The real alternative to design (Evolution)

by whitecraw, Monday, March 10, 2008, 17:50 (6100 days ago) @ George Jelliss

'All I am saying is that it is difficult to avoid anthropomorphism in describing nature. It is difficult to find language that is purely objective. We haven't yet developed the appropriate vocabulary, at least for communicating the ideas in a manner understandable to the general populace. Perhaps biologists have done so in their technical journals.' - This is a very important point George raises about the 'bewitchment of language'; that is, about how the way in which we talk, the grammar and phrasing of our conversations, directly affects our conclusions and can lead us astray in our thinking. - The thing about the way natural language has evolved is that structurally it is such that any talk of activity implies agency; something that either acts on or is acted upon by something else. Thus it is very difficult (if not impossible) to speak of something like natural selection without imputing to it some sort of intentionality or purposiveness behind it. But it does not follow from the fact that we cannot or cannot easily talk of these processes in natural language, without making implicit connotative reference to some agency which drives those processes, that there is such an agency. - The whole thrust of the theory of evolution by natural selection is the idea that no agency drives the process; that evolution is a purely natural process, notwithstanding the aforementioned problematical nature of words like 'selection'. Natural language certainly doesn't help us in this respect. - Nor do those popular TV programmes that couch their explanations of physical traits in teleological terms, David Attenborough being a prime culprit. Galapagos tortoises did not evolve concave lower shells 'so that' they could mate more easily (teleological explanation). Concave lower shells appeared as a result of a long series of accidental mutations at a biochemical level, which tended to survive, be reproduced and come to predominate in the population because the bearers of those mutations could mate more easily than non-mutant males (causal explanation). - We just need to mind our language.