Better late than never: can science restore its reputation after such a long confusion exposed long ago?
The long read: A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as misguided careerists – and the conflict may determine the future of biology
Source: Do we need a new theory of evolution? | Evolution | The Guardian
This is an excellent piece of critical/secular Darwiniana, and in the context today of beating Marxists over the head, a useful reminder that a secular humanist can see through Darwinism and survive cancel culture, although I fear that being published in the ID site shows still dark clouds overhead. I have often berated Marxists for their inability to shake off Darwinism, with its atrocious social Darwinist crypto-ideology. Continue reading “the eonic effect: a glimpse of evolution?!…//On Darwinism and the Abdication of Reason | Evolution News”
Another post/commentary, reproduced here:
Critiquing science is not acceptable in many circles and especially in a pandemic that can backfire. I am a great fan of physics and have tried to study its mathematical methods. But that is not our point here, trusting the science there is surely called for: we are citing the historical legacy of science as it emerged from early physics to related sciences in (bio)chemistry, etc….But then in the early nineteenth century this legacy spawned a kind of false ambition to extend science to all subjects, from biology to evolution, to psychology and the results failed in almost all cases. Worse with evolution, a fake theory emerged and no one in the science field could figure out that there was problem with natural selection, despite the warnings of the one scientist who dissented, Fred Hoyle. It is alarming there have been almost no others. For a century and a half almost the entire cadres of scientists made a myth of evolution in the Darwinian mode, a disaster that will perhaps forever caution any absolute trust in science and its pretension to be the source of all knowledge.
Marx fell into this trap and tried to make a science of history using a very reductionist model that was off the mark, as science. There can be a science flavor in psychology and sociology and attempts to advance in some fashion were often of great value but the results were descriptive and empirical methods, not scientific laws. It seems unlikely that this situation can be overcome. Who knows? But the reductionist scientism of the era of Marx attacking Hegel has proven a deadly perspective, especially in the way a system that rejected ethics became such a murderous horror.
One of the key failures that may suggest the resolution is the failure to understand the phenomenon of consciousness. That suggests the limit in the type of science emerging from the Newtonian era. This is hardly a novel idea, it has been said in one way or another over and over again, but scientists don’t really have to listen any more. They are showered with social power, money, prestige and the fictions of the history of science.
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Reposting with a note:
The point being made here is that physics is only one narrow avenue enquiry into nature. As a directed process it is accompanied by a whole spectrum of parallel innovations, ethical, aesthetic, political, philosophical. To restrict everything to a causal science based on physics to the exclusion of the larger process is a mistake, as a host of figures realized early on.
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Science is in crisis and winning the Templeton prize is a non-achievement. The question of science and spirituality must be able to address the question of Darwinism and its status as a pseudo-science, one that can’t be corrected by spiritual counterarguments. But the physicist here starts to spout about ‘god’, which may be simply PR crap. Almost the entire biological community has been stuck in an erroneous view of natural selection, under suspicion of being an ideological cover for capitalism and the need to maintain social viciousness as justified by evolution. Physicists should have been able to intervene but they are apparently as clueless as the biologists (many of whom in fact are liars who parrot the party line, lest they be fired immediately). Are physicists as stupid as the biologists (and/or dissembling also)? The question lurks as to the core of science reasoning which requires only mining higher mathematics for a theory to match the data in a new field: very little real enquiry is needed and the reality is that too many physicists in the ‘boy we’re smart’ crowd are marginally as moronic as the biologists. The Templeton gang is hardly any better and the promotion of design theory to, gasp, revive the braindead religious mess of Christian pottage is not believable (although a secular design argument is of interest). The correct methodology for evolution was discovered at the end of the eighteenth century by the teleomechanists and then Lamarck. But this starting point was suppressed with the coming of the complete dolt, Darwin, who was a racist, imperialist, genocidal crypto-ideologist and/or too dumb to do any real science beyond sticking pins in beetles.
