Nature as Historical and Evolutionary

Nature as Historical, and Evolutionary

The Hyper-Focus on Evolution in Defending Modern Sci-ence

Today the theory of evolution, which is primarily viewed as a

matter of understanding the mechanics of evolution, since out-

side those with either a childish view of reality or a political

agenda evolution is viewed as simply an observable fact, is domi-

nated by the converged theories commonly referred to as

Neo-Darwinism.

The real argument is not the straw man argument of simplistic

atheists whose only means of argument is to oppose the ignorant

and childish views of a minority of the religious, and the corre-

sponding argument of the ignorant and childish which ignores

obvious observable reality. The more complex and interesting ar-

gument concerns a mechanics of evolution based on purely ran-

dom causality versus mainstream creation theories that origi-

nated as an attempt to supplement evolutionary mechanisms

with both a telic causality and an addendum to the mechanics of

much older evolutionary theories. The commonality between

both arguments, and the reason they are so easily confused by

the non-scientific public, stems from the hyper-focus in both

cases on evolutionary theory itself. Mainstream creation theories

largely are in alignment with Heisenberg’s statement on science

in general: “The first taste of the natural sciences will make you

an atheist, but God is waiting for you at the bottom of the glass.”

This isn’t a defense of creation theory, but rather a look at the

reasons underlying the hyper-focus on one scientific theory by

both sides. Lewontin has already dealt with the first argument

in terms of a political use of the childish views of certain sects of

Christianity to battle one of the last areas of states’ right in the

U.S., that of the states’ right to oversee education. As a result I

will focus on the second argument, that which takes place at a

much more complex level of argument between actual scientists,

of whom Lewontin himself is a reasonable example, and actual

theologians and scientists who see the same problems with

Neo-Darwinism as with old evolutionary theories whose limita-

tions led to the creationism of the Neo-Platonists, and see no new

solutions to those issues.

On the latter side, the focus on evolutionary theory comes out

of specific problems with Neo-Darwinist theory. On the former,

the focus arises both from a distaste for theological solutions to

scientific problems, and an underlying unease with Neo-Darwin-

ism as a solution that renders the theological addenda irrelevant.

A large part of the issue with Neo-Darwinism lies in its abroga-

tion of two of the fundamental insights of Darwin himself, in-

sights not available to the originators of evolutionary theory prior

to the theological addenda begun by the Neo-Platonists.

The first problem concerns the fact that Darwin’s idea of natu-

ral selection only deals with one of the two moments of evolution.

The second concerns the cause of evolution itself. Neo-Darwin-

ism ignores the first moment of the two which Darwin specifically

stated could not be explained by natural selection due to its issue

with the second, since the mechanistic assumptions on which it

is based does not allow for telic causality in any sense.

The two moments of evolution, well expressed by Bernard Lon-

ergan in the book Insight, concern the following:

1. The likelihood of specific schemes of recurrence actually oc-

curring, a phrase that covers the recurrence of examples of a

specific species and the likelihood of greater complexity arising

as those species change, and the recurrence of specific environ-

mental conditions.

2. The survivability of examples of schemes of recurrence as

specific species, which is largely dependent on the recurrence of

specific environmental conditions.

Natural selection is paramount only in the second of these two

moments. Rather than being a driver of evolution, it acts primar-

ily as a brake on the development of species into more complex

forms.

The difficulty for the Neo-Darwinists arises in finding any rea-

son for the historical increase in the complexity of species given

the relative success in terms of survivability of simpler forms of

life when compared with the more complex forms. Darwin him-

self was familiar with the most advanced currents in philosophy

of his time, in particular the ideas of Hegel in terms of historical

development and the mechanics of telic causality, and combined

with his religious upbringing saw no difficulty in a practical

sense in accounting for the mechanics of the historical increase

in complexity, but not the difficulty the Neo-Darwinists have in

accepting either nature as a historical development or the exis-

tence of telic causality itself. As a result, aside from stating in

the introduction that the development of new species could not

be a matter of chance or happenstance, he focused on the second

moment – the mechanics of survivability of specific species under

changing environmental conditions.

