Drawing on work of the past decade, this volume brings together articles from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science, and many other branches of the biological sciences. The volume delves into the latest theoretical controversies as well as burning questions of contemporary social importance. The issues considered include the nature of evolutionary theory, biology and ethics, the challenge from religion, and the social implications of biology today (in particular the Human Genome Project).

This Element is a philosophical history of Social Darwinism. It begins by discussing the meaning of the term, moving then to its origins, paying particular attention to whether it is Charles Darwin or Herbert Spencer who is the true father of the idea. It gives an exposition of early thinking on the subject, covering Darwin and Spencer themselves and then on to Social Darwinism as found in American thought, with special emphasis on Andrew Carnegie, and Germany with special emphasis on (...) Friedrich von Bernhardi. Attention is also paid to outliers, notably the Englishman Alfred Russel Wallace, the Russian Peter Kropotkin, and the German Friedrich Nietzsche. From here we move into the twentieth century looking at Adolf Hitler - hardly a regular Social Darwinian given he did not believe in evolution - and in the Anglophone world, Julian Huxley and Edward O. Wilson, who reflected the concerns of their society. (shrink)

Challenging the posthumanist canon which celebrates the pre-eminence of matter, Ruth Miller, inFlourishingThoughtargues that what nonhuman systems contribute to democracy is thought. Drawing on recent feminist theories of nonhuman life and politics, Miller shows that reproduction and flourishing are not antithetical to contemplation and sensitivity. After demonstrating processes of life and processes of thought are indistinguishable, Miller finds that four menacing accumulations of matter and information--global surveillance, stored embryos, human clones, and reproductive trash--are politically productive rather than threats to democratic (...) politics. As a consequence, she questions the usefulness of individual rights such as privacy and dignity, contests the value of the rational metaphysics underlying human-centered political participation, and re-evaluates the gender relations that derive from this type of participation. Ultimately, in place of these human-centered structures, Miller posits a more meditative mode of democratic engagement. Miller's argument has shattering implications for the debates over the proper use and disposal of embryonic tissue, alarms about data gathering by the state and corporations, and other major ethical, social, and security issues. (shrink)

The Principles of Logic by Herbert Austin Aikins, first published in 1902, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to (...) the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the coherence and applicability of Whitehead's philosophy of organism insofar as that speculative scheme functions as a viable metaphysical basis for his philosophy of civilization. In short, what is offered is an inquiry concerning the metaphysical foundation of Whitehead's theory of civilized society. ;Overall, the metaphysical ground of civilized society is rooted in two tenets fundamental to Whitehead's philosophy: the paradigm of organism, exemplified in the becoming of an actual entity, and two, the essentially social character of (...) order, exemplified in the occurrences of natural events. Of the first, the primary ontological status of actual entities, each a self-creative process of many things in disjunction immanently related into one novel individual, sets the standard in terms of which all other existent things, human beings and civilized societies alike, are ultimately referent. Accordingly, the concepts of prehension and concrescence are most pertinent to the genesis and character of human experience, and thus to the advent of civilized society. The principle of creativity-one-many is likewise essential to the derivation of civilized society, inasmuch as the process of 'many' creatively united into 'one' is a universal archetype of Whitehead's philosophy, whether applied to cosmology or sociology. ;Equally fundamental to the metaphysical foundation of civilized society is Whitehead's conception of a composite organism, i.e., a "society" of actual entities, for it is upon this basis that the hierarchical social order of nature is established, and thereby the civilized order of human society. The occurrence of civilized society is, in this context, simply a highly specialized and unique form of social order made manifest by the impelling drive of creativity, actualized by way of the radical novelty of human mentality and the freedom of individual effort. Civilization is, as Whitehead so aptly puts it, an "adventure of ideas." So too, the question concerning the metaphysical status of civilized society, as an existent thing, as one or many, finds its resolution in conformity with the principles germane to the constitution of any such social organism. (shrink)

This essay concerns the original use of signs that is species-specifically human, namely, the awareness that results from the difference between animal estimation of objects in terms of what is to be sought (+), avoided (–), or safe to ignore (ø), and what human understanding species-specifically adds to animal awareness of objects as involving “things” existing in their own right as not wholly or simply reducible to their relations to us as objects.Powell calls the species-specfically human awareness of objects the (...) “transcendental realm”; and the ‘line of demarcation’ separating the semiosic awareness common to all animals as making use of signs from the semiotic consciousness of human animals as able to become aware of insensible relations as such triadically “considered as constituting the mode of being of a sign” (Peirce 1904: CP 8.332), Powell terms “ens primum cognitum”.Thus, Powell’s “transcendental realm” is the soil and ground common to all science, cenoscopic and ideoscopic alike, and hence the preconscious realm of metasemiosis wherein that species-specifically unique process is able to extend its roots and transform the “rational animal” of Greek and Latin thought into the “semiotic animal” of postmodern intellectual culture. “Humanesque analogy” is Powell’s term for the fact that the species-specifically human understanding is an awareness inescapably grounded in and having as its constant background and surrounding, as it were, the generically animal awareness of a world of perceptual objects related to ourselves as (+), (–), (ø). (shrink)

Austin Duncan-Jones; I—Notional Choice: The Presidential Address, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 61, Issue 1, 1 June 1961, Pages 1–18, https://.