The public is losing faith in science, and given the record of brazen distortion of evolution, that is hardly surprising…
Update: to document my statement that physicists don’t really investigate reality but simply discover mathematics that can match the data I would point to the history where at each stage a set of mathematical advances resolved a new field: calculus with Newton, then again Lagrange and Hamilton, Leibnitz, vector analysis with electromagnetism, (thermodynamics?), Hilbert Spaces, matrices with QM, and then Quantum field theory. String theory is (as far as I know) chock full of mathematics but still unresolved….Is the massive momentum of scientific physics going to stall again? If Darwinism is any indication, it has already done so. But I doubt that physics will collapse again. However, it is important to see that social advances have an eonic macro effect which comes to a stop at a certain point, then one is on one’s own.
In any case, the eonic effect shows a reality beyond both science and religion, yet easy to document in world history. Science begins with data, so check out this data. The text Decoding World History polnts to that data and its strategy is to look at a non-random pattern to evade the charge of speculation.
Any student of the eonic effect can see that ‘science’ is a modern close focus in the modern transition, generates advances as macro inductions (albeit requiring a certain amount of high intelligence), and in this case the process endures past the divide and becomes self-sustaining. Mathematics is like a crib for decoding something (I refer to the movie Enigma for the use of the term crib).
Note also that science is born inside the transitions of the eonic series, first in Greece (Sumer? who knows), the dead center in the modern transition. Most innovations damp out after the transitions, and ‘science’ did so in the medieval period (but there are many who attempt to challenge such a statement) and then in the next transition is reamped as modern science: so we conclude/suspect that without external macro induction physics might never have happened. This makes sense of the mathematical aspect: the large macro induction steers scientists to the uncanny non-coincidence of finding the exact ‘right’ mathematics coming into existence just before or during the next advance.
I have tried many times to explain the eonic effect to scientists but they are hopelessly stuck in a paralysis of thought. The eonic effect/model cannot be turned into a science like physics, and resembles ‘evolution’ done right without Darwin. I strongly recommend a close look at this model (which in fact requires direct thinking about historical data, without a mathematical crib, unless there is one I don’t know about).
Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize–winning theoretical physicist and author, has been announced as the recipient of the 2022 Templeton Prize, which is valued at more than $1.3 million. The annual award honors those “who harness the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it,” according to a press release from the John Templeton Foundation. Previous recipients include scientists such as Jane Goodall, Marcelo Gleiser and Martin Rees, as well as religious or political leaders such as Mother Theresa and Desmond Tutu.
Science is in crisis and winning the Templeton prize is a non-achievement. The question of science and spirituality must be able to address the question of Darwinism and its status as a pseudo-science, one that can’t be corrected by spiritual counterarguments. But the physicist here starts to spout about ‘god’, which may be simply PR crap. Almost the entire biological community has been stuck in an erroneous view of natural selection, under suspicion of being an ideological cover for capitalism and the need to maintain social viciousness as justified by evolution. Physicists should have been able to intervene but they are apparently as clueless as the biologists (many of whom in fact are liars who parrot the party line, lest they be fired immediately). Are physicists as stupid as the biologists (and/or dissembling also)? The question lurks as to the core of science reasoning which requires only mining higher mathematics for a theory to match the data in a new field: very little real enquiry is needed and the reality is that too many physicists in the ‘boy we’re smart’ crowd are marginally as moronic as the biologists. The Templeton gang is hardly any better and the promotion of design theory to, gasp, revive the braindead religious mess of Christian pottage is not believable (although a secular design argument is of interest). The correct methodology for evolution was discovered at the end of the eighteenth century by the teleomechanists and then Lamarck. But this starting point was suppressed with the coming of the complete dolt, Darwin, who was a racist, imperialist, genocidal crypto-ideologist and/or too dumb to do any real science beyond sticking pins in beetles.
The public is losing faith in science, and given the record of brazen distortion of evolution, that is hardly surprising…
Update: to document my statement that physicists don’t really investigate reality but simply discover mathematics that can match the data I would point to the history where at each stage a set of mathematical advances resolved a new field: calculus with Newton, then again Lagrange and Hamilton, Leibnitz, vector analysis with electromagnetism, (thermodynamics?), Hilbert Spaces, matrices with QM, and then Quantum field theory. String theory is (as far as I know) chock full of mathematics but still unresolved….Is the massive momentum of scientific physics going to stall again? If Darwinism is any indication, it has already done so. But I doubt that physics will collapse again. However, it is important to see that social advances have an eonic macro effect which comes to a stop at a certain point, then one is on one’s own.