Darwin’s studies and resulting theories represented a major

advance in comparative zoology, made possible by technical ad-

vances in the ability to travel and therefore accomplish compara-

tive zoology on a larger and more varied scale, and represented

an advance, largely accomplished in the practical sense by others

but figuring largely in his theories, in terms of paleontology as a

means of dramatically extending the knowledge of the historical

aspect of nature. At the same time Darwin’s theories accom-

plished a leap back to the original ideas on evolution as a com-

plex interplay of telos and happenstance that over a historical pe-

riod led naturally to species admirably adapted to their environ-

ment. Natural selection provided a mechanics for the happen-

stance that is largely responsible for the survivability of existent

and new species, however it has no bearing on the telic causality,

which Darwin himself felt was too complex a topic to tackle at

the time of his writing.

The Neo-Platonists’ issue in terms of telic causality arose from

the development of the idea of a creator being initially by the

Stoics, and was simultaneously answered by the nature of the

creator being in question. If reality had a beginning intentional

telic causality was necessary to account for nature as natural his-

tory and the resulting need to account for the increase in the

complexity of life forms over a limited period. For Empedocles

the past was limitless, which was simply an assumption common

to his society. For later thinkers, in particular Aristotle, the tem-

poral infinity of the universe was a logical deduction based on

the notion that any beginning to the universe would create a situ-

ation of an infinite regression in terms of the cause of such a be-

ginning. The development of theories such as the Big Bang the-

ory of reality’s origin doesn’t fundamentally address the problem,

because the singularity at the beginning in fact replicates the

features of the creator being except for the intentionality of the

creator being, and the problematic issue that the singularity, as

no longer being, must be temporally tensed, and must therefore

itself have a cause. As a result the theory still prevalent of the

beginning of the universe complicates the situation for evolution-

ary theory, because the historical increase in complexity cannot

be accounted for by an intentional telic causality arising from the

intentionality of the creator being itself.

Evolution, then is neither a fact nor a theory, but the descrip-

tion of nature viewed as natural history. When nature is looked

at historically, even within the history of man, but more conclu-

sively when geological history is brought into play, it appears as

evolutionary. This history is determined by a complex interplay

of creativity and destruction, Self-organization and entropy,

Self-optimization and the limiting factors of the environment and

resulting natural selection. The renormalization of Darwin’s vi-

sion of natural history with the invalid assumptions of mechanis-

tic determinism, far from obviating creationism, render it neces-

sary in order to account for the deficiencies in applying their ex-

planation to the actual historical record of nature., as it was orig-

inally a necessary complement to the early evolutionary ideas in

order to account for the observed evidence.

Darwin’s full vision of natural history as evolutionary, however,

does not have the deficiencies present in either the original no-

tions of evolution nor the renormalization of Neo-Darwinism, and

as a result requires no complementary creationism to account for

nature’s historical development as evolutionary.

The Problems with Converged or Neo-Darwinist Ideas

Following on the notion of Darwin's ideas as a historical ac-

count of nature, in which, evidentially, nature presents itself as

historically evolutionary, we need to look more closely at what

this means in terms of the inadequacy of the most commonly ac-

cepted theories of nature as historical, usually inaccurately re-

ferred to as “theories of evolution”.

Neo-Darwinism and its variants purport to be a more concrete

extension of Darwin's ideas, expressed principally in On the Ori-

gin of Species. Darwin's ideas were an attempt, if only partial, to

look at the history of nature, to view nature as historical in pre-

cisely the meaning Hegel gave that term. Hegel's definition of

history as the “history of Spirit” doesn't initially give us much as-

sistance in seeing how Darwin applied the idea to nature, which

is generally viewed as precisely the opposite of anything “spiri-

tual”.

Evidentially, given not only the array of examples in Darwin's

own work but in the work of many brilliant researchers since,

from de Chardin to Lewontin, when nature is viewed historically

it appears as an evolutionary history. The question then arises as

to what makes a given history, the history of nature as we know

it in this case, an evolutionary history, rather than just a sequen-

tial listing of events and changes.

We can distinguish quite readily an evolutionary change from

a non-evolutionary change, as well as from a devolutionary

change. We also distinguish fairly easily between evolutionary

change and revolutionary change. Since evidentially the history

of nature has been predominantly evolutionary (although re-

search since Darwin has demonstrated revolutionary aspects to

the history of nature at different times – referred to in the litera-

ture often as 'punctuations') any theory that attempts to under-

stand the history of nature has to be able to distinguish between

these types of change, and provide sufficient reason for the pre-

dominance of evolutionary change, punctuated by revolutionary

change and occasionally halted and redirected by devolutionary

disaster.

Darwin is, of course, known for the idea of natural selection.

