[Skyli]

OK, done that. Some impressions.

On page 1 of this thread, your third post actually, you bring God into the discussion, emphatically. On page 12 you ask me why I bring God into this discussion.
On the second page the first reference to semantics is made. By this time you have mentioned the contributions and opinions of Islam and the Holy Koran several times.
Your basic assertion, well defined by the end of the first few pages, is that evolution cannot, alone, explain the origin or subsequent development of human consciousness. As mentioned, you suggest God as the missing element in your third post. You make reference to the "soul" and the "self" and the subjective sense of self-awareness that we all possess. You assert that, in particular, the development of this subjective feature of human consciousness  could not have arisen through evolution.
As is to be expected on a forum your assertion is challenged by several people. Much of this is semantic clarification.
There are several digressions into "what is science" and "what place does God have in science" (it was during one of these that you asked me why "I" was bringing Godinto the discussion(?)).
There were also suggestions that Evolution is competent to account for human consciousness. My own was as arrogantly dismissed as any other.
From page 2 onwards you were clearly promoting Islamic scientific philosophy, backed up by a complimentary approach from Nagel
I have not read every page of Nagel posted - my subjective sense of Dignity baulks at the imposition.

No, I believe that I have understood what you have said in this thread perfectly well.

I understand the contribution that Islam has made to science - you have mentioned it several times (I was, actually, very well aware, but thanks anyway).
I understand that "human consciousness" may contain a "soul" or a "spirit" - your words, not mine.
I understand that souls, spirits and religions have no place in science.

I also understand your constant reference to these non-scientific items in defence of your opinion and I understand your resorting to insults and evasion when you have them thrown back at you, although you do actually use this technique a lot when I think about it.

I understand your opinion of scientific method, tightly-based on Nagel; I don't agree with it and have given my arguments. I have received arrogance and rudeness rather than adult and logical challenge for my efforts on the majority of occasions.

This is not a discussion, it is a pulpit for a preacher, despite all your pretence of some scientific basis in your opening arguments. What, on Earth, is the Human Consciousness? Well, you have your answer, always did, and you're obviously not interested in hearing anybody elses, in fact your replies show that you despise them. You are talking "Faith", not "Science"; I understand exactly what this "thread"is about.

The worrying thing is that you, an intelligent young man, do not.

[cheryl j]

But, there is indeed overwhelming empirical evidence indeed for the biological physical side of evolution ,it's just that evolution has also a non-physical non-biological side to it as well...

But that's the whole problem, you and Nagel haven't proven that, and your entire argument rests on that very assumption. Just because you keep saying there is a non biological, non-physical side of nature doesn't make it so. But your excuse is you can't prove it because it's immaterial, and physical science can't identify or measure something that's immaterial. Well, how convenient.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

But, there is indeed overwhelming empirical evidence indeed for the biological physical side of evolution ,it's just that evolution has also a non-physical non-biological side to it as well...

But that's the whole problem, you and Nagel haven't proven that, and your entire argument rests on that very assumption. Just because you keep saying there is a non biological, non-physical side of nature doesn't make it so. But your excuse is you can't prove it because it's immaterial, and physical science can't identify or measure something that's immaterial. Well, how convenient.

Well, honey : you are really impossible and ludicrous :
Fact is : the reductionist materialist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature , or rather  misconception of nature, is not only almost certainly false , it is also certainly ,obviously and absolutely false , a fact which does have serious implications for the dominating materialist meta-paradigm in science , for the materialist version of evolution, for the materialist explanations and approaches of the emergence evolution and origins of life , for the emergence origins and evolution of consciousness ...to say just that .
Besides, the exclusively biological physical materialist conception of nature is seriously debunked by the challenging  anomalies  represented by life itself , by its emergence ,origins and evolution , by the emergence evolution and origin of consciousness, by the nature of human cognition ...those exclusive physical biological materialist explanations and approaches can certainly not account for , that's why materialists just resort to reducing life , consciousnes,human cognition , memory , ...to just physical biological processes , for obvious dogmatic ideological materialist "reasons " that have nothing to do with science proper ....
Did you , at least , listen to what Sheldrake said on the subject , as my provided link to here above shows, concerning those materialist dogmatic  beliefs that do prevent science from progressing , and much more ?
Sheldrake wrote also a whole book on the subject , called "Science set free ..." ( Sheldrake did also praise that fascinating book of T.Nagel "MInd and Cosmos ...by the way " )

There he is talking about this book of his :

If this above video of Sheldrake in the US does not succeed in making you understand all this , than nothingelse  will ...

The British original title of the book was/is : "The science delusion" (Sheldrake  might have been referring to the "God delusion " of Dawkins ,i dunno,  the latter as 1 of the major representatives of the inherently atheist materialist "scientific " fundamentalism, or scientism = the dogmatic materialist belief system that was/ is sold to the people as science proper , as   scientific approaches or as scientific facts  .),  Sheldrake's book thus tackles these issues of what  can be called scientism , or the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science that gets presented to the people as scientific facts ,or at least as scientific approaches , science has absolutely nothing to do with , ironically enough .
When Sheldrake wanted to publish his "The science delusion " book thus in the US , his US publishers advised him to change the title to " Science set free ..." , simply because people might misunderstand his views ,and might misinterpret them, as you all might do, ironically enough , as a denigration of science ...which is absolutely not the case .
Sheldrake's US publishers had to make Sheldrake change the title of that book of his , due to that polarisation in the US created by fanatics atheists such as Dawkins , Dennett , Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris ...against religion or against religious creationists and their "intelligent design " theory ...a polarisation that's obviously  conducted in the name of science , but is in fact driven by just ideology from both sides or camps .
Sheldrake is in fact trying just to liberate science from the materialist dogmatic belief systems ,once again, a materialist dogmatic ossified belief system that gets presented to the people as science proper  .