In any case, the eonic effect shows a reality beyond both science and religion, yet easy to document in world history. Science begins with data, so check out this data. The text Decoding World History polnts to that data and its strategy is to look at a non-random pattern to evade the charge of speculation.
Any student of the eonic effect can see that ‘science’ is a modern close focus in the modern transition, generates advances as macro inductions (albeit requiring a certain amount of high intelligence), and in this case the process endures past the divide and becomes self-sustaining. Mathematics is like a crib for decoding something (I refer to the movie Enigma for the use of the term crib).
Note also that science is born inside the transitions of the eonic series, first in Greece (Sumer? who knows), the dead center in the modern transition. Most innovations damp out after the transitions, and ‘science’ did so in the medieval period (but there are many who attempt to challenge such a statement) and then in the next transition is reamped as modern science: so we conclude/suspect that without external macro induction physics might never have happened. This makes sense of the mathematical aspect: the large macro induction steers scientists to the uncanny non-coincidence of finding the exact ‘right’ mathematics coming into existence just before or during the next advance.
I have tried many times to explain the eonic effect to scientists but they are hopelessly stuck in a paralysis of thought. The eonic effect/model cannot be turned into a science like physics, and resembles ‘evolution’ done right without Darwin. I strongly recommend a close look at this model (which in fact requires direct thinking about historical data, without a mathematical crib, unless there is one I don’t know about).
Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize–winning theoretical physicist and author, has been announced as the recipient of the 2022 Templeton Prize, which is valued at more than $1.3 million. The annual award honors those “who harness the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it,” according to a press release from the John Templeton Foundation. Previous recipients include scientists such as Jane Goodall, Marcelo Gleiser and Martin Rees, as well as religious or political leaders such as Mother Theresa and Desmond Tutu.
This is hardly anything we didn’t know twenty years ago, and yet nothing changes. The design argument is somehow transparent but the proponents of ID (intelligent design) have spoiled their case, even as the Darwinists continue their ostrich fantasy of random natural selection. It is a remarkable deadlock. The design argument is very telling but its proponents over and over spoil their case by grafting their thinking onto Biblical theology and that doesn’t work. A true design argument needs a Kantian discipline, and, ironically, a born-again secular humanist framework, something Dawkins-dominated secular humanists could never manage. Here’s the crux: world history shows design and the emergence the Israelite ‘monotheism’ (parallel to Buddhism) a design as in the eonic effect sense but this won’t work with the degenerated theism of later monotheism. Cf. Decoding World History here.
The issue of design being ‘intelligent’ is ambiguous. It could be right, but we can’t prove it, and the standard of proof of the design inference is too loose to be trustworthy, the more so as the already theistic proponents cheat at all points on rigorous arguments.
Meanwhile Marxists, secular humanists, radical activists uphold the whole idiotic Darwinian ideology/pseudo-scientific terrified if they dissent one iota they will be canceled in the ugly domination of the Dawkins/Darwin racket. And it is a racket and the racist imperialist Darwin, more than Spencer, is the real perpetrator of the social darwinist legitimation of racism imperialism and, yet capitalism. We never see how the capitalist brand enforces the ideology via the universities, science orgs and biology pros, but that backdrop is clearly there: social viciousness is all too useful for keeping capitalism in place.
Losers on both sides, and especially sad with the Marxists who follow Marx’s hypocritical embrace of Darwinism after he realized his initial skepticism was going to be a problem, starting with the idiotic Engels who no doubt twisted his arm here. Marx was a coward on the subject he saw through from the beginning.
To be clear: the design argument is strong but you can’t use it to prove the existence of God.
The left’s confused embrace of Darwin shows how it is really party to the ideology it preaches against.
I consider this simple argument as a final nail in the coffin of Darwinian unguided evolution.