Philosophy of Communication Ethics is a unique and timely volume that creatively examines communication ethics, philosophy of communication, and "the other.".

Law in Crisis is an unsettling history of natural disaster and political subject formation in the modern world.

Three hundred years before Christianity became a religion, Jesus taught the Way. His earliest followers identified as philosophers--adherents to the philosophy of Jesus. In this book, Daniel Austin Napier guides us to directly experience Jesus' unparalleled genius for renovating human life. A good tour guide, Napier gestures toward and describes other figures on the periphery--such as Socrates, Aristotle, and the Stoics--to whom Jesus may be fruitfully compared. But Jesus and his account of lasting personal change is the singular point (...) of focus from beginning to end. With cross-disciplinary knowledge and gentle personal warmth, Napier presents a portrait of Jesus that you've never seen before but that you've been looking for. Perhaps you wonder: What's a soul and what's it good for? How could you locate it in everyday experience? Just how smart is Jesus? What did he say that changed his students so drastically? What are the essential ingredients of lasting personal change? What's it like to co-work with God, and how can you recognize when it's happening? What's so different, and so good, about the God whom Jesus calls Father? You will find lucid answers to all these questions and many more inside. You're invited. Come explore Jesus' philosophy of personal transformation. (shrink)

This is the correspondence (1959–1969), on the nature of the evolutionary process, between the biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky and the historian John C. Greene.

A brief, accessible history of the idea of purpose in Western thought, from ancient Greece to the present Can we live without the idea of purpose? Should we even try to? Kant thought we were stuck with purpose, and even Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which profoundly shook the idea, was unable to kill it. Indeed, teleological explanation—what Aristotle called understanding in terms of “final causes”—seems to be making a comeback today, as both religious proponents of intelligent design and some (...) prominent secular philosophers argue that any explanation of life without the idea of purpose is missing something essential. In On Purpose, Michael Ruse explores the history of the idea of purpose in philosophical, religious, scientific, and historical thought, from ancient Greece to the present. Accessibly written and filled with literary and other examples, the book examines “purpose” thinking in the natural and human world. It shows how three ideas about purpose have been at the heart of Western thought for more than two thousand years. In the Platonic view, purpose results from the planning of a human or divine being; in the Aristotelian, purpose stems from a tendency or principle of order in the natural world; and in the Kantian, purpose is essentially heuristic, or something to be discovered, an idea given substance by Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. On Purpose traces the profound and fascinating implications of these ways of thinking about purpose. Along the way, it takes up tough questions about the purpose of life and whether it’s possible to have meaning without purpose, revealing that purpose is still a vital and pressing issue. (shrink)

Richard Dawkins argues both that Darwin's theory made a God-as-the-designer-of-species redundant, and also that the problem of evil provides overwhelming evidence against God's existence. But Michael Ruse suspects Dawkins may be too hasty….

Book reviewed in this article: Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature. By R. C. Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin.

The subject of this paper, Excuses, is one not to be treated, but only to be introduced, within such limits. It is, or might be, the name of a whole branch, even a ramiculated branch, of philosophy, or at least of one fashion of philosophy. I shall try, therefore, first to state what the subject is, why it is worth studying, and how it may be studied, all this at a regrettably lofty level: and then I shall illustrate, in more (...) congenial but desultory detail, some of the methods to be used, together with their limitations, and some of the unexpected results to be expected and lessons to be learned. Much, of course, of the amusement, and of the instruction, comes in drawing the coverts of the microglot, in hounding down the minutiae, and to this I can do no more here than incite you. But I owe it to the subject to say, that it has long afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and made, barren of -- the fun of discovery, the pleasures of co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement. (shrink)

Evolutionary ethics - the application of evolutionary ideas to moral thinking and justification - began in the nineteenth century with the work of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, but was subsequently criticized as an example of the naturalistic fallacy. In recent decades, however, evolutionary ethics has found new support among both the Darwinian and the Spencerian traditions. This accessible volume looks at the history of thought about evolutionary ethics as well as current debates in the subject, examining first the claims (...) of supporters and then the responses of their critics. Topics covered include social Darwinism, moral realism, and debunking arguments. Clearly written and structured, the book guides readers through the arguments on both sides, and emphasises the continuing relevance of evolutionary theory to our understanding of ethics today. (shrink)

Brings together traditional philosophy and modern sociobiology to examine evolutionary biology and its relation to the evolution of knowledge and ethics.