Science does not have to be materialist , materialism  has just been hijacking science for so long now ,that most people cannot but  confuse it with science proper as a result , as you all do by the way  .
If science is delivered from materialism some day , and it will certainly be , then, whole new unimaginable vistas will open up for science , the latter that has been seriously held back by that backward secular religion in science : materialism , to say the least = an understatement .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

OK, done that. Some impressions.

On page 1 of this thread, your third post actually, you bring God into the discussion, emphatically. On page 12 you ask me why I bring God into this discussion.
On the second page the first reference to semantics is made. By this time you have mentioned the contributions and opinions of Islam and the Holy Koran several times.
Your basic assertion, well defined by the end of the first few pages, is that evolution cannot, alone, explain the origin or subsequent development of human consciousness. As mentioned, you suggest God as the missing element in your third post. You make reference to the "soul" and the "self" and the subjective sense of self-awareness that we all possess. You assert that, in particular, the development of this subjective feature of human consciousness  could not have arisen through evolution.
As is to be expected on a forum your assertion is challenged by several people. Much of this is semantic clarification.
There are several digressions into "what is science" and "what place does God have in science" (it was during one of these that you asked me why "I" was bringing Godinto the discussion(?)).
There were also suggestions that Evolution is competent to account for human consciousness. My own was as arrogantly dismissed as any other.
From page 2 onwards you were clearly promoting Islamic scientific philosophy, backed up by a complimentary approach from Nagel
I have not read every page of Nagel posted - my subjective sense of Dignity baulks at the imposition.

No, I believe that I have understood what you have said in this thread perfectly well.

I understand the contribution that Islam has made to science - you have mentioned it several times (I was, actually, very well aware, but thanks anyway).
I understand that "human consciousness" may contain a "soul" or a "spirit" - your words, not mine.
I understand that souls, spirits and religions have no place in science.

I also understand your constant reference to these non-scientific items in defence of your opinion and I understand your resorting to insults and evasion when you have them thrown back at you, although you do actually use this technique a lot when I think about it.

I understand your opinion of scientific method, tightly-based on Nagel; I don't agree with it and have given my arguments. I have received arrogance and rudeness rather than adult and logical challenge for my efforts on the majority of occasions.

This is not a discussion, it is a pulpit for a preacher, despite all your pretence of some scientific basis in your opening arguments. What, on Earth, is the Human Consciousness? Well, you have your answer, always did, and you're obviously not interested in hearing anybody elses, in fact your replies show that you despise them. You are talking "Faith", not "Science"; I understand exactly what this "thread"is about.

The worrying thing is that you, an intelligent young man, do not.

You, obviously , still have no clue whatsoever regarding what we have been talking about all along : incredibly amazing lack of understanding  :

Gross absurd surreal misinterpretations of my words , once again, unfortunately enough : unbelievable : use your God -given mind , dude : just listen to a great scientist on the issue : Sheldrake : it does not take a genius to do just that :
See this above displayed post of mine on the issue , and especially the important relevant link in it regarding Sheldrake's debunking of materialism in science , to Cheryl :
If that does not succeed in making you, people,  understand the lethal predicament represented by the materialist dogmatic belief system in science ,then nothingelse will...
Good luck indeed.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

To all our surreal unbelievable reductionists here :

Once again, if this following lecture of this great scientist: Rupert Sheldrake, as a preview to his "Science set free ..." book ,does not succeed in making you understand or grasp what we have been talking about all along here , concerning the reductionist misconception of nature in science that has been crippling science for so long now that you cannot but confuse it with science proper , the latter has absolutely nothing to do with, then , nothingelse will  ...:

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

" The Science Delusion " By Rupert Sheldrake :
The science delusion = the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science, or scientism :  :

Rupert Sheldrake- Dispelling Dogmas and Opening New Frontiers

[Skyli]

My dear young sir, once again you have given a non-answer – I “don't understand”.

Of course, you don't say what I don't understand. You can't. You do not have any argument, just a “feeling” that I am wrong. Therefore you resort to dismissal. You will, indeed, dismiss this assertion in the same way; you have no choice.

Don't worry, it is a time-honoured tactic of preachers, be they skinheads preaching the virtues of racial purity or murderers preaching the “sinfulness” of western education. I don't mind – I know where it comes from.

This thread deals with “human consciousness”. Let us assume you did some research into the subject before you started writing. Research is, after all, what any sensible adult would do.

Your research into psychology no doubt made you aware of Transactional Analysis. Broadly speaking, it occupies the place in psychology that “materialist reductionism” occupies in other branches of science. You are, therefore, familiar with the parent/child/adult aspects of “character”, a fundamental feature of human consciousness.

(If these assumptions regarding your validity as a commentator are incorrect my apologies. However, an appreciation of psychiatric principles and methods is usual, nay, essential, in discussions on “human consciousness”, particularly if you add God to the mix - your third post.)

It is not hard to discern from your posts that your parent sits like a solemn giant on all the wisdom and truth that Creation possesses; it is the guardian of your value system. Your child believes implicitly in this body of “truth” and cannot comprehend how anybody could disagree with the certain “truth” that was fixed in your value system before you were ten years old. It behaves as a child behaves; yeah but, no but, yeah but “why bring God into the discussion” circular arguments and “It's not fair!” dismissals. Your adult, the would-be modifier of your value system, lies battered and bleeding in the corner where it has crawled to die. This is because it gets a good kick from your child every time it dares to think that there might be some other truth. Externally this manifests itself in your frequent recourse to “What are you talking about?” and “you don't understand”.

You have now added another name to Nagels to “prove” that everything you learned at your parents knee was the one and only solemn truth of Creation (including, but certainly not limited to human consciousness). In fact, Nagel and Sheldrake are the only ideas you can accept; anything else would mean that your parent was wrong and your adult is nowhere near strong enough to stand up to your implicitly-believing child.

A child can only preach that his daddy is the strongest – what else does he know that he can rely on? It is only with adulthood, after time and experience have modified its Weltanschauen, that a child realises that daddy was not always right.

Of course, you have no choice but to dismiss this as well; how can you, a grown man, be thinking childishly on such an important topic? You know the difference between preaching and discussing, right?