Source: Species Pairs: A New Challenge to Darwinists | Evolution News
The_Last_Revolution_Postcapitalist_ Futures_version_4_7_22
The text here is ‘forever unfinished’ but as such basically sufficient to start. It is sad but true that in a period when fascism seems to wish for a comeback, the left is ‘out in left field’. The right is trying to fill that void, and take over the revolution nexus. The world system, at the risk of Gaian memes, like some roving elephant is big-brained and smart stupid, and both a victim of and in need of human interaction. The mess created by homo sapiens has to be left to same for a fix, a possibly tragic circumstance with poor chances. Where politicians, scientists, leftists, rightists, economists, seem to be stuck in outstanding routines and mind habits the only reserve troops available are amateurs who are beholden to no social group and outsiders to the fixed system where most are socially fixated and subject to immediate cancel culture if they get out of line.
This dire situation has left politicians prisoners of Capital, more or less as depicted by Marx, but the cadre of Marxists suffers many of the same problems.
There are several key issues the left cannot handle:
Darwinism and its social Darwinist ideology.
the JFK and 9/11 conspiracies (we spend little time on theses: you have to do your home work alone here)
and a host of other issues, but the above three are signs that those who critique ideology have succumbed to it.
With Marxists the dead weight of historical materialism lingers ad infinitum. What a useless subject.
We can make the case for socialism in a hundred pages and skip the whole theory windbag routine of Marx.
the fascist creep of covert agencies which are close to control a key monstrosity likely to take society out of range for good.
Beyond that the state of the American political system is dreadful and beyond redemption in its current form.
We have tried to distill Marx into a more usable form, but in a form that is my own, and which I have to vouch for. Hopefully, Marxists will examine the material and learn something although that is doubtful. This book cannot be discussed at Marxmail where you can not criticize Marx. This situation will simply sideline Marxists and wait on the improbable efforts to new attempts by people forced to work alone with no money, association, or social support. Marxism peaked in the Second Intenational and then, especially due to Stalinism, simply faded away. That was a century ago.
The issues here are:
a new approach to world history is like Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires. World history is the graveyard of theories and a ‘science of history’ and that includes Darwinism. If you think you suffer mind control consider the Darwin paradigm: the entire field of scientists and biologists has been confused over a theory with an elementary mistake for about a century.
The simple solution is to drop theories and study chronologies (which hide a strange secret)
dropping the battle of idealism and materialism, one of the most useless confusions created by Marx. The realm of Hegel is not so relevant now and the protest against idealism always missed the point.
some form of practical and sane economy where again theories fail while empirical approaches are viable
once we drop theories can embrace the issue of values in the realm of facts and create a truly humanistic socialism.
the issue of religion is deftly handled by the eonic model and we don’t have get into the theism/atheism rut to do socialism
etc…
Have a nice day
Last week we discussed a new book about to appear accusing Darwin of plagiarizing Patrick Mathew, and there is an outstanding debate over the suspicious incident of Wallace’s Ternate letter. The charges of plagiarism two times over set the whole question in a mystery.
But whatever the case Darwin created a tragic mess out of evolution and we are still stuck with it. The fallacy of natural selection has created a social monstrosity that professional con men in the universities enforce as a religious dogma in the context of the capitalist fixation on social Darwinism as a legitimation of competition in economic systems.
Let’s be clear: the entire professional cadre, more or less, of professional biologists, and most other scientists in tow, along with much of the general public which dares no dissent, is stuck in pseudo-science based on the statistical absurdity of natural selection. And this has gone on for over a century with virtually no avenue of dissent. The reputation of science can never quite recover from this farce and now slowly but surely the whole paradigms is starting to collapse. We must be careful to stop being conned in the name of science.
Here Marx has also confused the issue: he challenged theories that were really ideology, and Darwinism is just such a case, and yet he also succumbed to farce, perhaps with cunning as he saw the rising tide of professional dogma and conformity overtake the question.
Darwin was a strange sort of dunce, and his suspected plagiarism make him a crook as well.
Even Darwin would be aghast at what the world has made of a mere abstract that he was almost pathologically ambivalent about ever publishing.
Source: Darwin’s Reticence: On the Origin of a Book | Evolution News
1848+: The End(s) of History 