Book reviewed in this article: On Human Nature. By Edward O. Wilson.

Passmore argues that there is urgent need to change our attitude to the environment, and that humans cannot continue unconstrained exploitation of the biosphere.

It is not too great an exaggeration to claim that On the Origin of Species was, along with Das Kapital, one of the two most significant works in the intellectual history of the nineteenth century. As George Henry Lewes wrote in 1868, ‘No work of our time has been so general in its influence’. However, the very generality of the influence of Darwin’s work provides the chief problem for the intellectual historian. Most books and articles on the subject assert the (...) influence but remain very imprecise about its nature. It is very difficult indeed to assess what it was about the Darwinian theory which was so influential and how its influence was felt. This problem in Victorian intellectual history intersects with a related one in the history of science. There has been a tendency on the part of historians of science to isolate Darwin in two related ways. The first is to single him out from the mainstream of nineteenth-century naturalism in Britain and allow ‘Darwinism’ to stand duty for the wider movement of which it was in fact but a part. The second is the tendency to single out his evolutionary theory and to demarcate it sharply from those of his predecessors and contemporaries. According to this interpretation Darwin stood alone as a real, empirical scientist and provided the first genuinely scientific hypothesis for the process by which evolution might have occurred. The theories of the other main evolutionists—Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Chambers, Spencer, and Wallace—were more or less besmirched by ideological, anthropomorphic, or other ‘non-scientific’ factors or by the uses to which they were put by their authors. Charles Darwin is thus made to stand out as a figure of comparatively unalloyed scientific status and is treated in relative isolation from the social and intellectual context in which he worked and into which his theory was received. (shrink)

A discussion of egoism and altruism as related both to ethical theory and moral psychology. Williams considers and rejects various arguments for and against the existence of egoistic motives and the rationality of someone motivated by self-interest. He ultimately attempts to give a more Humean defense of altruism, as opposed to the more Kantian defenses found in Thomas Nagel, for example.

Many writers in various fields--philosophy, religion, literature, and psychology--believe that the question of the meaning of life is one of the most significant problems that an individual faces. In The Meaning of Life, Second Edition, E.D. Klemke collects some of the best writings on this topic, primarily works by philosophers but also selections from literary figures and religious thinkers. The twenty-seven cogent, readable essays are organized around three different perspectives on the meaning of life. In Part I, the readings assert (...) and defend the theistic view that without the existence of God--or faith in God--life has no significance or purpose. In Part II the selections deny this thesis, defending instead the humanistic alternative--that life has or can have meaning and worth without any theistic beliefs or commitment. In the final group of readings, contributors ask if the question of the meaning of life is in itself legitimate and significant. The volume also includes an introduction by the editor and a selected bibliography. This new edition adds essays by A. J. Ayer, Hazel Barnes, William Lane Craig, Owen Flanagan, Antony Flew, Thomas Nagel, Kai Nielsen, Philip L. Quinn, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Walter T. Stace. The only anthology of its kind, The Meaning of Life, Second Edition, is ideal for courses in introduction to philosophy and human nature. It also provides an accessible and stimulating introduction to the subject for general readers. (shrink)

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).

Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.

In this expanded version of his Thank-Offering to Britain Fund lectures, delivered at the British Academy in February 1976, Stuart Hampshire compares two radically different conceptions of morality, those of Aristotle and Spinoza, authors, he claims, of the most plausible of all moral philosophies. He discusses the relation between moral intuitions and moral theory, and the contrasting ideas of moral normality and moral conversion. Spinoza's theory of the relation between mind and body is expounded and its relevance to recent theories (...) is explained. (shrink)

Plantinga's attempts generally to undermine inductive-Analogical arguments for the other minds are criticized, And an attempt is made to present a sound analogical argument for other minds that can withstand plantinga's and other sceptical criticisms. It is then argued that a similar demonstration of the reasonableness of believing in objects when we are not observing them is also possible.

