MY youngest
brother and I had an excellently heated debate upon a time over the nature of
evolution; rather, I was debating the nature of evolution and he was
debating the theory of evolution. Essentially I maintained the notion of
blind forces devoid of intelligence developing into a human being, a bird of
paradise, a spider, a mole, or a lion, was absurd, and that this was the glaring
flaw to evolutionary theory which I had not as yet seen answered to my
satisfaction. My brother, rather tartly, replied something to the effect of
saying I did not understand the theory, he said it was random,
the perception of intelligence resulted from afterthought, and that in point of
fact the highly adapted forms of life we see are not successful because they
are highly adapted but that they are highly adapted because they were
successful.
I had already heard this argument and I
replied, with the clarifying simplicity I always strive to maintain in my
thought processes, that this explained very little. In the first place, I
maintained, the notion of randomness was unscientific to its very core
in that it is mathematically impossible, as well as being philosophically
inexplicable. It is a rejection of rationality in so far as it declines to
supply any explanation whatsoever. As for the case that somehow adaptation is
an incident to success, I was convinced that was a fallacy
indeed. It is like saying the Olympic runner did not win his medal because he
was good at running, but that he was good at running because he won his medal.
How, pray, does a medal make a man something? It is only an indication of what
he is, it does not alter him in any way. It is a very weak argument and it
explains nothing, essentially it says: life is because it is, evolution is
incidental and there's an end on't. Even Richard Dawkins admitted there was
a problem in this view when he said to John Lennox, 'It is not random,
by the way.' But the theory, which he so ably espouses, implies it is random
at its very core, or rather I should say unintelligent. The mutations
which are said to occur from the first are supposed to be entirely incidental,
as incidental as the formation of certain elements in a star, and therefore are
not specified by any particular process.
Natural selection of course is another
matter, and the evolutionary philosophers admit tacitly, though whether they
are themselves aware of it is not always obvious, that there is an intelligence
evident in the gradual development of living things. A giraffe has a long neck
because it is helpful for eating tall foliage, a gorilla is very strong because
that helps to ensure its self-defence and survival, a grasshopper has powerful
legs because they are useful for movement and evasion. These examples, and every
other such example of creatures and vegetables, show that where there is a
possible use for a development there is a rational choice in favour of it,
according to environmental suitability. The failures, the ones which end in
extinction, only happen to suffer that fate due to prevailing competition. It
is not that nature erred, merely that nature refined, as Mozart
doubtless played extempore ten thousand times the amount he ever wrote for
posterity, and I am sure a great deal of it was worth the listening too, only
he chose not to record it.
Where I differ with the naturalists is
simply in the view they have taken of conceiving a compatibility with physics
and chemistry and biological evolution, rather than realising
that these various branches of study describe the same thing from
different perspectives; thus physics would describe the motion of blood
in a monkey, chemistry would describe the elements of it, and biology
the function of it. These are all so
many different parts accruing to the overall truth, the Whole, whose
ultimate imagining is the highest purpose of human intellectual endeavour; as
the excellent fable of the blind men and the elephant so acutely
describes. Instead of recognising this however, many evolutionary biologists
have made it their business to dabble in casual philosophy and often
unwarranted invective against certain Forms of Ignorance, as they see them. It
is the creationists they particularly detest, but I cannot see why.
Certainly I think it odd in anyone to prefer the view that the earth is
seven-thousand years of age because that is the figure employed in old
literature, merely as a means of emphasising how ancient the world is, rather
than the view of a geologist, but when it comes to creation as a
philosophical notion it appears to me the creationists misuse it and the
evolutionary men misunderstand it.
This I contend because the necessary
implications of theism are indeed such that the concept of temporality is
completely defeated except as a product of human imagination. What are
the main doctrines of temporality? Number, space, time, creation, and
destruction, these all are notions formed out of delineation, that is, we take
something and quantify it so that one part is recognised from another.
This process has served us well, for the little creatures we are, but does it
serve the Universe, the great and complete frame of existence around us? Does
it serve God? Does the universe voluntarily kill itself because Stephen Hawking
believed it ought, or will it admit to birthing itself with the big bang
because that is what scientific consensus thinks it really ought to have done
if it had any manners? We try and we stratify, we map and we clap, we draw and
we saw, and go about our business, but it is only so much occupation, only the
diversion of pastime, it is not Broad enough to be acceptable philosophy.
The redundant notion of randomness is the
defeat of effort due to incomprehension in the face of complexity. Complexity
is a perception not a fact, but due to its influence some are inclined to
surrender to notions like chance or randomness. In colloquial usage this is
quite justified, as conversation would be tedious if instead of calling
something a 'chance encounter' we called it 'a most extraordinary encounter
doubtless explicable if the many, frankly innumerable, threads of circumstance
were all gathered together and unified into one good yarn of comprehension'. Tedious
though it seem, that is what we must realise we truly mean by a 'chance encounter'.
So by creation we mean that one point of time compared to another point
of time is so different as to seem utterly disparate, and therefore we think
something sprung out of nothing, a pure creation or uncaused cause. I have been
vague about the notion of cause in my writing for the same reason Lady
Windermere gave that excellent riposte to Lord Darlington when he said,
'Vileness is a terrible word, Lady Windermere.' 'It is a terrible thing, Lord
Darlington.' she replied. Vague I am about cause because vague it is. Any
illustration may show this, say I drop a pebble in a lake and it causes ripples.
What is the cause of the ripples? The stone? The gravity affecting the stone?
