On the website of the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) I read the article Why Darwinism is False by Jonathan Wells. Dr. Wells, a Ph.D. in both microbiology and religious studies, was very critical of both Charles Darwin and Jerry Coyne, who Wells takes no time in bringing into his essay about Darwinism. Wells’ background on the website is described as:
Dr. Wells has published articles in Development, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, BioSystems, The Scientist and The American Biology Teacher. He is also author of Charles Hodge's Critique of Darwinism (Edwin Mellen Press, 1988) and Icons of Evolution: Why much of what we teach about evolution is wrong (Regnery Publishing, 2000). Most recently he is co-author with William Dembski of The Design of Life (FTE, 2008) and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (Regnery, 2006)
Dr. Wells is currently working on a book criticizing the over-emphasis on genes in biology and medicine.
From the looks of this Wells certainly seems determined to prove Darwin wrong and to describe his own feelings on the topic of the creation of modern organisms.
In Prof. Brown and Hendl’s essay, they describe the habitus, which is described as “all of our dispositions to act in particular ways in particular settings,” which come from a person’s particular surroundings and environment. In Wells' example, he has been in an environment and school of thought that supports the thought/theory/etc. that evolution and Darwinism are not true. He, as with all humans, has conformed, at least in some degree, to the signs/signifiers/culturalization/etc. around them.
One major assumption that Wells makes in his essay is that Coyne, and, thus, his arguments and way of thinking, are the same as Darwin’s, as Wells uses his essay to disprove Coyne, for the most part, and not Darwin. Wells may do this for a number of reasons: Wells believes that all those who support evolution, or at least the two men he chooses to describe, believe in Darwinism and all of Darwin’s dated reasoning, evolution is an unquestioned scientific theory that is treated as fact, or Wells’ personal and religious feelings/actions/reactions inside his environment, such as the CSC. Brown and Hendl later say "we may find that views, linguistic styles, our complexes of underlying beliefs find immediate "currency" when we speak them; may be respected and successful. We may also find that they have little 'value' or that they are rejected as 'counterfeit' held intact only by the reception it finds when deployed in the marketplace." This explains why people are arguing over evolution in the first place. For the most part, people can be convinced of anything if the linguistics used to persuade them sound believable enough. He calls this the "rhetoric marketplace", where we can "market" our ideas and try to convince others of the truth behind them. He also says that our "rhetoric is always shaped by our habitus and our sense of the linguistic marketplace".
Lastly in Brown and Hendl describe that the John Birch Society's article was considered more of a "strategic cultural and political move" speaking of the manner that they used for trying to get people to believe their "truth". Both the John Birch Society and the CSC's arguments seem slightly ignorant to me, but it is very obvious that they are trying to attract audiences who don't know much about the topic, therefore will believe almost anything that is well supported.
No comments:
Post a Comment