Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1598680 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

Splendid Look at the Modern Synthesis from a Historian
John C. Greene's "Debating Darwin" is a fitting coda to his work on exploring the history of Darwinian evolution and its philosophical, sociological and religious implications. The bulk of this volume is devoted to his splendid correspondence between geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky and ornithologist Ernst Mayr, two of the primary architects of the "Modern Synthesis". Philosophically, Greene's attitudes toward Darwin come closest to Brown University Professor of Biology Kenneth Miller's, especially in the latter's "Finding Darwin's God". This is an important volume for those interested in the history and philosophy of science. I suspect it will be an invaluable resource to those scholars interested in studying the creation of the "Modern Synthesis" and its subsequent history from sociological, philosophical, and, if appropriate, religious contexts.

Philosophist, Biologer...
A fscinating semi-biographical account by the author of The Death of Adam, and Science, Ideology and World View. Many theoretical biologists take umbrage at the suggestion they might actually be philosophers with a hidden metaphysical agenda. John Greene has always attempted eloquently to disabuse the Darwinist of his presumptions in this regard. The history of Darwinism is important to study in order to understand the disguised ideological context in which its fallacies of evolutionary mechanism (amidst its triumphs of evolutionary fact)became fixed rigidly in place. Like a prophecy of the philosopher Kant Darwinism promptly ran afoul of the 'Big Three', divinity, soul, and free will, taking positions that are legitimate as dialectical explorations, if they are hypotheses, but illegitimate if they are taken as rigid axioms, or established foundations.

Can Values Be Derived from Evolutionary Biology
In "Debating Darwin", John C. Greene displays an impressive knowledge of intellectual history in regards to science and evolution's relationship and non-relationship to Western tradition. The format of the book is also impressive for someone who dares to "debate" Darwin. He publishes letters of correspondence with two eminent scientists (Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr). The debates between Green and the two scientists are assertive and friendly. Some of the people who submit reviews to Amazon could learn about civilized debate from these three great men. By their example, we can learn to disagree without becoming disagreeable. Greene's main thesis is: "One would like to feel optimistic about the scientistic mythology that has grown up around the theory of evolution, but it is hard to do so. The myth is intellectually dishonest, employing teleological and vitalistic figures of speech to describe processes that are advertised as "mechanistic" and pretending to derive from evolutionary biology values that stem from classical, Judaeo-Christian, and Enlightenment sources." p. 43. In his book, Mr. Greene defends this viewpoint consistently and brilliantly. Dobzhansky and Mayr give as good as they get, but as Greene is the author, he of course takes the last word. Greene makes some interesting quotes from various scholars such as Balfour and pan-psychist Sewall Wright. One gets the feeling that Greene agrees with Wright that our consciousness is the most knowable of all our experiences and science is a secondary sort of knowledge. It is interesting to speculate as to what Greene would have to say about Daniel C. Dennet. Mr. Greene seems unmoved by Max Ernst's theory of emergence. I assume Mr. Greene would have been equally unimpressed by Dennet's ideas about "cranes". Greene seems to be impressed by the writings of theologian Paul Tillich, which Dennet dismisses as being full of "bombastic recapitulation", and I could only imagine Greene, unconcerned by "sky-hooks", would wonder on what "Ground of Being" the "cranes" rested. At any rate, I can only speculate that Mr. Greene would be unimpressed by "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" Chapters 16 and 17 where Dennet deals with Morality. Greene would probably persist in the idea that no value system could be derived from or accounted by evolutionary theory. More ever, it seems that Greene would be unconvinced that consciousness could be explained from any scientific materialistic and/or mechanistic theory. One could be concerned that Greene seems to ignore the pre-Darwin social contract philosophers (Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke) who seem to anticipate some very materialistic basis for ethics that could be construed as consistent with Darwinism. This is my first book by John C. Greene. I have to give this book 5 stars because it is so educational, clear and decent. By giving this book such a high rating, I am not saying Mr. Greene won the debate. I am saying he has conveyed a great deal of valuable information. He also brought up important issues in evolutionary thought that should lead to a greater clarity as to what evolutionary science is and is not and as to whether evolutionary scientists are illegitimately going beyond science, in the name of science, into realms which belong to philosophy and religion. If you are at all interested in evolution, at least get this book to read Chapter 2, the letters, and the conclusion. John C. Greene is a gentleman,a scholar, and a plausible debater.