However Darwin himself did not feel comfortable with the focus

given to the idea, since on its own it doesn't provide sufficient

reason for what the evidence available to him, presented as a

steady evolutionary trend in the changes involved in nature

throughout its history. While not proposing another mechanism

himself, he does note in the introduction to On the Origin of

Species that whatever that mechanism might be it

Naturalists continually refer to external conditions, such as climate, food, etc., as the only possible cause of variation. In one very limited sense, as we shall hereafter see , this may be true; but it is pre-posterous to attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance, of the woodpecker , withits feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees. In the case of the misseltoe, which draws its nourish-ment from certain trees, which has seeds that must be transported by certain birds, and which has flow-ers with separate sexes absolutely requiring the agency of certain insects to bring pollen from one flower to the other.

Darwin, Charles (2012-05-16). On the origin of species (p. 3). . Kindle Edition.

In criticizing the “naturalists” of his time, Darwin indirectly

levels a serious criticism at the Neo-Darwinists, mechanistic ge-

neticists, and other “convergence” theorists that believe they are

extending his work. Random change, by virtue of its being ran-

dom, cannot distinguish between evolutionary, revolutionary,

non-evolutionary and devolutionary change. While Darwin does

make the claim that natural selection is the “main” arbiter that

ensures change will, overall, operate in an evolutionary manner,

thus matching the evidence at his disposal, he does not claim

that it is the only agent of evolutionary change.

Going beyond Darwin, we have not only to provide a theory

that fully accounts for change that can be described as evolution-

ary, we have to account for the 'punctuations', revolutionary

changes that do not fit well with the slow, steady model of

change originally envisioned. As well, the theory of the history of

nature must provide a stronger accounting for an overall evolu-

tionary style of change capable of overcoming the devolutionary

disasters we have since discovered in the evidential record.

What, then, do we mean by evolutionary (and revolutionary as

a more sudden form of the former) versus non-evolutionary or

devolutionary change? We see nature's historical record as evo-

lutionary because we see evidence of a progression in terms of

diversity and complexity within nature. As Darwin noted there is

a fundamental difficulty in understanding

… how a simple being or a simple organ can be changed and perfected into a highly developed be-ing or elaborately constructed organ;

Darwin, Charles (2012-05-16). On the origin of species (p. 5). . Kindle Edition.

This difficulty obviously doesn't lessen when the requirement

of understanding how revolutionary increases in diversity and

complexity could occur, as they appear to have done relatively of-

ten in the geological record.

Diversity, while perhaps difficult to account for, is at least eas-

ier to initially understand than complexity. Natural selection, for

its part, has nothing to say on the latter. Complexity, as far as all

the evidence we have available, in and of itself shows no intrinsic

advantage in terms of survivability. When we add in the likeli-

hood of any particular scheme recurring, complexity inherently

makes chance recurrence less likely, while making intentional re-

currence (in the widest sense of intentionality) intrinsically more

difficult and costly in terms of energy utilization. The law of en-

tropy throws a further difficulty in the way, in that evolutionary

change appears to occur in spite of a necessary general tendency

towards simpler forms of organization with lower inherent en-

ergy requirements to maintain that form. Neo-Darwinism pairs

random genetic mutation as the driving force behind change,

with natural selection as the arbiter guaranteeing that change

overall will be evolutionary, but in practice random genetic muta-

tion doesn't occur often enough for sufficient favourable muta-

tions to occur, and thus doesn't provide a sufficient base from

which natural selection could select only the more favourable

mutations. While it's certainly true that mutations do occur, and

it's also perfectly possible that natural selection could ensure

that a favourable mutation survives, in general mutations are not

favourable, and while natural selection does, definitely, de-select

these changes from proliferating, the overall negativity of its ef-

fect makes it sufficiently unsuitable as a means of increasing di-

versity and complexity.

We also know far more about natural selection as a mechanism

than Darwin could have, in that it is both far more efficient than

he anticipated in a stable environment, where a given species

will reach its optimal configuration within three to four genera-

tions, and simultaneously radically inefficient in a rugged envi-

ronment, where no observable improvement can be expected in

an infinite number of generations. Given that the majority of en-

vironments where life is observed are sufficiently rugged to make

natural selection ineffective in distinguishing advantageous traits

from disadvantageous ones it's place as the main arbiter of

change is rendered at least highly questionable. At the same

time the much higher than anticipated efficiency in stable envi-

ronments renders it doubly problematic, since the diversity ob-

served in stable environments is magnitudes greater than should

be expected.