Change and necessity is a statement of Darwinian natural selection as a process driven by chance necessity, devoid of purpose or intent.

In this paper I explore various grounds on which wilderness can be regarded as something which we should value, and I draw attention to the problems of resolving conftict which are generated by these diverse grounds. I conclude that our attitudes toward nature are partially determined by a background of metaphysical assumptions which derive in particular from the philosophy of Descartes. Thesemetaphysical preconceptions lead to the misconception that various alternative views about the natural environment are mystical or occult. Thus, an (...) alternative non-Cartesian mode ofconception involving holistic or systemic modes of-thought is required in order to develop a satisfactory basis for our attitude toward the natural world. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Our environmental crisis is commonly explained as a product of a set of attitudes and beliefs about the world which have been developed by post‐Cartesian technological society. Deep ecologists claim that the crisis can only be overcome by adopting an alternative non‐technological paradigm, such as can be discovered in non‐Western cultures. In this paper I express misgivings about the use of the expression ‘Paradigm’ by deep ecologists, question the claim that a science‐based world‐view inevitably fosters manipulative and exploitative attitudes to (...) the natural world, suggest that non‐technological cultures do not necessarily provide exemplary and superior models for relating to the natural world, and defend a scientific naturalism as a satisfying way of realising our unity with the natural world. (shrink)

How do we know that God exists? One of Britain's greatest 18th-century philosophers addresses the age-old question in this timeless dialogue. Equally captivating as a philosophical argument and as a work of literature, this classic is particularly relevant in terms of its criticism of the reasoning behind Intelligent Design.

Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous, elephants abstract or biscuits teleological. This should not need mentioning, but Richard Dawkins's book The Selfish Gene has succeeded in confusing a number of people about it, including Mr J. L. Mackie. What Mackie welcomes in Dawkins is a new, biological-looking kind of support for philosophic egoism. If this support came from Dawkins's producing important new facts, or good new interpretations of old facts, about animal life, this (...) could be very interesting. Dawkins, however, simply has a weakness for the old game of Brocken-spectre moralizing—the one where the player strikes attitudes on a peak at sunrise, gazes awe-struck at his gigantic shadow on the clouds, and reports his observations as cosmic truths. He is an uncritical philosophic egoist in the first place, and merely feeds the egoist assumption into his a priori biological speculations, only rarely glancing at the relevant facts of animal behaviour and genetics, and ignoring their failure to support him. There is nothing empirical about Dawkins. Critics have repeatedly pointed out that his notions of genetics are unworkable. I shall come to this point later, but I shall not begin with it, because, damning though it is, it may seem to some people irrelevant to his main contention. It is natural for a reader to suppose that his over-simplified drama about genes is just a convenient stylistic device, because it seems obvious that the personification of them must be just a metaphor. Indeed he himself sometimes says that it is so. But in fact this personification, in its literal sense, is essential for his whole contention; without it he is bankrupt. His central point is that the emotional nature of man is exclusively self-interested, and he argues this by claiming that all emotional nature is so. Since the emotional nature of animals clearly is not exclusively selfinterested, nor based on any long-term calculation at all, he resorts to arguing from speculations about the emotional nature of genes, which he treats as the source and archetype of all emotional nature. This strange convoluted drama must be untwisted before the full force of the objections from genetics can be understood. (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)

In this paper I explore various grounds on which wilderness can be regarded as something which we should value, and I draw attention to the problems of resolving conftict which are generated by these diverse grounds. I conclude that our attitudes toward nature are partially determined by a background of metaphysical assumptions which derive in particular from the philosophy of Descartes. Thesemetaphysical preconceptions lead to the misconception that various alternative views about the natural environment are mystical or occult. Thus, an (...) alternative non-Cartesian mode ofconception involving holistic or systemic modes of-thought is required in order to develop a satisfactory basis for our attitude toward the natural world. (shrink)