Wrong. You don't. You need to a) grow up and b) develop some humility – you have at least one good book on the subject; the best.

I won't quote any of the many evasive, rude and dismissive answers that you have given to back up my assertion but I will quote something you said recently (reply 357):

“ these people do not seem to be able to get it yet , so, they just distort my views ,or do not understand them properly “

It's not fair! Is it.

Now, I think it's reasonable to bring a little of the “science” of human consciousness into a discussion on the subject. You do not like it; you can't – you don't not have the ability to give credence to criticism of your beliefs or your style of argument; your adult is simply not strong enough.

Which means you have no choice but to dismiss this again. However, may I suggest that, this time, you bottle your child-like arrogance and try something a bit more adult than “you don't understand”. Your lack of common courtesy is most telling and very irritating.

Finally, there is a phrase in your last post: “Dispelling Dogmas and Opening New Frontiers”.
It's a good idea; you should try it when you're ready.

[cheryl j]

Well, honey : you are really impossible and ludicrous :
Fact is : the reductionist materialist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature , or rather  misconception of nature, is not only almost certainly false , it is also certainly ,obviously and absolutely false , a fact which does have....

That is not a fact.

There exist diseases that do not yet have a known cause. By your logic, I should be able to say that  science, blinded by its materialistic paradigm, has failed miserably to find their true cause, which is obviously the work of Satan (or the supernatural force of my choice.) And offer no reason or proof because as we all know, immaterial things don't require that. They just require that you keep saying it over and over.

[Skyli]

I don't believe that facts are the issue here Cheryl, and the more I read the more I am convinced by that. Your reference to "Satan", who neither myself nor anybody I know has ever met, are far more the issue.

This seems all about immovable objects and irresistible forces - Faith Vs. Science. It has been dressed up a bit, rather clumsily and transparently, but when a "scientific discussion" starts referring to souls, spirits, God and now Satan (a reference I accept as perfectly valid given the context) it really is time to call it a day.

[alancalverd]

The science delusion = the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science, or scientism :

Piffle. Science is a process of systematic unbelief. Isms are anathema to science.

[cheryl j]

I don't believe that facts are the issue here Cheryl, and the more I read the more I am convinced by that. Your reference to "Satan", who neither myself nor anybody I know has ever met, are far more the issue.

This seems all about immovable objects and irresistible forces - Faith Vs. Science. It has been dressed up a bit, rather clumsily and transparently, but when a "scientific discussion" starts referring to souls, spirits, God and now Satan (a reference I accept as perfectly valid given the context) it really is time to call it a day.

Well, it also seems to be a problem with logic. I did watch one of the Sheldrake videos. The experiment he mentioned, in which a blind child seemed to be receiving information from his sighted mother was, if validly controlled, interesting. But claiming that any unexplained phenomena, whether it is the appearance of ESP or UFOs, is more likely to have one explanation than another, if you have no evidence for either, only a lack of evidence, is not logical.

The other problem with his reasoning is asserting that his subjective impression of the qualitative nature of things as a kind of fact. He calls things non-biological which he has not proven to be non biological, and are certainly not immaterial or unobservable or unmeasurable scientifically, such as human behavior, social interactions, or economics. That is the basis of this claim that "Besides, the exclusively biological physical materialist conception of nature is seriously debunked by the challenging  anomalies  represented by life itself ..."

For his next debate, I suggest he move to the physics forum and tell them that there can't possibly be so much empty space inside atoms because it fails to explain why the brick wall he's been banging his head against feels so solid.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Well, honey : you are really impossible and ludicrous :
Fact is : the reductionist materialist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature , or rather  misconception of nature, is not only almost certainly false , it is also certainly ,obviously and absolutely false , a fact which does have....

That is not a fact.

There exist diseases that do not yet have a known cause. By your logic, I should be able to say that  science, blinded by its materialistic paradigm, has failed miserably to find their true cause, which is obviously the work of Satan (or the supernatural force of my choice.) And offer no reason or proof because as we all know, immaterial things don't require that. They just require that you keep saying it over and over.

It is an indeniable obvious fact that nature or the universe are not a matter of just exclusively biological physical processes,as reductionism makes you believe they are  .

I am , once again, not talking about science proper , just about that untrue reductionism in science , reductionist materialism as a world view in science ...as a misconception of nature ...as a meta-paradigm in science ...

Did you listen to what Sheldrake had to say on the subject ? , I guess not .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

The science delusion = the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science, or scientism :

Piffle. Science is a process of systematic unbelief. Isms are anathema to science.

It was not about science proper , once again : what Sheldrake talked about is that materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science ,and which has thus nothing to do with science proper .
Sheldrake just tries to liberate science proper from that prison of that materialist dogmatic belief system , that's all .
Can't you get just that ? Is that so difficult to understand ?
Just try to listen to what Sheldrake has to say on the subject then .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Maybe, it would help to draw you a pic ...Unbelievable .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

I don't believe that facts are the issue here Cheryl, and the more I read the more I am convinced by that. Your reference to "Satan", who neither myself nor anybody I know has ever met, are far more the issue.

This seems all about immovable objects and irresistible forces - Faith Vs. Science. It has been dressed up a bit, rather clumsily and transparently, but when a "scientific discussion" starts referring to souls, spirits, God and now Satan (a reference I accept as perfectly valid given the context) it really is time to call it a day.

Well, it also seems to be a problem with logic. I did watch one of the Sheldrake videos. The experiment he mentioned, in which a blind child seemed to be receiving information from his sighted mother was, if validly controlled, interesting. But claiming that any unexplained phenomena, whether it is the appearance of ESP or UFOs, is more likely to have one explanation than another, if you have no evidence for either, only a lack of evidence, is not logical.

You still do not get it , honey :
Science does not have to be materialistic , it just has been hijacked by materialism since the 19 th century at least up to this present date .
The objective reality out there is not exclusively biological physical...

