1. INTRODUCTION
|
|
||
|
|
||
| 1.2.3 The Oedipus Paradox | ||||
|
Science in its current form claims an objectivity of
social theory that is illusory. Theories are clumsy instruments in the social
sciences. We are so conditioned to the triumphs of physics, and the claims for
its extension into all fields that we fail to realize what a muddle the whole
thing is. A theory as potentially violent as Physical laws are statements about carefully defined massive objects. Evolutionary generalizations are about organisms, and the character of these entities is never systematically defined, or observed, and their character changes over time. The generalization by natural selection, apparently, stretches from the beginning of life, to the emergence of man, and therefore to man’s present, and, evidently his future, since, by definition, that is the nature of a ‘law’. Let us note the flood of fallacies that emerge here. All of these organisms show a distinct increase in their degrees of freedom (which may mean no more than the evolution of locomotion) with time, and with man this seems to cross a threshold where an ‘active will’ (which need not be ‘free will’) can select a set of options, no doubt still within the grip of physical law, that will alter or simply create the future. The extraordinary question arises here: what if he adopts a ‘theory about natural selection’ as the basis of his action?! Or even the option to negate this theory! Note the contradiction. A ‘law’ should operate at all times without choice from an observer. But man, having evolved a higher degree of freedom, could choose to consciously mimic what he thought the ‘law’ of natural selection, taking this as grounds for the abandonment of other factors in his decision, including ethical restraints. Since natural selection naturally suggests competition and conflict, he puts a premium on such conflict, with, to make matters worse, a spurious teleological expectation about the ‘future value’ of such conflict, as opposed to ethical restraint. What has gone wrong here? Clearly in a passive organism
without an active will, an ‘evolutionary law’ might apply, but in an organism
with an active will, and mind, the idea of the theory becomes a thinkable idea
that can influence action, and this will turn into a possibly confused bogus
form of mental software: I should act according to ‘law’. The obvious answer is
that ‘evolutionary laws’ don’t exist in the sense of ‘physical laws’! We need a
new kind of ‘theory’ for evolution, one that can define its domain of
application, the type of organism it refers to, specify the temporal coordinates
of the observer and creator of a theory, and be so specified that it
will apply only to the observer’s past,
and never his present or future, since he always has option to ‘do otherwise’,
contradict, or falsify that ‘law’. For this and many other reasons, we must
suspect that Some new kind of evolution has appeared long ago to produce mind, an active will, and, indeed, science itself. Man has, all along, passed through an ‘evolutionary process’ of some other kind that ‘evolves’ his potential to act, and act ethically. It is hard to see how natural selection could ever foot the bill here. And any generalization must take into account the ‘turning point’ after which future of prediction by ‘law’ is voided. Theories with temporal domains, and referring only to the past of the theorist/observer are not contradictory, and we will attempt to produce one for the so-called eonic effect, and its distinct species of ‘evolution’. We must produce a theory about the ‘evolution of freedom’. We will use the term ‘Oedipus Paradox’ for this phenomenon of theories. This ‘Oedipus Paradox’, a term from Karl Popper , is a sign of an improperly constructed theory, and will be discussed further in Chapter Four. It arises from the failure to define the boundary of history (the chronicle of the ‘will to act’), and evolution (the emergence of passive organisms). In some embarrassment we wake up to the way in which the visible surface of ‘jungle life’ and the spectacle of natural selection has hoodwinked us into a false generalization about evolution. Resolving the
Oedipus Paradox As we discover the eonic
effect, we will see this problem resolved by creating a new kind of historical
model that unites in tandem the definitions of ‘evolution and history’, the one
emerging from the other. ‘Evolution’ is always seen looking backwards, and never
applies directly to the free potential of the present, and the agent acting out
history. In the interaction of these two we see the direct appearance of ethical
evolution/behavior, induced and ‘free’, or on the way to being free, its
evolution and self-evolution (i.e. history) connected yet separate. It’s pretty
obvious, with this new model, an ethical override arrives to induce a ‘should’
about murder and botched theories with their inducements of mayhem. The Old Testament There could hardly a more dramatic example of the intersection of macroevolution and history, generating ethical protocols, than the Old Testament. We must keep in mind, however, the primitive nature of this early instance, and the way in which the document itself is a record only of the ‘history’ aspect of our unified ‘evolution/history’ process, and this kicks up all the dust of mythological thinking. We are ‘evolving’ past this archaelogical monument. A catch for any theory If we adopt this approach we must, to produce a theory of evolution, produce a deduction of the system of ethics to go with it in any account of ‘evolution and ethics’. The Old Testament is already ancient history in this regard. How then do we pass judgment on the cunning and cynical Darwinians indifferent to murder in the name of ‘value-free theory’? The attempts of Kant to derive freedom and the categorical imperative in conjunction, are also, as we will see, eonic in their emergence, as an upgrade, however incomplete, to this question. The simplest answer is that we are unable to produce a ‘theory’ of evolution without a deduction of ethical judgment. We are allowed, however, an intelligent ‘cop out’ with an ‘if’: if our evolution is thus incomplete, and the true birth of history an unrealized potential in a field of rogue Darwinian ‘theorists’, cunning enough to use science glamor and pseudo-theories for their dark purposes. |
||||