Michael Ruse offers a new analysis of the often troubled relationship between science and religion. Arguing against both extremes - in one corner, the New Atheists; in the other, the Creationists and their offspring the Intelligent Designers - he asserts that science is the highest source of human inquiry. Yet, by its very nature and its deep reliance on metaphor, science restricts itself and is unable to answer basic, significant questions about the meaning of the universe and humankind's place (...) within it: why is there something rather than nothing? What is the meaning of it all? Ruse shows that one can legitimately be a skeptic about these questions, and yet why it is open for a Christian, or member of any faith, to offer answers. Scientists, he concludes, should be proud of their achievements but modest about their scope. Christians should be confident of their mission but respectful of the successes of science. (shrink)

Does human life have meaning? Ever since Darwin, there has been great skepticism about whether a "meaning of life" was possible outside of religious belief. Is it possible to find meaning in human life? Philosopher of science Michael Ruse examines the question of meaning in life within Darwinian views of human nature. He argues that meaning in the Darwinian age can be found if we turn to a kind of Darwinian existentialism, seeing our evolved human nature as the source (...) of all meaning, both in the intellectual and social worlds. (shrink)

In June 1975, the distinguished Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson published a truly huge book entitled, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. In this book, drawing on both fact and theory, Wilson tried to present a com prehensive overview of the rapidly growing subject of 'sociobiology', the study of the biological nature and foundations of animal behaviour, more precisely animal social behaviour. Although, as the title rather implies, Wilson was more surveying and synthesising than developing new material, he com pensated by giving (...) the most thorough and inclusive treatment possible, beginning in the animal world with the most simple of forms, and progressing via insects, lower invertebrates, mammals and primates, right up to and in cluding our own species, Homo sapiens. Initial reaction to the book was very favourable, but before the year was out it came under withering attack from a group of radical scientists in the Boston area, who styled themselves 'The Science for the People Sociobiology Study Group'. Criticism, of course, is what every academic gets (and needs!); but, for two reasons, this attack was particularly unpleasant. First, not only were Wilson's ideas attacked, but he himself was smeared by being linked with the most reactionary of political thinkers, including the Nazis. (shrink)

The author considers the role of male and female homosexuality in society and presents a range of theories about the causes of homosexuality as well as diverse theories about free will and the extent to which it influences sexual orientation.

Introducción de Michael Ruse: “La teoría darwiniana de la evolución".

INTRODUCTION I first read Charles Darwin's masterpiece, On the Origin of Species , some twenty years ago. At once I fell under its spell - an emotion which ...

Preface ix Introduction 1 1 Two Thousand Years of Design 9 2 Paley and Kant Fight Back 31 3 Sowing the Seeds of Evolution 51 4 A Plurality of Problems 69 5 Charles Darwin 89 6 A Subject Too Profound 107 7 Darwinian against Darwinian 129 8 The Century of Evolutionism 151 9 Adaptation in Action 171 10 Theory and Test 195 11 Formalism Redux 223 12 From Function to Design 249 13 Design as Metaphor 271 14 Natural Theology Evolves (...) 291 15 Turning Back the Clock 313 Sources and Suggested Reading 339 Illustration Credits 358 Acknowledgments 359 Index 361. (shrink)

This short and highly accessible volume opens up the subject of the philosophy of biology to professionals and to students in both disciplines. The text covers briefly and clearly all of the pertinent topics in the subject, dealing with both human and non-human issues, and quite uniquely surveying not only scholars in the English-speaking world but others elsewhere, including the Eastern block. As molecular biologists peer ever more deeply into life’s mysteries, there are those who fear that such ‘reductionism’ conceals (...) more than it reveals, and there are those who complain that the new techniques threaten the physical safety of us all. As students of evolution apply their new-found understanding to our own species, some people think that this is merely an excuse for racist and sexist propaganda, and others worry that the whole exercise blatantly violates the religious beliefs many of us hold dear. These controversies are the joint concern of biologists and philosophers—of those whose task it is to study the theoretical and moral foundations of knowledge. The comprehensive and fully up-to-date bibliography makes this an invaluable and indispensable guide. (shrink)

Presenting an ardent defence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, this book offers a clear and comprehensive exposition of Darwin's thinking. Michael Ruse brings the story up to date, examining the origins of life, the fossil record, and the mechanism of natural selection. Rival theories are explored, from punctuated equilibrium to human evolution. The philosophical and religious implications of Darwinism are discussed, including a discussion of Creationism and its modern day offshoot, Intelligent Design Theory. Ruse draws upon the (...) most recent discoveries, writing with a minimum of jargon in order to appeal to all readers, from professional biologists to those concerned that Darwinism is a naturalistic religion that is forced on school children despite their own Christian convictions. Openly revealing his own beliefs, Ruse presents readers with all the information and critical tools they need to make an informed decision on evolutionary theory. (shrink)