The reasonableness, then, of the converged Neo-Darwinist the-

ories only survives when natural history is looked at as a just-so

story. When the combination of random genetic mutations and

natural selection is applied predictively to a relatively stable en-

vironment, it would predict a much lower amount of diversity

than is actually observed. When it is applied to a more rugged

environment, the increase in adaptive traits is much higher than

would be predicted. Neo-Darwinist mechanisms do provide a

handy account of how unfavourable changes are prevented from

proliferating, but the overall predictive picture that emerges is

one of a general lowering of diversity and complexity over time,

which of course is in keeping with the mechanics of physics ex-

pressed in the law of entropy itself. Since this does not account

for the evidential history of nature, it does not suffice as a theory

of that history.

As I remarked earlier, complexity itself remains a problem, one

more difficult initially to fully understand than diversity. Why

there should be a steady tendency towards its increase, whether

in natural history or human history, remains a mystery as far as

mechanistic scientific accounts purport to explain the world as

we experience it. Diversity has obvious advantages in terms of

survivability both within a species and in terms of life itself.

Complexity, however, displays no obvious advantages in either re-

producibility or survivability, in fact it appears positively detri-

mental to both in the majority of cases.

Further, what complexity itself consists in is not well under-

stood. While it may be obvious in concrete instances which of

two systems is the more complex, defining precisely what makes

one system generally more complex than another is a less obvi-

ous task. Simple calculations such as size, number of parts, even

number of obvious relations, all fail radically when analyzing dif-

ferent types of systems, yet generally we intuitively understand

which of two systems is more complex (assuming a reasonable

basic understanding of both systems).

If we take living systems as examples, we could for instance

draw up a list of living systems of varying complexity:

• dog

• worm

• tree

• mouse

• sponge

• bacterium

It would be relatively easy, given a general knowledge of each

of these, to put them in order of complexity, while there might be

questions on certain of the examples (is a worm more or less

complex than a tree?) for the most part the ordering is fairly ob-

vious:

1. bacterium

2. sponge

3. worm

4. tree

5. mouse

6. dog

(It's my view that those who would put worm after tree are in-

trinsically biased in favour of animal life as inherently more com-

plex than plant life, which I have decided against in this case

since trees not only appear more structurally complex, in many

cases they display complex behaviour that many people don't as-

sociate with plants)

The question is, then, how did I quickly arrive at that particu-

lar ordering, and with one possible exception, why would the ma-

jority of readers agree with me with little to no hesitation? How

do we recognize more complex (living) systems almost without

thinking about it?

If we take two examples that, at least to an untrained eye, ap-

pear to be similarly complex in terms of number of parts and re-

lations, for instance the mouse and the tree, on what do we base

our intuition that the mouse is the more complex system? There

was a hint in the ellipsis above: we tend to view complexity as ei-

ther structural or behavioural. While the tree demonstrates a

high degree of structural complexity, we might initially say that it

doesn't display the behavioural complexity of the mouse. Even

this differentiation proves to be simplistic, however. While the

organs of the mouse are certainly more complex in their activi-

ties than the leaves or trunk of the tree, much of what we ascribe

as the behaviour of the mouse as a mouse, rather than as a col-

lection of more or less complex parts, involves not only its indi-

vidual behaviour but its behaviour as part of a group of mice with

which it lives and interacts. While trees also tend to be found in

groups and interact to a certain degree, the extent of and sense

to their interactions doesn't compare to that of a group of mice.

Complexity, then, isn't restricted to an individual system any

more than a subsystem of that system, and by the same logic is

not combined to a single group within a species, or a single

species, but to the complexity of all the interaction between all

the species. Darwin's vision of the evolutionary nature of the his-

tory of nature was a vision of nature as a whole. Only as nature

itself as a system gains in diversity and complexity do subgroups

and individuals gain in degrees of freedom, which is the funda-

mental manner in which we judge complexity. Insects, for in-

stance, have degrees of freedom in the way they interact that

sponges do not. Dogs have magnitudes greater degrees of free-

dom than insects in their social interactions, arising from the

complexity of having a world, even if in the main that is a semi-

otic, and not a linguistic world. Human beings have evolved the

means of evolution itself, where evolution is primarily a societal

rather than a biological matter, precisely supplementing natural

history with history proper. The rate at which the interplay in

human societies has increased outstrips that of natural history by

further magnitudes, and each increase in social complexity re-

sults in the potential for an increase in individual complexity, for

instance from mythical being to metaphysical being and beyond,

which in turn increases the possibility of gains in social complex-

ity.

