“What is well known in general, exactly because it is well known, is not known.”
G. W. F. Hegel, “Preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit”
“Defects of empirical knowledge have less to do with the ways we go wrong in philosophy than defects of character do; such as the simple inability to shut up; determination to be thought deep; hunger for power; fear, especially the fear of an indifferent universe”
David Stove, “The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies”
The historical development of modern science carries with it several philosophical underpinnings that while common, often pass unnoticed by becoming parts of a “social cliche”.
The recent Creationist Agenda managed to bring about one such issue which is commonly referred among professional philosophers with the pompous name of the “Three Major Cosmological Indignations of Mankind”
These are attributed to the three major revolutions, the Copernican, the Darwinian and the Freudian. All share a common attribute consisting in a decentralization of the human kind with respect to the rest of the Universe. Although the last may be in doubt due to more recent neurological evidence, it is the second one that presents the most interesting evidence of a self-contradictory attribute in it’s very name by which it became known to a general audience’.
Despite the core of Darwinian teaching, we still prefer to use the term “Evolution”. In doing this, we preserve a place for us in the upper parts of a tree-like diagram of species variation. Implicitly, we enjoy a special place on the upper leaves of that tree for our own intelligence and scientific understanding.
However, one should be reminded that a “tree” structure is in itself an abstract construct that only shows variation. The true nature of the so called evolutionary record is in fact the mere and raw prevalence of one specimen to another.
It is perhaps by a sheer luck that the lack of contact with any possible alien race allows us to show such arrogance by putting ourselves on the top leaves and considering our own science as the best of anything achievable. But just think of a species able to sense all the acoustic and electromagnetic spectrum, what need would it have of all our precious and expensive equipment!
[Ed. Indeed, the Mantis Shrimp is a crustacean found in waters of Thailand with extreme perceptual powers from ultraviolet through infra-red]
Consider also the case where all the massive ingenuity and trickery of nature would have been concentrated on another species like the “Alien” in Scott Ridley’s film, not requiring anything more than its own reflexive power to face all our defenses. If ever on Earth it would have wiped us all out in months if not days!
We are flattered enough by still thinking of ourselves as the culmination of natural history, a kind of self-prize and yet we show no true evidence of such a progress when the issue of social relationships comes about, even in Academia.
There, the same old natural attitude abounds and that is “pre-eminence”.