โ Scribed by Arthur Caplan
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Philosophers and scientists often voice the complaint that despite the apparent comprehensiveness and theoretical ornateness of modem-day evolutionary theory, the theory is somehow less reputable than the theories used in the physical, chemical, and social sciences. This avowed distaste for the modem synthetic theory can take the forms of a stronger and a weaker thesis. The stronger claim, which might be labelled the contemptibility thesis, maintains that evolutionary theory is worthless since it amounts to no more than a simplistic tautology to the effect that those organisms that survive are fit, and, those that are fit, survive. Given the relative immunity Of tautological propositions from refutation or test by empirical facts, proponents of the contemptibility thesis would claim that tautologies are hardly the stuff of which useful scientific theories are made.1
The weaker thesis concerning the dissatisfaction many commentators feel in confronting contemporary evolutionary accounts might be labelled the disreputability thesis. This view does not deny that contemporary evolutionary theory is non-tautologous in character, but, evolutionary theory seems more prone than most theories to a number of serious defects and ailments. 2
Firstly, evolutionary theorizing is rarely sullied by any specific predictions or retrodictions concerning organic events at any level of biological organization.
Secondly, the theory seems to possess a disquieting amount of elasticity or flexibility with regard to explaining organic phenomena. Anything and everything in the empirical biological world seems to be compatible with evolutionary explanations. Refuting evidence or crucial experiments that could realistically jeopardize an evolutionary account seem extremely few and far between.
Thirdly, evolutionary theorists seem willing to assume and postulate
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Darwin's theory of evolution raised the question of how the human brain differs from that of other animals and how it is the same. Early students of brain evolution had constructed rather grand but speculative theories which stated that brains evolved in a linear manner, from fish to man and from si