no more than a calculational consequence of natural selection? Can anyone really believe, beyond the hype of rhetoric, that "all the other occasions for wonder in the world of nature" flow from adaptation? (Gould 1997)
Gould and Dennett's battle notwithstanding on how much of evolution can be solely attributed to natural selection, the state of the art in contemporary molecular biology that concerns the actual mechanisms that cause mutations in genetic evolution is called evo-devo and combines studies of species evolution -evo– with studies of individual development -devo-.
An excellent overview of Evo-Devo is to be found in an article written by Israel Rosenfield and Edward Ziff. entitled Evolving Evolution which is a review of two recent books on the subject by Sean Carroll, Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart. What follows are a few excerpts from this article:
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In 1894, the English biologist William Bateson challenged Darwin's view that evolution was gradual. He published Materials for the Study of Variation, a catalog of abnormalities he had observed in insects and animals in which one body part was replaced with another. He described, for example, a mutant fly with a leg instead of an antenna on its head, and mutant frogs and humans with extra vertebrae. The abnormalities Bateson discovered resisted explanation for much of the twentieth century. But in the late 1970s, studies by Edward Lewis at the California Institute of Technology, Christiana Nüsslein-Vollhard and Eric Wieschaus in Germany, and others began to reveal that the abnormalities were caused by mutations of a special set of genes in fruit fly embryos that controlled development of the fly's body and the distribution of its attached appendages. Very similar genes, exercising similar controls, were subsequently found in nematodes, flies, fish, mice, and human beings.
What they and others discovered were genes that regulate the development of the embryo and exert control over other genes by mechanisms analogous to that of the repressor molecule studied by Monod and Jacob. Eight of these controlling genes, called Hox genes, are found in virtually all animals—worms, mice, and human beings—and they have existed for more than half a billion years. Fruit flies and worms have only one set of eight Hox genes; fish and mammals (including mice, elephants, and humans) have four sets. Each set of Hox genes in fish and mammals is remarkably similar to the eight Hox genes found in fruit flies and worms. This discovery showed that very similar genes control both embryological and later development in virtually all insects and animals...............
According to this theory, the mutations, or variations, needed to drive evolutionary change can occur with little disruption either to the basic organization of an organism or to the core processes that make its cells function.†(Rosenfield Ziff 2006)
A common set of genes that is shared by all life forms that would seem responsible for all mutations and embryological morphology would in itself not be inconsistent with a perspective favoring an integral view of life.
The next section of this paper demonstrates that, in his own way, Sri Aurobindo anticipated some of today's predominate scientific theories on biological evolution as well as presented a view about the meaning of human evolution that in its secular aspects is consistent with contemporary social theory.
III) Anticipating Science & Society
One thing that can be said
non-metaphorically about that the way Sri Aurobindo practiced yoga
was that it was scientific. The perfection of his sadhana was a feat
that required experimentation and one in which he sought demonstrable
results. It should reasonably follow that his perspective on science
would be one in which its truth claims were open to critical
interrogation, just as were his experiments in yoga.
Given
his penetrating intellectual insights into cultural change, his
understanding of history as both progressive and cyclic, his
multivocal criticisms of society, his integrative encounter with
other voices and texts, his ability to effortlessly traverse the
subjectivities of Europe and India and to transit freely between both
ancient and modern zeitgeists, it seems reasonable to assume that he
would size up science with a critical gaze.
While naturally
rejecting the reductionism of evolutionary biology that goes as far
as to suggest that all of evolution can be reduced to a single
algorithm, he does not seem to have rejected some of the organizing
ideas derived of Darwinian evolution. In general he does not
seem to have discarded the necessity of scientific explanations on
evolution. To restate a paragraph from his essay on Materialism
(1915) he seems to understand perfectly well why science reasons as
it does :
Materialistic science had the courage to
look at this universal truth with level eyes, to accept it calmly as
a starting point and to inquire whether it was not after all the
whole formula of universal being. Physical science must necessarily
to its own first view be materialistic, because so long as it deals
with the physical, it has for its own truth's sake to be physical
both in its standpoint and methodâ€
In the above quotes he is obviously
instancing scientific reason as helper rather than on reason as bar.
That said before attempting to analyze his scientific world view one
must admit that there are real problems with simply selectively
quoting Sri Aurobindo, someone whose intellectual project involved
constantly integrating binary perspectives and synthesizing ways of
knowing that seem entirely contradictory. If we are not alert to the
complexity that his stylistic approach presents we will fail
altogether to understand him by simply referencing selected
quotations from his text. Isolated quotations will almost inevitably
appear in other parts of his text in other contexts, that to the
untrained eye, would seem to contradict or cancel each other out .
So we should not be surprised that while praising the
scientific method in his 1915 essay on Materialism he appears to
contradict himself in his essay of the same year entitled Evolution:
“the materialistic view of the world is now rapidly collapsing
and with it the materialistic statement of the evolution theory must
disappear†. It is only when one assumes an integrative stance
visa vie his text, that implicitly contextualizes any
statement by admitting the possibility of its opposite under
different circumstances that one can fully appreciate his integral
approach. So when one finds that in one place he extols the virtues
of science yet in another he seems to denounce it, one must avail
oneself of the essential element of context to be able to understand
the integrative meaning he is trying to get at.
If we take the above the quotation
regards the collapse of the “materialistic statement†as
envisaging a future of science we have to equally understand the
respect he accorded it in his own day:
“it must
interpret the material universe first in the language and tokens of
the material Brahman, because these are its primary and its general
terms and all others come second, subsequently, are a special
syllabary. To follow a self-indulgent course from the beginning would
lead at once towards fancies and falsities. Initially, science is
justified in resenting any call on it to indulge in another kind of
imagination and intuition. Anything that draws it out of the circle
of the phenomena of objects, as they are represented to the senses
and their instrumental prolongations, and away from the dealings of
the reason with them by a rigorous testing of experience and
experimentation, must distract it from its task and is inadmissible.â€
(Aurobindo1915)
His prophecy concerning the collapse of a materialistic science seems to clearly not to have come to pass some eighty four years after his forecast. This is especially true if one regards the reductionist formulas of evolutionary biology and most traditional neo-Darwinian accounts of evolution as paradigmatic. In fact, some may argue after reading the works of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett that we may now be farther away from a non-material science than when Sri Aurobindo penned his prophecy. In fact, we maybe farther away from the logical proof that begins the Life Divine, then when he wrote:.
“We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness. And then there seems to be little objection to a farther step in the series and the admission that mental consciousness may itself be only a form and a veil of higher states which are beyond Mind.†(Aurobindo 1949 p3)
Indeed the most recent contemporary
narratives that scientific tells points back to materialism as its
first and final cause. But things might be changing.
Reductionism is no longer the only scientific game in town and
in fact other evolutionary narratives are being written that move in
an opposite direction, from simple reductionism to principles of
complexity and emergence to help explain nature. Such narratives can
be gathered from the new science of complexity.
Complexity
theorist such as Stuart Kaufmann (2007) and others at the Sante Fe
Institute offer a new scientific paradigm that posits emergence
instead of reduction, self-organization instead of natural selection
in a complex reorientation from materialism to a view of nature that
may resacramentalize her. While their new vision of the sa
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