A Darwinian Pilgrim's Late Progress
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.37784Keywords:
pseudoscience, idea of progress, Darwinism, Meaning, Darwinian existentialismAbstract
This is the final part of an autobiographical series which retraces the most significant events, collaborations, and research results of Michael Ruse’s 55-year-long career in the history and philosophy of science. In this installment, Ruse’s increasing engagement with historiography leads him to rethink and tackle the role of values in science. The intertwined topics summarized here are considered as they developed between the 1990s and the 2010s: the mediation between empiricism and social constructivism; the historical study of the idea of qualitative, biological “progress” in evolutionary biology as drawn from coeval social ideas; the paradox according to which “progress” is formally eschewed and yet implicitly present in modern evolutionary biology; the development of evolutionary biology from pseudoscience tied to social progress to popular science to full-fledged professional science; Darwinism as hopeful, progressive “religion” contrasted with progress-less Darwinian theory; meaning in a Darwinian world, and the development of a Darwinian existentialism.
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Ruse, M. 2017a. Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us About Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1086/695791
Ruse, M. 2017b. On Purpose. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ruse, M. 2018. The Problem of War: Darwinism, Christianity, and Their Battle to Understand Human Conflict. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ruse, M. 2019. A Meaning to Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sartre, J. P. [1946] 1948. Existentialism and Humanism. Brooklyn, NY: Haskell House Publishers Ltd.
Starhawk. 2009. “Power, Authority, and Mystery: Ecofeminism and Earth-based Spirituality”. In Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, ed. I. I. Diamond and G. F. Orenstein, 73–86. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club.
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St. Aquinas, T. 1952. Summa Theologica, I. London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne.
Barnes, J., ed. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Browne, J. 1995. Charles Darwin: Voyaging. Volume 1 of a Biography. New York: Knopf.
Bury, J. B. [1920] 1924. The Idea of Progress; An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth. London: MacMillan.
Chambers, R. 1844. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. London: Churchill.
Chambers, R. 1846. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Fifth Edition. London: J. Churchill.
Collins, H. M. 1981. “Stages in the Empirical Program of Relativism – Introduction”. Social Studies of Science 11(1): 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631278101100101
Cottingham, J. 2003. On the Meaning of Life. London: Routledge.
Darwin, C. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.68064
Darwin, C. 1861. Origin of Species. Third Edition. London: John Murray.
Darwin, C. 1881. Letter to William Graham, July 3. Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter no. DCP-LETT-13230. http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/DCP-LETT-13230 (accessed 2 November 2018).
Darwin, E. 1794-1796. Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life. London: J. Johnson.
Darwin, E. 1803. The Temple of Nature. London: J. Johnson.
Dawkins, R. 1983. “Universal Darwinism”. In Evolution from Molecules to Men, ed. D. S. Bendall, 403–25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dawkins, R. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: Norton.
Dawkins, R., and J. R. Krebs. 1979. “Arms Races Between and Within Species”. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 205(1161): 489–511. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1979.0081
Dostoevsky, F. [1866] 2003. The Brothers Karamazov. London: Penguin.
Hardy, T. 1994. Collected Poems. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Poetry Library.
John Paul II. 1998. “Fides et Ratio: Encyclical Letter of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II to the Bishops of the Catholic Church On the Relationship Between Faith and Reason”. Encyclical Letter of John Paul II to the Catholic Bishops of the World. Vatican City. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html (accessed 12 November 2018).
Lankester, E. R. 1880. Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism. London: Macmillan.
McMullin, E. 1983. “Values in Science”. In PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association1982. II. Symposia and Invited Papers, ed. P. D. Asquith and T. Nickles, 3–28. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association. https://www.jstor.org/stable/192409
Meredith, G. 1870. “In the Woods”. Fortnightly Review 8: 179–83.
Naden, C. 1999. Poetical Works of Constance Naden. Kernville, CA: High Sierra Books.
Nagel, E. 1961. The Structure of Science, Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
Popper, K. R. 1972. Objective Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Richards, R. J. 2008. The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjh.44.1.189
Ruse, M. 1979a. The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjh.15.1.142
Ruse, M. 1979b. Sociobiology: Sense or Nonsense? Dordrecht: Reidel.
Ruse, M. 1996. Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ruse, M. 2005. The Evolution-Creation Struggle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ruse, M. 2006. Darwinism and its Discontents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ruse, M. 2010. Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ruse, M. 2013a. “Evolution: From Pseudoscience to Popular Science, from Popular Science to Professional Science”. In Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, ed. M. Pigliucci and M. Boudry, 225–44. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226051826.001.0001
Ruse, M. 2013b. The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ruse, M. 2015. Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ruse, M. 2017a. Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us About Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1086/695791
Ruse, M. 2017b. On Purpose. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ruse, M. 2018. The Problem of War: Darwinism, Christianity, and Their Battle to Understand Human Conflict. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ruse, M. 2019. A Meaning to Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sartre, J. P. [1946] 1948. Existentialism and Humanism. Brooklyn, NY: Haskell House Publishers Ltd.
Starhawk. 2009. “Power, Authority, and Mystery: Ecofeminism and Earth-based Spirituality”. In Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, ed. I. I. Diamond and G. F. Orenstein, 73–86. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club.
Wilson, E. O. 1975. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wilson, E. O. 2012. The Social Conquest of Earth. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Published
2019-10-14
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Ruse, M. (2019). A Darwinian Pilgrim’s Late Progress. Journal of Cognitive Historiography, 4(2), 180-198. https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.37784
