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Sto caricando le informazioni... Evolution and Ethicsdi Thomas Henry Huxley
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Some Victorians were really into the idea of a society run along evolutionary lines, and this is easy to criticize-- especially if that Victorian is Herbert Spencer-- but Thomas Henry Huxley laid out a more nuanced than most. To Huxley's credit is that though he wants science applied to human life (laid out more fully in his earlier essay "Science & Culture"), he doesn't appeal to "nature" as some kind of obvious model for human behavior. Rather he recognizes that things are more complicated than that; for example, in his declaration that "the 'points' of a good or bad citizen are really far harder to discern than those of a puppy or a short-horn calf" (23). And unlike Francis Galton, he doesn't believe in getting rid of the "unfit," because all humans have been unfit at some point! Huxley says that the very idea that humanity is evolving to perfection is a misleading illusion; even though evolution by natural selection is not teleological, a lot of people-- including actual evolutionary biologists!-- seem to often forget that and assume some kind of endgame. (Just today, actually, I was listening to an excellent Radiolab episode about an organism that challenges our typical teleological thinking in evolution.) Huxley's essay provides a nice warning against the legitimately dangerous kinds of eugenics thinking that would come in the early 20th century. It's no wonder that his student, H. G. Wells, published a number of novels that resisted evolutionary ethical justifications, most notably The War of the Worlds; it's also quite a shame that more people didn't listen to Huxley, and instead listened to hateful people like Galton. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
In 1893, the biologist and educator Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) published the text of a public lecture on ethics and evolutionary theory. He opens Evolution and Ethics with the story of Jack and the Bean Stalk as a metaphor for cyclical evolution--the small seed that becomes a mature plant. Huxley then takes the reader on a journey through two culturally different belief systems Buddhism and Greek intellectual thought -- to illustrate human attempts to understand the 'cosmic process'. Huxley outlines the growth of differing concepts of justice as populations became more organised, and how different societies dealt with the knowledge that nature is unjust. Huxley abhors the harsh applications of Darwin's work to society and decries the 'gladiatorial theory of existence'. Arguing against the concept of social Darwinism, Huxley proposes that ethical behaviour must counteract the painful effects of the 'struggle for survival' in order for society to progress. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)171.7Philosophy and Psychology Ethics Theories of Ethics Evolutionary or educationalClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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