The main failure of Neo-Darwinism is analogous to the failure

of social Darwinism, in that the focus on the individual, or the in-

dividual species / genus / people / nation, forgets the interplay

which allows any given individual or group to grow in complexity,

and the increase in diversity which allows that growth in interac-

tivity and sustains it. The history of nature as evolutionary is not

the history of the preeminence of any one species, but the in-

creasing diversity and complexity of nature as a whole made pos-

sible by the development of more complex species and individu-

als, which in turn makes the development of more complex

species and individuals possible. Thus any theory of natural his-

tory as evolutionary must be a dialectical theory – one that not

only handles seeming contradictory tendencies (e.g. development

of selfishness and altruism) but sees the interplay of these con-

tradictions as necessary to the development of either.

The final problems a theory of natural history must confront

are:

1. the problem of the seemingly inevitable tendency towards

such increase in complexity, which is not obviated by the

record of dramatic devolutionary catastrophes in the histori-

cal record, but in fact made stronger by them, in that natu-

ral history has remained evolutionary on the whole despite

such massive catastrophes

2. how an individual or species can posit itself as such, indeed

must do so, retroactively, in order to come into existence at

all. Simplistic linear cause and effect does not suffice for

this, but without it we have no conception of the necessary

ability of beings to found the (local and temporary) abroga-

tion of the law of entropy by becoming increasingly complex

and raising the local energy levels.

Glynn / Horizons of Identity / 21

The Problems with Genetic Accommodation Theory

The theory of Genetic Accommodation, as expounded most

fully by Mary Jane West-Eberhard, is a tidy way of understanding

how a priori phenotypical changes become embedded in the

genome. For the sake of brevity and simplicity of understanding

I will quote the following succinct expression of the theory by

David Dobbs:

Genetic accommodation involves a three-step process.

First, an organism (or a bunch of organisms, a pop-ulation) changes its functional form — its phenotype— by making broad changes in gene expression. Second, a gene emerges that happens to help lock in that change in phenotype. Third, the gene spreads through the population.

Die, selfish gene, die

David Dobbs

While this is a seemingly natural way of understanding how a

phenotype’s reinterpretation of a gene is ‘written back’ into the


genome, the questions arise as to whether it a) really makes

sense, b) is at all likely and c) matches the available evidence.

The answer to all three, when the theory is thought through

sufficiently, is no.

In terms of whether the theory really makes sense, we need to

consider the following:

1. In the generations that follow the initial reinterpretation

of the gene, the phenotype has to remain as it was in the ini-

tial reinterpretation, awaiting a genetic mutation that hap-

pens to be useful to replicate the phenotypical change. No

means for this to occur is proposed in the model.

2. While the initial phenotypical change occurs through a

‘re-reading’ or reinterpretation of an existing gene, once the

proposed genetic mutation occurs, the new gene is read liter-

ally, and this is assumed to be more efficient at creating a sim-

ilar phenotype. In fact the theory requires that the new gene

produce a better phenotype than the initial reinterpretation

could.

The problems are compounded when the likelihood of the

above, and the other implications of the theory, are assessed:


1. The likelihood of an appropriate mutation occurring soon

after a given phenotypical change approximates the likelihood

of an appropriate mutation that is phenotypically advanta-

geous in standard converged evolutionary theory. That is,

phenomenally unlikely, which is the major logical objection to

converged theory.

2. The likelihood that the mutated gene somehow produces

a better adaptation than the initial reinterpretation, given

that the former is random and the latter environmentally

aware, is even lower than the case in (1.).

Lastly we need to assess whether the theory matches the

available evidence, again we run into significant problems:

The theory arose firstly in order to understand the identically

of the genomes of various wasp phenotypes, and the identically

of the genome in the very different phenotypes known as the

grasshopper and locust, the latter pair being able to reinterpret

the genome on the fly and change back and forth from one phe-

notype to another; secondly to understand the lack of significant

enough difference between the genomes of fundamentally differ-

ent species.


1. Since the genome is both of these cases is identical, the

assumption that the gene needs to somehow exist in the

genome is not always true.

2. The theory fails to account for the lack of sufficient dif-

ference in genomes between radically different species, since

were the majority of phenotypical changes ‘written back’ into

the genome, the genomes would be nearly as different as con-

verged theory would predict.

