УМСТВЕННАЯ ОБСТАНОВКА (№ 8) — Эволюция по Дарвину

MENTAL FURNITURE #8 - Darwinian Evolution

In his introduction to Darwin's The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals Konrad Lorenz has this to say: "...Jacob von Uexkull once said rather pessimistically that today's truth was, after all, nothing but the error of tomorrow. Thereupon... Otto Koehler answered, 'No the truth of today is the special case of tomorrow!'... This second statement contains a very much deeper truth. In science, and particularly in biology, the discoverer of a new explanatory principle is more than apt to overrate the range of its applicability. ...One may indulgently regard this little weakness as the well-merited prerogative of genius, because the great man's pupils, though lesser discovers, are apt to be better at verification than their inspired teacher and can be relied upon to clip the wings of his genius when it threatens to soar too high. It is only when the pupils degenerate into disciples who unquestioningly accept the far sweeping statements of their master that danger arises, and a newly born epistemophagus (knowledge-devouring) monster, another 'ism' rears its ugly head."

"However, the greatest of all discoverers in the field of biology did not commit the error just discussed: when Charles Darwin discovered natural selection, the explanatory principle that was destined to change our outlook on man and the world more than any other before it, he decidedly did not overestimate the number of phenomena that could be explained on its basis. If anything, he erred on the side of understatement.... Like all really great scientific discoverers, Darwin possessed an almost uncanny ability to reason on the basis of hypotheses which were not only provisional and vague but subconscious. He deduced correct consequences from facts more suspected than known, and verified both the theory and the facts by the obvious truth of the conclusions thus reached. In other words, a man like Darwin knows more than he thinks he knows, and it is not surprising that the consequences of his knowledge reach far and in different directions."