The other problem with his reasoning is asserting that his subjective impression of the qualitative nature of things as a kind of fact. He calls things non-biological which he has not proven to be non biological, and are certainly not immaterial or unobservable or unmeasurable scientifically, such as human behavior, social interactions, or economics. That is the basis of this claim that "Besides, the exclusively biological physical materialist conception of nature is seriously debunked by the challenging  anomalies  represented by life itself ..."

What makes you so sure that reality is exclusively biological physical ?
Who said that non-biological or non-physical processes cannot be studied scientifically ?
What do you think Sheldrake was doing then ?

For his next debate, I suggest he move to the physics forum and tell them that there can't possibly be so much empty space inside atoms because it fails to explain why the brick wall he's been banging his head against feels so solid.

Don't be silly :
Do not confuse science proper with materialism in science , materialism that has been challenged even by modern physics , or quantum physics ...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

I don't believe that facts are the issue here Cheryl, and the more I read the more I am convinced by that. Your reference to "Satan", who neither myself nor anybody I know has ever met, are far more the issue.

This seems all about immovable objects and irresistible forces - Faith Vs. Science. It has been dressed up a bit, rather clumsily and transparently, but when a "scientific discussion" starts referring to souls, spirits, God and now Satan (a reference I accept as perfectly valid given the context) it really is time to call it a day.

What you all do not seem to be able to get, understand or grasp, even though it is an easy thing to understand , is that the core issue here is not about science proper , it is just about the materialist dogmatic belief system in science : can't you get just that ?
Science proper should be thus liberated from that materialist dogmatic belief system prison  , and then whole new vistas would open up for science   proper as a result , the latter that has been just held back by materialism, materialism  as a backward secular religion in science =
materialism as a conception ,or rather misconception of nature has thus nothing to do with science proper ...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

My dear young sir, once again you have given a non-answer – I “don't understand”.

Of course, you don't say what I don't understand. You can't. You do not have any argument, just a “feeling” that I am wrong. Therefore you resort to dismissal. You will, indeed, dismiss this assertion in the same way; you have no choice.

Don't worry, it is a time-honoured tactic of preachers, be they skinheads preaching the virtues of racial purity or murderers preaching the “sinfulness” of western education. I don't mind – I know where it comes from.

This thread deals with “human consciousness”. Let us assume you did some research into the subject before you started writing. Research is, after all, what any sensible adult would do.

Your research into psychology no doubt made you aware of Transactional Analysis. Broadly speaking, it occupies the place in psychology that “materialist reductionism” occupies in other branches of science. You are, therefore, familiar with the parent/child/adult aspects of “character”, a fundamental feature of human consciousness.

(If these assumptions regarding your validity as a commentator are incorrect my apologies. However, an appreciation of psychiatric principles and methods is usual, nay, essential, in discussions on “human consciousness”, particularly if you add God to the mix - your third post.)

It is not hard to discern from your posts that your parent sits like a solemn giant on all the wisdom and truth that Creation possesses; it is the guardian of your value system. Your child believes implicitly in this body of “truth” and cannot comprehend how anybody could disagree with the certain “truth” that was fixed in your value system before you were ten years old. It behaves as a child behaves; yeah but, no but, yeah but “why bring God into the discussion” circular arguments and “It's not fair!” dismissals. Your adult, the would-be modifier of your value system, lies battered and bleeding in the corner where it has crawled to die. This is because it gets a good kick from your child every time it dares to think that there might be some other truth. Externally this manifests itself in your frequent recourse to “What are you talking about?” and “you don't understand”.

You have now added another name to Nagels to “prove” that everything you learned at your parents knee was the one and only solemn truth of Creation (including, but certainly not limited to human consciousness). In fact, Nagel and Sheldrake are the only ideas you can accept; anything else would mean that your parent was wrong and your adult is nowhere near strong enough to stand up to your implicitly-believing child.

A child can only preach that his daddy is the strongest – what else does he know that he can rely on? It is only with adulthood, after time and experience have modified its Weltanschauen, that a child realises that daddy was not always right.

Of course, you have no choice but to dismiss this as well; how can you, a grown man, be thinking childishly on such an important topic? You know the difference between preaching and discussing, right?

Wrong. You don't. You need to a) grow up and b) develop some humility – you have at least one good book on the subject; the best.

I won't quote any of the many evasive, rude and dismissive answers that you have given to back up my assertion but I will quote something you said recently (reply 357):

“ these people do not seem to be able to get it yet , so, they just distort my views ,or do not understand them properly “

It's not fair! Is it.

Now, I think it's reasonable to bring a little of the “science” of human consciousness into a discussion on the subject. You do not like it; you can't – you don't not have the ability to give credence to criticism of your beliefs or your style of argument; your adult is simply not strong enough.

Which means you have no choice but to dismiss this again. However, may I suggest that, this time, you bottle your child-like arrogance and try something a bit more adult than “you don't understand”. Your lack of common courtesy is most telling and very irritating.

Finally, there is a phrase in your last post: “Dispelling Dogmas and Opening New Frontiers”.
It's a good idea; you should try it when you're ready.

Dude, instead of writing these kindda absurd whole lengthy posts that make no sense whatsoever , just try to understand what the core issue here is ,we have been talking about :

Did you at least listen to what Sheldrake had to say on the subject ? I do not think so .
We are talking here about the fact that the materialist dogmatic belief system in science as a direct consequence of the materialist 's  misconception of nature , gotta be rejected ,simply because it is untrue and has thus nothing to do with science proper , and must be replaced by a more or less valid non -reductionist naturalist conception of nature ..........
What's wrong with you, people ?
How can't you understand these simple statements and obvious facts ? Unbelievable ...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Excerpts from "Science Set Free : 10 Paths To New Discovery " By Rupert Sheldrake , Chapter 1 :" Is Nature Mechanical " :



Is Nature Mechanical?
Many people who have not studied science are baffled by scientists’ insistence that animals and plants
are machines, and that humans are robots too, controlled by computer-like brains with genetically
programmed software. It seems more natural to assume that we are living organisms, and so are
animals and plants.

