False Truths by Edward C. Mendler

Author:Edward C. Mendler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: undefined
Published: 2012-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

Consciousness

Another opportunity for Gould to express and press his views arose in a special issue of the magazine Scientific American, devoted to Life in the Universe.[10] A series of articles described cosmological origins from the big bang, the formation of particles, atoms, molecules, galaxies and stars, the consolidation of the earth, and the chemical and physical processes by which self-reproducing molecules were formed and then life ensued. All of that, the scientists seem to agree, was largely deterministic, a necessary consequence of the nature of energy and matter.

Then came the article on The Evolution of Life on the Earth by Stephen Jay Gould. It did not take him long to assert that “. . . theory can predict certain general aspects of life’s geological pattern. But the actual pathway is strongly under-determined by our general theory of life’s evolution.” And then that “Humans arose . . . as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness.” In this article (as in many of Gould’s other writings, as noted above) the main theme was refutation of the “conventional deterministic models of Western science and [of] the deepest social traditions and psychological hopes of Western culture for a history culminating in humans as life’s highest expression and intended planetary steward.” In his writings he did a thorough and admirable job of it. Nevertheless, we may still question the conclusion that, but for chance, life would not have given rise to mind.

A key element of Gould’s thesis is the dominant role of bacteria. Life arose 3.5 billion years ago in the form of simple prokaryotic cells and remained largely that way until 600 million years ago when multicelled eukaryotic fauna appeared. The Cambrian explosion of 530 million years ago established the phyla and architecture of substantially all currently existing animals, yet bacteria continued to flourish in numbers and complexity. Humans along with other modern species are but a small twig on the “bush of life” or the “right tail” of the chart of increasing complexity, as shown in the diagram and recital attached to Gould’s article. The diagram shows a large and ever-increasing mass of bacterial life at the low end of a range of complexity and a steadily decreasing occurrence of more complex types of organisms, ending with humans, at the “right tail.”

The thesis had been elaborated by Gould in his book Full House, referred to above. In it he said: “The claim that a conscious creature like us must evolve because we can predict the development of an expanding right tail for all of life represents a classic “category mistake” — in this case, the false inference of a particular from a valid generality. The right tail did predictably arise (if only as a passive consequence), but any individual creature on the right tail of earthly life at this particular time represents a fortuitous and improbable result, one actualization among a hundred million unrealized alternatives.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.