Re: Ch. 1: Science and Sensibility (A Devil's Chaplain)
Posted: Sun May 08, 2011 7:23 am
Robert Tulip wrote: In The God Delusion Dawkins says (p197), in discussing how genes cooperate, "we have here something more like a free market than a planned economy... The invisible hand of natural selection fills the gap. That is different from having a central planner... the invisible hand will turn out to be central to our understanding of religious memes..."
I'm quite familiar with Hayek, but I think his and other economists' notions of evolutionary adaptation are really just an analogy to biological evolution, and Dawkins' use of "the invisible hand" seems to be analogy to Adam Smith's usage -- he is using it to describe the facts of evolution, including those of memes, not to make a normative claim. I see no logical reason, nor anything from Dawkins, for why an understanding of Darwinian evolution would preclude an argument for economic central planning (even though I think those economic arguments fail). I still think you're reading claims into Dawkins that aren't there -- I don't see him making any normative claims resulting from Darwinism, and he explicitly states his "anti-Darwinian" views.Robert Tulip wrote:Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Hayek used this Darwinian philosophy as the basis for his neoliberal thought, arguing that in society as in nature, a free market where individuals seek their own advantage will produce a superior outcome compared to a society where the state seeks to plan centrally...
Hayek observes that law that builds on precedent is evolutionary in nature, and suggests that all economic theory should seek to be evolutionary. In courts as in nature, law works through the evolutionary principle of cumulative adaptation.
I think you're reading Dawkins uncharitably here, I don't see how he would disagree with your observation that the universe and Earth in particular is hospitable to life and that this is quite fortunate for us -- he's talking about the struggle for survival among organisms, given these background conditions.Robert Tulip wrote:Dawkins quotes TH Huxley:
Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.
I disagree entirely with this claim. The idea that the cosmic process is hostile to life is refuted by the existence of life on earth.