Michael Ruse - Are Humans Necessary?
Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hacbohWccdkAlmost all discussions of human nature put us at the top. The Greeks – Plato and Aristotle – did this. The Jews did this. And, for all that they saw us as tainted by original sin, so did the Christians. After all, God was prepared to die on the Cross for our salvation, and he certainly did not do this for warthogs. Then came evolution, with a wholly naturalistic account of human origins. Thanks to Charles Darwin, we now know that Homo sapiens is the end result of a long, slow process of natural selection, brought on by the struggle for existence.
But the central place of humans has continued. Darwin and his contemporaries were convinced that we humans have come out on top, and that view persists to this day. It is true that some, like the late Stephen Jay Gould, have challenged this view, but critics are few and far between, and even Gould was not as strongly against the idea as some of his writings imply.
Can we really be the top dogs, given the Darwinian processes of change – a relativistic natural selection working on random changes, mutations? I review the various proposals for solving this puzzle, and, finding them all wanting, I offer a solution of my own.
NB: My title is a riff on one of the funniest books in the English language, Is Sex Necessary? Or Why You Feel the Way You Do by James Thurber and E. B. White. Even though the connection may be tenuous, the cartoons make it all worthwhile.
MICHAEL RUSE is the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science at Florida State University. He is the author or editor of many books, including The Cambridge Companion to Darwin and Evolution (Cambridge, 2013) and The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet (Chicago, 2013). His next book will be Atheism: Everything One Needs to Know (Oxford, 2014). At moment he is co-writing a book with Robert J. Richards, Debating Darwin: Mechanist or Romantic? Usually in disagreements such as these there is something to be said for both sides; but not in this case.
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Michael Ruse Gaia hypothesis, global warming, religion, science
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLyXMaKvG-MDr. Michael Ruse is an author, Florida State University professor, and philosopher of science who specializes in the philosophy of biology. Ruse spoke about the Gaia hypothesis.
Internationally recognized for his work on Darwin, distinguishing science from non-science and in particular science from pseudoscience, the relationship between science and religion, and the creation-evolution debate, Ruse has drawn attention for his views as a nonbeliever who believes science and religion can actually reconcile.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKD4IJRWEig
Michael Ruse on Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Biology versus Evolutionary Biology, Functionality, his book Taking Darwin Seriously, Darwin and Morality, Darwin in Light of the Extended Synthesis, Creationism and Intelligent Design.
This interview was conducted at the 2013 International Summer School on Evolution which was organized by the Applied Evolutionary Epistemology Lab in collaboration with Ciência Viva, and held at Ciência Viva's Pavilion of Knowledge in Lisbon, Portugal.
More info can be found at:
http://evolutionschool.fc.ul.pt/summer
http://appeel.fc.ul.pt
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