. Organisms are self-organizing; they form and maintain themselves, and have their
own ends or goals. Machines, by contrast, are designed by an external mind; their parts are put
together by external machine-makers and they have no purposes or ends of their own.
The starting point for modern science was the rejection of the older, organic view of the universe.
The machine metaphor became central to scientific thinking, with very far-reaching consequences. In
one way it was immensely liberating. New ways of thinking became possible that encouraged the
invention of machines and the evolution of technology. In this chapter, I trace the history of this idea,
and show what happens when we question it.
Before the seventeenth century, almost everyone took for granted that the universe was like an
organism, and so was the earth. In classical, medieval and Renaissance Europe, nature was alive.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), for example, made this idea explicit: “We can say that the earth has a
vegetative soul, and that its flesh is the land, its bones are the structure of the rocks … its breathing
and its pulse are the ebb and flow of the sea.”1 William Gilbert (1540–1603), a pioneer of the science
of magnetism, was explicit in his organic philosophy of nature: “We consider that the whole universe
is animated, and that all the globes, all the stars, and also the noble earth have been governed since the
beginning by their own appointed souls and have the motives of self-conservation.”2
Even Nicholas Copernicus, whose revolutionary theory of the movement of the heavens, published
in 1543, placed the sun at the center rather than the earth was no mechanist. His reasons for making
this change were mystical as well as scientific. He thought a central position dignified the sun:
Not unfittingly do some call it the light of the world, others the soul, still others the governor.
Tremigistus calls it the visible God: Sophocles’ Electra, the All-seer. And in fact does the sun,
seated on his royal throne, guide his family of planets as they circle around him.3
Copernicus’s revolution in cosmology was a powerful stimulus for the subsequent development of
physics. But the shift to the mechanical theory of nature that began after 1600 was much more radical.
For centuries, there had already been mechanical models of some aspects of nature. For example, in
Wells Cathedral, in the west of England, there is a still-functioning astronomical clock installed more
than six hundred years ago. The clock’s face shows the sun and moon revolving around the earth,
against a background of stars. The movement of the sun indicates the time of day, and the inner circle
of the clock depicts the moon, rotating once a month. To the delight of visitors, every quarter of an
hour, models of jousting knights rush round chasing each other, while a model of a man bangs bells
with his heels.
Astronomical clocks were first made in China and in the Arab world, and powered by water. Their
construction began in Europe around 1300, but with a new kind of mechanism, operated by weights
and escapements. All these early clocks took for granted that the earth was at the center of the
universe. They were useful models for telling the time and for predicting the phases of the moon; but
no one thought that the universe was really like a clockwork mechanism.
A change from the metaphor of the organism to the metaphor of the machine produced science as
we know it: mechanical models of the universe were taken to represent the way the world actually
worked. The movements of stars and planets were governed by impersonal mechanical principles, not
by souls or spirits with their own lives and purposes.
In 1605, Johannes Kepler summarized his program as follows: “My aim is to show that the celestial
machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to clockwork … Moreover I show how
this physical conception is to be presented through calculation and geometry.”4 Galileo Galilei (1564–
1642) agreed that “inexorable, immutable” mathematical laws ruled everything.
The clock analogy was particularly persuasive because clocks work in a self-contained way. They
are not pushing or pulling other objects. Likewise the universe performs its work by the regularity of
its motions, and is the ultimate time-telling system. Mechanical clocks had a further metaphorical
advantage: they were a good example of knowledge through construction, or knowing by doing.
Someone who could construct a machine could reconstruct it. Mechanical knowledge was power.
The prestige of mechanistic science did not come primarily from its philosophical underpinnings
but from its practical successes, especially in physics. Mathematical modelling typically involves
extreme abstraction and simplification, which is easiest to realize with man-made machines or
objects. Mathematical mechanics is impressively useful in dealing with relatively simple problems,
such as the trajectories of cannonballs or rockets.
One paradigmatic example is billiard-ball physics, which gives a clear account of impacts and
collisions of idealized billiard balls in a frictionless environment. Not only is the mathematics
simplified, but billiard balls themselves are a very simplified system. The balls are made as round as
possible and the table as flat as possible, and there are uniform rubber cushions at the sides of the
table, unlike any natural environment. Think of a rock falling down a mountainside for comparison.
Moreover, in the real world, billiard balls collide and bounce off each other in games, but the rules of
the game and the skills and motives of the players are outside the scope of physics. The mathematical
analysis of the balls’ behavior is an extreme abstraction.
From living organisms to biological machines

