Earth Is Our Home , livre ebook

The Earth Is Our Home
Mary Midgley’s Critique and Reconstruction of Evolution and Its Meanings
Nelson Rivera
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To Sara,
and to our daughters
Noelia, Paula, Celeste, and Laura,
in love and gratitude



Introduction
This book attempts to show how an evolutionary theory is truly a welcome development in philosophical and religious thinking alike. This I do by assessing the contributions of philosopher of science and culture Mary Midgley (b. 1919) to an epistemology that takes Darwinian evolution seriously by building knowledge about the world from the complexity of the human experience. What Midgley has to offer is a kind of “evolutionary epistemology.” In her case, as she herself puts it, that means “asking what we know by asking about ourselves as knowers, and as beings who are shaped by a particular evolutionary history, rather than by trying immediately to understand the subject-matter that we know (or don’t know) about.” [1]
It is my personal conviction that Midgley’s approach can also be understood as a way of building knowledge of the world around us and of ourselves “from below,” from the underside of the world, from the realms of nature and history . [2] We learn about ourselves in relation to everything else, especially other living things. Moreover, we learn about the world by using historical thinking. We build our worldviews by the gradual accumulation of experience, reasoning, and the allocation of value borne by our inner life. In this project, I also want to explore the impact that such a view “from below” may have on helping the public in general, and religious believers in particular, come to terms with evolutionary theory.
It is my belief that some of the difficulties that a number of Christians may have with evolutionary theory spring from a religious epistemology that begins with assumptions about God and the world “from above,” from a previous metaphysical commitment to ideas of order, design and purpose in nature, which may impede a fuller appreciation of what a Darwinian evolutionary perspective has to offer. All that said, the view from below, which is a historical perspective , is not necessarily alien to metaphysical constructions . When a historical approach goes beyond the original experience, it then ends up being metaphysical at least in a general sense. But starting with a metaphysical theory of reality is not the most appropriate way to build knowledge of the world, at least methodologically speaking. We construct a reasonable worldview first by taking seriously our concrete experience of the natural world, including elaborating a workable picture of its evolutionary history.
In the context of this project, I first need to introduce Mary Midgley and why I think that she matters for our study of evolution and its meanings. Unfortunately, Midgley is not as well known in America, where I live and work, as she is in her native England. Therefore, I use the first chapter to present her to the general public by opening a view to her context: family, education, formative experiences, and some of the interests that have driven her academic as well as her public life.
In the same line, the second chapter summarizes those topics and concerns that have preoccupied Midgley’s career. Of particular interest for our exposition is to make clear that Midgley’s concerns are about science and its role in contemporary societies. Throughout this book, I intend to explain what it is that Midgley understands by science, and what problems she sees with a certain kind of science (some would call it ‘scientism’) that tends to overreach by intending to explain more than it actually can, or to offer more than it can actually deliver. In order to do this, I shall concentrate primarily, though not exclusively, on those of Midgley’s writings dealing directly with science, evolution, Darwin, religion, and related topics.
Chapter three is a survey of evolutionary theory with a brief account of the major questions and debates that have surrounded it, roughly, since Darwin’s day. If we want to talk about evolution, we had better understand what it is and what the experts are saying about it nowadays. The end result of this third chapter is a presentation of a “pluralistic understanding of evolution” akin to Midgley’s own.
The fourth chapter then introduces some of the relevant controversies between evolution and religion, with special attention to those instances in which evolutionary theory has been presented, and in some cases even defended, as a form of religion itself, or at least a form of spirituality. In this chapter, I begin to draw on Midgley’s critique of evolution (as a worldview) and its possible meanings. In order to do this, I revisit first some of the controversies around Darwinian evolution during the Victorian era. Most importantly, and following Midgley’s lead, I then examine some of the controversies around modern sociobiology, and some aspects of the scientific materialism of the likes of Edward Wilson and Richard Dawkins, both of them bona fide scientists who have written considerably on the critique, sometimes dismissal, of religion by evolutionary theory.
In the fifth and final chapter, I attempt to explain what an evolutionary epistemology looks like from Midgley’s perspective. Midgley herself has acknowledged that the term “evolutionary epistemology,” although not used by her in her own writings, nonetheless applies well to her views on human knowing and the human interrelation with the living world. For this, I have to assess first the claims of Midgley’s empiricism, since the latter is basic to the development of her philosophical epistemology. In addition, I try to answer the question of why it matters to elaborate such views based on Midgley’s work. Midgley herself has insisted on the necessity of our self-understanding as creatures who are products of this earth, who have our home here, and cannot live apart from this intimate relation with nature. That is the reason for the use of the image that appears in the title of this book: the earth as home.
For Midgley, both science and religion are needed in our way to wisdom. Neither of them can take the place of the other in their particular approaches to the world. Natural science is a way of getting acquainted with the living world in all its complexity. The world is an intricate web of relations ; it is also the realm of wonder. Wisdom, therefore, comes into a way of life that can be appropriately informed by science but that goes beyond science and into ethics, art, metaphysics, and, yes, religion. Religion provides a sense of direction for life. Religion does it by giving us a fuller view of the human experience. Life is not merely the aggregate of individual parts, but rather the foundation for the appropriation of the human experience in its wholeness. Therefore religion and science are together capable of providing us a measured sense of our own selves, for instance, our innermost desire to know who we are and what is our place and role in this earthly life.
During the time of my research and writing, I was blessed with the opportunity of an exchange of letters (electronic mail) and therefore views with this living philosopher. Since her first major publication, Beast and Man , in 1978, Midgley has earned a reputation as one of the most effective “scourges of scientific pretensions” in our time. This is because she has criticized the ideologies that unfortunately sometimes drive scientists in their supposedly “objective” and “unbiased” work. These are ideologies that proclaim a reductive view of the world and that tend to deprive us of the world’s intrinsic richness and complexity. As a moral philosopher, Midgley has called attention to the ethical implications of systems of ideas, especially the dominant ideas and ideals of a given time, a role that has been increasingly occupied by scientific discourse in our day. Midgley is deeply concerned with the impact on the public at large of overreaching scientific ideologies and their seemingly philosophical baggage. [3]
As someone who thinks of philosophy as more than just an academic discipline or a private exercise, Midgley has been an advocate of a public role for philosophy and has called for a critical reappraisal of its social responsibility. Philosophical analysis is a valuable tool in the task of unearthing dangerous patterns of thought. In this context, Midgley engages in what she calls “philosophical plumbing ,” a way of uncovering the role of ideas and ideologies in forming our modern worldview. For her work in explaining difficult concepts to the general public, and the open reception and success of her many publications, Midgley has been praised as a philosopher that the common person can actually understand. At the same time, she is also said to be “feared and admired” in almost equal measure.
Among Midgley’s many contributions to the philosophy of science, I find particularly insightful her assessment of evolutionary ideas. She is able to be as fiercely critical of developments in evolutionary theory, and their impact on culture, as she can be affirmative of the theory’s contributions to the history of ideas. Moreover, and as I intend to show through this project, she has contributed positively to the reassessment of Darwinian evolution and its meanings.
In her writings on evolution, Midgley h