Me, for dropping the stone? The water of the lake, for being inclined to
ripple? Or all these put together and more? If the last answer then I have no cause
but I have circumstances. Effects are even more deceptive fellows. For
it is plain that by day they masquerade as causes and by night they wear the
clothes of an effect. Take the example of a man drinking an Alka-Seltzer
of a Saturday morning, he is the cause of the Alka-Seltzer's formation
in a cup of water, but this cause is also an effect of an earlier cause which
was an headache, and the headache was a cause caused by the effect of excessive
alcohol consumption the night before, which was an effect caused by the cause
of wishing to forget trouble and strife. All these entertaining descriptions
and definitions, and games played with time and the imagination, prove an
enterprise diverting and useful to me; but it demands locality and temporality,
two things which the Whole Universe transcends. For they are the offspring of
comparison between the universe's parts, but the universe or God in totality is
beyond all such inward differentiation, as a sheep is not merely a bag of limbs,
organs, wool, and good nature.
Therefore, creationism is not so strange a
notion if it be considered that the nature of creation is alteration, caused
cause if one is to use that imperfect terminology, things moving in the
manner they do and they must, God's will (which is synonymous with His Being,
His Presence, His Goodness, et. al.). But the evolutionary biologist rankles at
this because he believes the creationists think there was a finger of God's
which physically touched a clod of clay, and lo! a little beetle scurried off,
and lo! an elegant gazelle, and hark! the sound of the corncrake, but beware!
the snapping of the crocodile. Perhaps some of them do, I cannot say, but I
think it would be absurdly mundane to suggest as much, yet that does not mean
the notion of an active will or Nature (which word I much prefer) identical
with divine Being, is not present and manifest in the works of evolutionary
development, quite the contrary.
Some ready rebuttals I can foresee, that
there have been mistakes in certain adaptations of life, or that the
nature of life's developments is emergent, so a man has personality and is
made of atoms but an atom does not have personality. Well, in the first instance
a mistake is a human term and a peculiarly emotive one at that. It is
determined by another definition (and whenever a word is not determined in
itself, as Spinoza would say, caution is advised), namely by the definition
of success. So a penguin has wings and cannot fly and evolution made a mistake.
But why must wings ensure flight to be judged successes? I have two excellent
fountain pens that cannot write and I use them as pointers to aid in reading.
That is all I think necessary to object to this question.
Emergence is a more tangled objection but in
essence I believe it is a confusion of thinking, caused again by temporal
logic. A book has no knowledge but it can cause learning by the stimulation it generates
in a reader, I we have an emergent property, except no. I only think there is
an emergence because I am imagining a layer where the learning does not
occur, a base layer of blind and inert matter, but such is not the case. The
scene involves a reader. Yet more than this even, an atom no more precludes
mentality than a planet precludes mentality, though I sometimes feel
materialist doubts when I look at chalk cliffs, however these are but the
phases of Form, and the essence of these as all things is identical with the
essence of a brain, an emotion, an idea, or an entire personality, only they
have morphed in time to their particular shape and nature. One thing's nature
is judged for the sake of convenience isolated and apart, but it is not isolated
nor apart but inextricably entwined in the greater mesh and the higher purpose.
As an animal's mentality commands all the matter which its body makes up, so I
conceive God's infinite mentality at work in every apparently inert form of
matter (improper word) or 'base clay', so utterly superseding all lower
reasoning as to render it non-existent except in the purposes of lesser beings
such as ourselves. This reflection lifts my heart.
But I am not contending idealism, because I
hold with Spinoza that the true Substance of existence transcends mind and
matter, and that these are but two aspects of it; as the oil puddle is not any
one of the rainbow of colours it shews in looking at it, but all of them and
none of them at the same time. I believe Spinoza's early definitions can imply
that the Substance or true essence of existence is something one must drill
down to find, a mere foundation upon which other more interesting things are
constructed. However this is the kind of logic which is ever leading thought
astray, because it is still treating reality piecemeal, like saying the only real
part to Achilles, the only true essence of the hero, was his heel.
Whole-part-whole my dear grandmother called the process of learning, but the
whole this process refers to is only relatively so. The Whole to which I refer
must be God, reality and existence's totality summarised; therefore, by parts
we may synthesise a better understanding, but our sieve-like minds
cannot hold it all at once but must one moment be looking at this jet of water,
the next moment that jet, till all the water has already left the vessel. Although,
perhaps this is what makes human learning evergreen, pleasant ignorance and charming
forgetfulness.
I think in regard to design, or the notion
of calculated form, which is held up the antithesis to natural processes,
perhaps a garden of Capability Brown's would be most illustrative. We English
pioneered the natural garden in contradistinction to the continental style of quarters
and gridlines, which I still like in herb gardens for example, and surely Brown
is the genius and the glory of this grand method. He is the Shakespeare and
Newton of gardening and landscape design, and what was his main purpose? To
create and to alter an environment so as to look more natural, not less
so, strange though it seem. To invoke a kind of Elysium ideal of perfect
nature, with seemingly eternal stretches of sweeping meadow, and mythic banks
along enchanted lakes, water with air painting the land, complemented and
enhanced not sullied by the central presence of great architecture. So we
have an example of design being natural, and I argue also that nature is
designing. In so saying I am not attempting to enter into Chesterton's Royal Family
of Paradox, I only mean to show again that these two terms of nature and of design
are but the glinting of lights to perception, two kinds of lens flare, proving
the multiple properties of existence. Design seems to imply strain, and nature
to imply automation, but these once more are only describing human emotions; and Jehovah revealed the answer to Moses with His own identity when He said those profound reverberant words: I AM THAT I AM.
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