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

The vision of mechanical nature developed amid devastating religious wars in seventeenth-century
Europe. Mathematical physics was attractive partly because it seemed to provide a way of
transcending sectarian conflicts to reveal eternal truths. In their own eyes the pioneers of mechanistic
science were finding a new way of understanding the relationship of nature to God, with humans
adopting a God-like mathematical omniscience, rising above the limitations of human minds and
bodies. As Galileo put it:
When God produces the world, he produces a thoroughly mathematical structure that obeys the
laws of number, geometrical figure and quantitative function. Nature is an embodied
mathematical system.5
But there was a major problem. Most of our experience is not mathematical. We taste food, feel angry,
enjoy the beauty of flowers, laugh at jokes. In order to assert the primacy of mathematics, Galileo and
his successors had to distinguish between what they called “primary qualities,” which could be
described mathematically, such as motion, size and weight, and “secondary qualities,” like color and
smell, which were subjective.6 They took the real world to be objective, quantitative and
mathematical. Personal experience in the lived world was subjective, the realm of opinion and
illusion, outside the realm of science.
René Descartes (1596–1650) was the principal proponent of the mechanical or mechanistic
philosophy of nature. It first came to him in a vision on November 10, 1619, when he was “filled with
enthusiasm and discovered the foundations of a marvellous science.”7 He saw the entire universe as a
mathematical system, and later envisaged vast vortices of swirling subtle matter, the ether, carrying
around the planets in their orbits.
Descartes took the mechanical metaphor much further than Kepler or Galileo by extending it into
the realm of life. He was fascinated by the sophisticated machinery of his age, such as clocks, looms
and pumps. As a youth he designed mechanical models to simulate animal activity, such as a pheasant
pursued by a spaniel. Just as Kepler projected the image of man-made machinery onto the cosmos,
Descartes projected it onto animals. They, too, were like clockwork.8 Activities like the beating of a
dog’s heart, its digestion and breathing were programmed mechanisms. The same principles applied to
human bodies.
Descartes cut up living dogs in order to study their hearts, and reported his observations as if his
readers might want to replicate them: “If you slice off the pointed end of the heart of a live dog, and
insert a finger into one of the cavities, you will feel unmistakably that every time the heart gets
shorter it presses the finger, and every time it gets longer it stops pressing it.”9
He backed up his arguments with a thought experiment: first he imagined man-made automata that
imitated the movements of animals, and then argued that if they were made well enough they would
be indistinguishable from real animals:
If any such machines had the organs and outward shapes of a monkey or of some other animal
that lacks reason, we should have no way of knowing that they did not possess entirely the same
nature as those animals.10
With arguments like these, Descartes laid the foundations of mechanistic biology and medicine that
are still orthodox today. However, the machine theory of life was less readily accepted in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than the machine theory of the universe. Especially in England,
the idea of animal-machines was considered eccentric.11 Descartes’ doctrine seemed to justify cruelty
to animals, including vivisection, and it was said that the test of his followers was whether they would
kick their dogs.12
As the philosopher Daniel Dennett summarized it, “Descartes … held that animals were in fact just
elaborate machines … It was only our non-mechanical, non-physical minds that make human beings
(and only human beings) intelligent and conscious. This was actually a subtle view, most of which
would readily be defended by zoologists today, but it was too revolutionary for Descartes’
contemporaries.”13
We are so used to the machine theory of life that it is hard to appreciate what a radical break
Descartes made. The prevailing theories of his time took for granted that living organisms were
organisms, animate beings with their own souls. Souls gave organisms their purposes and powers of
self-organization. From the Middle Ages right up into the seventeenth century, the prevailing theory
of life taught in the universities of Europe followed the Greek philosopher Aristotle and his leading
Christian interpreter, Thomas Aquinas ( c. 1225–74), according to whom the matter in plant or animal
bodies was shaped by the organisms’ souls. For Aquinas, the soul was the form of the body.14 The soul
acted like an invisible mold that shaped the plant or the animal as it grew and attracted it toward its
mature form.15
The souls of animals and plants were natural, not supernatural. According to classical Greek and
medieval philosophy, and also in William Gilbert’s theory of magnetism, even magnets had souls. 16
The soul within and around them gave them their powers of attraction and repulsion. When a magnet
was heated and lost its magnetic properties, it was as if the soul had left it, just as the soul left an
animal body when it died. We now talk in terms of magnetic fields. In most respects fields have
replaced the souls of classical and medieval philosophy.17
Before the mechanistic revolution, there were three levels of explanation: bodies, souls and spirits.
Bodies and souls were part of nature. Spirits were non-material but interacted with embodied beings
through their souls. The human spirit, or “rational soul,” according to Christian theology, was
potentially open to the Spirit of God.18
After the mechanistic revolution, there were only two levels of explanation: bodies and spirits.
Three layers were reduced to two by removing souls from nature, leaving only the human “rational
soul” or spirit. The abolition of souls also separated humanity from all other animals, which became
inanimate machines. The “rational soul” of man was like an immaterial ghost in the machinery of the
human body.
How could the rational soul possibly interact with the brain? Descartes speculated that their
interaction occurred in the pineal gland.19 He thought of the soul as like a little man inside the pineal
gland controlling the plumbing of the brain. He compared the nerves to water pipes, the cavities in the
brain to storage tanks, the muscles to mechanical springs, and breathing to the movements of a clock.
The organs of the body were like the automata in seventeenth-century water gardens, and the
immaterial man within was like the fountain keeper:
External objects, which by their mere presence stimulate [the body’s] sense organs … are like
visitors who enter the grottoes of these fountains and unwittingly cause the movements which
take place before their eyes. For they cannot enter without stepping on certain tiles which are so
arranged that if, for example, they approach a Diana who is bathing they will cause her to hide in
the reeds. And finally, when a rational soul is present in this machine it will have its principal
seat in the brain, and reside there like the fountain keeper who must be stationed at the tanks to
which the fountain’s pipes return if he wants to produce, or prevent, or change their movements
in some way.20
The final step in the mechanistic revolution was to reduce two levels of explanation to one. Instead of
a duality of matter and mind, there is only matter. This is the doctrine of materialism, which came to
dominate scientific thinking in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, despite their
nominal materialism, most scientists remained dualists, and continued to use dualistic metaphors.
The little man, or homunculus, inside the brain remained a common way of thinking about the
relation of body and mind, but the metaphor moved with the times and adapted to new technologies. In
the mid-twentieth century the homunculus was usually a telephone operator in the telephone exchange
of the brain, and he saw projected images of the external world as if he were in a cinema, as in a book