The question then arises as to why we need the second and

third parts of the theory, since the problems mentioned can be

adequately accounted for simply by the first part, i.e. that the

genome is interpreted differently depending on the environment

in a dynamic fashion. Other than maintaining the assumption of

some importance to the actual composition of the genome, it ap-

pears that the second and third parts are superfluous. It seems

unlikely, though, that decades of research that include the identi-

fication of some causally determinative genes, at least in similar

environments, has absolutely no relevance to genetic or evolu-

tionary theory. There is also the evidential issue that different

species do have different genomes, in fact the determination of a


species as unique is via the fact that two life forms with suffi-

ciently differing genomes can no longer effectively reproduce.

The answers to the latter two questions, although having fun-

damentally different assumptions than either converged theory

or genetic accommodation theory, are actually rather obvious in

terms of the requirements and available evidence.

We have evidence that organisms can and in fact do rewrite

the genome, at least temporarily, in the immune system. How-

ever immune system genome changes do not replicate between

generations. Given that the ability exists, though, and simultane-

ously is unnecessary for a large variety of phenotypical changes,

it’s unsurprising that we have no direct evidence of a rewritten

genome being passed on generationally. It simply isn’t required

often enough for us to have direct evidence of it.

Whether or not it is required (or at all advantageous) appears

to be dependent, evidentially, on whether the available variety in

the genome, without sacrificing reproducibility with others of the

species, is sufficient to maintain the phenotypical changes via

consistent reinterpretation. If the phenotypical changes require

more than reinterpretation for the phenotypical changes to reli-


ably ‘stick’ generationally, the ability to reproduce is sacrificed in

order to persist the genotypical changes that initially differenti-

ate species. Of course, this is inherently a difficult and risky

proposition, because it depends on a combination of genotypical

changes that sufficiently differentiate a species arising from

rewritten genes merged from two parents who could reproduce

with the origin species. These parents are not species differenti-

ated, but in combination their offspring may be. Precisely at this

point natural selection intervenes, acting as a brake on the sur-

vival of ineffective combinations, since there is a good chance

these offspring are sterile and cannot reproduce, and a good

chance that the merged, rewritten genomes do not produce a vi-

able new species.

This also answers another issue with standard converged evo-

lutionary theory that is not addressed by genetic accommoda-

tion: that the already low probability of any given genetic muta-

tion leading to an evolutionary advantage is rendered dramati-

cally lower in the case of a new species, since the number and

variety of available reproductive mates is reduced initially to off-

spring of the same parents. This disadvantage is generally


avoided, which helps to understand why immune system varia-

tions are generally not inherited - the advantages conferred are

for the most part overridden by the disadvantages. Only where a

sufficiently significant advantage is conferred do the parents re-

write their genomes, and only where mating results in a signifi-

cantly more viable species does the changed genome have suffi-

cient survivability to overcome the reproductive disadvantages.

While it seems simple common sense that causality works bot-

tom-up and forward temporally (past creates present) this 'com-

mon sense' became common based on a particular prevalent be-

lief-system or ideology. For Aristotle, the telic cause, i.e. the

goal, was the principle cause, since the other causes could be re-

placed with entirely different ones, yet accomplish the same re-

sult. However for this to be the case the cause has to posit the

effect top-down and retroactively. This became unthinkable to

common sense when phusis, or self-origination, was replaced by

techne, or production, as the mode of origin of all beings. Con-

verged and Neo-Darwinist theory, and the various modifications

of them that attempt to overcome the issues noted in the past

few chapters, fail for the most ironic reason imaginable. As tech-


nical, mechanistic understandings, they are fatefully embedded

in a perspective on reality that has its basis and justification in a

creationist worldview. This can be easily demonstrated in the

history of science itself, from the abandonment of telic causality

made possible in the first place by theologians such as William

of Occam, who not only maintained the creationist notions of

common Christians that predated him, but re-posited the god of

that creation as an engineer that would obviously accomplish ev-

erything in the most efficient, simplest manner possible. Simul-

taneously, Occam and others posited all meaning as supernatu-

ral, the things of this world were precisely meaningless, hence

nominalist. This nominalism provided the theoretical framework

by which science could treat 'things' as meaningless objects,

which could be fully determined mathematically, and of course if

the other part of the theological change, that all meaning ad-

heres only in god, were simply dropped or forgotten, the result is

the meaningless reality of modern science.

Nature as Historical and Evolutionary

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