published in 1949 called The Secret of Life: The Human Machine and How It Works .21 In an exhibit in
2010 at the Natural History Museum in London called “How You Control Your Actions,” you looked
through a Perspex window in the forehead of a model man. Inside was a cockpit with banks of dials
and controls, and two empty seats, presumably for you, the pilot, and your co-pilot in the other
hemisphere. The ghosts in the machine were implicit rather than explicit, but obviously this was no
explanation at all because the little men inside brains would themselves have to have little men inside
their brains, and so on in an infinite regress.
If thinking of little men and women inside brains seems too naïve, then the brain itself is
personified. Many popular articles and books on the nature of the mind say “the brain perceives,” or
“the brain decides,” while at the same time arguing that the brain is just a machine, like a computer.22
For example, the atheist philosopher Anthony Grayling thinks that “brains secrete religious and
superstitious belief” because they are “hardwired” to do so:
As a “belief engine,” the brain is always seeking to find meaning in the information that pours
into it. Once it has constructed a belief, it rationalises it with explanations, almost always after
the event. The brain thus becomes invested in the beliefs, and reinforces them by looking for
supporting evidence while blinding itself to anything contrary.23
This sounds more like a description of a mind than a brain. Apart from begging the question of the
relation of the mind to the brain, Grayling also begs the question of how his own brain escaped from
this “hardwired” tendency to blind itself to anything contrary to its beliefs. In practice, the
mechanistic theory is only plausible because it smuggles non-mechanistic minds into human brains. Is
a scientist operating mechanistically when he propounds a theory of materialism? Not in his own eyes.
There is always a hidden reservation in his arguments: he is an exception to mechanistic determinism.
He believes he is putting forward views that are true, not just doing what his brain makes him do.24
It seems impossible to be a consistent materialist. Materialism depends on a lingering dualism,
more or less thinly disguised. In the realm of biology this dualism takes the form of personifying
molecules, as I discuss below.
The God of mechanical nature
Although the machine theory of nature is now used to support materialism, for the founding fathers of
modern science it supported the Christian religion, rather than subverted it.
Machines only make sense if they have designers. Robert Boyle, for example, saw the mechanical
order of nature as evidence for God’s design.25 And Isaac Newton conceived of God in his own image
as “very well skilled in mechanics and geometry.”26
The better the world-machine functioned, the less necessary was God’s ongoing activity. By the end
of the eighteenth century, the celestial machinery was thought to work perfectly without any need for
divine intervention. For many scientifically minded intellectuals, Christianity gave way to deism. A
Supreme Being designed the world-machine, created it, set it in motion and left it to run
automatically. This kind of God did not intervene in the world and there was no point in praying to
him. In fact there was no point in any religious practice. Several Enlightenment philosophers, like
Voltaire, combined deism with a rejection of the Christian religion.
Some defenders of Christianity agreed with the deists in accepting the assumptions of mechanistic
science. The most famous proponent of mechanistic theology was William Paley, an Anglican priest.
In his book Natural Theology, published in 1802, he argued that if someone were to find an object like
a watch, he would be bound to conclude on examining it and observing its intricate design and
precision that “there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or
artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its
construction and designed its use.”27 So it was with “the works of nature” such as the eye. God was the
designer.
In Britain in the nineteenth century, Anglican clergymen, most of whom emphasized the same
points as Paley, wrote many popular books on natural history. For example, the Reverend Francis
Morris wrote a popular, lavishly illustrated History of British Butterflies (1853), which served both as
a field guide and a reminder of the beauty of nature. Morris believed that God had implanted in every
human mind “an instinctive general love of nature” through which young and old alike could enjoy the
“beautiful sights in which the benign Creator displays such infinite wisdom of Almighty skill.”28
This was the kind of natural theology that Darwin rejected in his theory of evolution by natural
selection. By doing so, he undermined the machine theory of life itself, as I discuss below. But the
controversy he stirred up is still with us, and its latest incarnation is Intelligent Design. Proponents of
Intelligent Design point out the difficulty, if not impossibility, of explaining complex structures like
the vertebrate eye or the bacterial flagellum in terms of a series of random genetic mutations and
natural selection. They suggest that complex structures and organs show a creative integration of
many different components because they were intelligently designed. They leave open the question of
the designer,29 but the obvious answer is God.
The problem with the design argument is that the metaphor of a designer presupposes an external
mind. Humans design machines, buildings and works of art. In a similar way the God of mechanistic
theology, or the Intelligent Designer, is supposed to have designed the details of living organisms.
Yet we are not forced to choose between chance and an external intelligence. There is another
possibility. Living organisms may have an internal creativity, as we do ourselves. When we have a
new idea or find a new way of doing something, we do not design the idea first, and then put it into our
own minds. New ideas just happen, and no one knows how or why. Humans have an inherent
creativity; and all living organisms may also have an inherent creativity that is expressed in larger or
smaller ways. Machines require external designers; organisms do not.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Ironically, the belief in the divine design of plants and animals is not a traditional part of
Christianity. It stems from seventeenth-century science. It contradicts the biblical picture of the
creation of life in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. Animals and plants were not portrayed as
machines, but as self-reproducing organisms that arose from the earth and the seas, as in Genesis 1:11:
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit trees yielding fruit
after his kind, whose seed is in itself.” In Genesis 1: 24: “God said, Let the earth bring forth the living
creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind.” In theological
language, these were acts of “mediate” creation: God did not design or create these plants and animals
directly. As an authoritative Roman Catholic Biblical Commentary expressed it, God created them
indirectly “through the agency of the mother earth.”30
When nature came to life again
Followers of the Enlightenment put their faith in mechanistic science, reason and human progress.
“Enlightened” ideas or values still have a major influence on our educational, social and political
systems today. But from around 1780 to 1830 in the Romantic movement there was a widespread
reaction against the Enlightenment faith, expressed mainly in the arts and literature. Romantics
emphasized emotions and aesthetics, as opposed to reason. They saw nature as alive, rather than
mechanical. The most explicit application of these ideas to science was by the German philosopher
Friedrich von Schelling, whose book Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797) portrayed nature as a
dynamic interplay of opposed forces and polarities through which matter is “brought to life.”31
A central feature of Romanticism was the rejection of mechanical metaphors and their replacement
with imagery of nature as alive, organic and in a process of gestation or development.32 The first
evolutionary theories arose in this context.
Some scientists, poets and philosophers linked their philosophy of living nature to a God who
imbued Nature with life and left her to develop spontaneously, more like the God of Genesis than the
designer God of mechanistic theology. Others proclaimed themselves atheists, like the English poet
Percy Shelley (1792–1822), but they had no doubt about a living power in nature, which Shelley called
the Soul of the universe, or the all-sufficing Power, or the Spirit of Nature. He was also a pioneering
campaigner for vegetarianism because he valued animals as sentient beings.33
These different worldviews can be summarized as follows:
Worldview
Traditional Christian
God
Interactive
Nature
Living organism
Worldview
Early mechanistic
God
Interactive
Nature
Machine
Worldview
Enlightenment deism
God
Creator only
Nature
Machine
Worldview
Romantic deism
God
Creator only
Nature
Living organism
Worldview
Romantic atheism
God
No God
Nature
Living organism
Worldview
Materialism
God
No God
Nature
Machine
The Romantic movement created an enduring split in Western culture. Among educated people, in the
world of work, business and politics, nature is mechanistic, an inanimate source of natural resources,
exploitable for economic development. Modern economies are built on these foundations. On the
other hand, children are often brought up in an animistic atmosphere of fairy tales, talking animals
and magical transformations. The living world is celebrated in poems and songs and in works of art.
Nature is most strongly identified with the countryside, as opposed to cities, and especially by
unspoiled wilderness. Many urban people dream of moving to the country, or having a weekend home
in rural surroundings. On Friday evenings, cities of the Western world are clogged with traffic as
millions of people try to get back to nature in a car.
Our private relationship with nature presupposes that nature is alive. For a mechanistic scientist, or
technocrat, or economist, or developer, nature is neuter and inanimate. It needs developing as part of
human progress. But often the very same people have different attitudes in private. In Western Europe
and North America, many people get rich by exploiting nature so that they can buy a place in the
countryside to “get away from it all.”
This division between public rationalism and private romanticism has been part of the Western way
of life for generations, but is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Our economic activities are not
separate from nature, but affect the entire planet. Our private and public lives are increasingly
intertwined. This new consciousness is expressed through a revived public awareness of Gaia, Mother
Earth. But goddesses were not far below the surface of scientific thought even in its most materialist
forms.
The goddesses of evolution
One of the pioneers of evolutionary theory was Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, who
wanted to increase the importance of nature and reduce the role of God.34 The spontaneous evolution
of plants and animals struck at the root of natural theology and the doctrine of God as designer. If new
forms of life were brought forth by Nature herself, there was no need for God to design them. Erasmus
Darwin suggested that God endued life or nature with an inherent creative capacity in the first place
that was thereafter expressed without the need for divine guidance or intervention. In his book
Zoönomia (1794), he asked rhetorically:
Would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living
filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new
parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and
associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent
activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without
end!35
For Erasmus Darwin, living beings were self-improving, and the results of the efforts of parents were
inherited by their offspring. Likewise, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in his Zoological Philosophy (1809)
suggested that animals developed new habits in response to their environment, and their adaptations
were passed on to their descendants. The giraffe, inhabiting arid regions of Africa,
is obliged to browse on the leaves of trees and make constant efforts to reach them. From this
habit long maintained in all its race, it has resulted that the animal’s fore-legs have become
longer than its hind legs, and its neck is lengthened to such a degree that the giraffe attains a
height of six metres.36
In addition, a power inherent in life produced increasingly complex organisms, moving them up a
ladder of progress. Lamarck attributed the origin of the power of life to “the Supreme Author,” who
created “an order of things which gave existence successively to all that we see.”37 Like Erasmus
Darwin, he was a romantic deist. So was Robert Chambers, who popularized the idea of progressive
evolution in his bestselling Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation , published anonymously in
1844. He argued that everything in nature is progressing to a higher state as a result of a God-given
“law of creation.”38 His work was controversial both from a religious and scientific point of view but,
like Lamarck’s theory, it was attractive to atheists because it removed the need for a divine designer.
But Chambers, Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin not only undermined mechanistic theology, they also,
perhaps unwittingly, undermined the mechanistic theory of life. No inanimate machinery contained
within it a power of life, capacity for self-improvement or creativity. Their theories of progressive
evolution demystified the creativity of God by mystifying evolution.
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace’s theory of evolution by natural selection (1858)
attempted to demystify evolution. Natural selection was blind and impersonal, and required no divine
agency. It weeded out organisms that were not fit to survive, and favored those that were better
adapted. The subtitle of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was The Preservation of Favoured Races in
the Struggle for Life. The source of creativity was within animals and plants themselves: they varied
spontaneously and adapted to new circumstances.
Darwin gave no explanation for this creative power. In effect, he rejected the designing God of
mechanistic theology, and attributed all creativity to Nature, just as his grandfather had done. For
Darwin, Nature herself gave rise to the Tree of Life. Through her prodigious fertility, her spontaneous
variability and her powers of selection, she could do everything that Paley thought God did. But
Nature was not an inanimate, mechanical system like the clockwork of celestial physics. She was
Nature with a capital N. Darwin even apologized for his language: “For brevity’s sake I sometimes
speak of natural selection as an intelligent power … I have, also, often personified the word Nature;
for I have found it difficult to avoid this ambiguity.”39
Darwin advised his readers to ignore the implications of his turns of phrase. If, instead, we pay
attention to their implications, Nature is the Mother from whose womb all life comes forth, and to
whom all life returns. She is prodigiously fertile, but she is also cruel and terrible, the devourer of her
own offspring. She is creative, but she is also destructive, like the Indian goddess Kali. For Darwin,
natural selection was “a power incessantly ready for action,”40 and natural selection worked by
killing. The phrase “Nature red in tooth and claw” was the poet Tennyson’s rather than Darwin’s, but
sounds very like Kali, or the destructive Greek goddess Nemesis, or the vengeful Furies.
Charles Darwin, like his grandfather Erasmus and Lamarck, believed in the inheritance of habits.
His books give many examples of offspring inheriting the adaptations of their parents.41 The neo-
Darwinian theory of evolution, which developed from the 1940s onward, differed from Charles
Darwin’s theory in that it rejected the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Instead, organisms
inherited genes from their parents, passing them on unaltered to their offspring, unless there were
mutations, that is to say, random changes in the genes. The molecular biologist Jacques Monod
summarized this theory in the title of his book, Chance and Necessity (1972).