Talk:Evolution (philosophy)

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I don't understand why this is "Evolution(philosophy)." Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was a minerologist and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a paleontologist and theologian. I have no objection to an article that atarts with their theories, but it is misleading and I think simply inaccurate to label this article "philosophy." I don't think that any philosophy department in the US would start with or focus on the people in this article in any course on evolution. I have heard philosophers lecture on evolution and they have always started with and worked within a Darwinian pramework, not making any reference at all to Vernadsky or Chardin or any of their ideas. I imagine it is the same in the UK but hope someone who is familiar with philosophy in the UK would confirm this. Again, I have no objection to an article on these idea. But it seems very wrong to lable this under "philosophy." Why isn't this part of the Evolution article? Slrubenstein | Talk 14:59, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, the article on Teilhard calls him a philosopher. If the difference between philosophy and theology is that theology talks about God and philosophy talks about the world, then Teilhard was clearly both. The most important evolutionary philosophers are the German Idealists: Hegel, Fichte, Schelling. They wrote before the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Teilhard and Aurobindo, both post-Darwin, were influenced by German Idealism, but mainstream Anglo academic philosophy reacted against Idealism.

The disambig page for evolution acknowledges that there are lots of different kinds of theories about evolution. The evolution article is about biological evolution, whereas this article is more about speculative cosmology a la Hegel. But I don't agree that this article is not about philosophy merely because its subjects are not philosophy professors. --goethean ॐ 15:43, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Your point about Hegel Fichte and Schelling makes sense. I do not know enough about them to add anything to the article. Do you? I think you are mentioning important names, and the article would be much stronger with some discussion of them. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:56, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes there should definitely be a discussion of German Idealism here. I will work on that as well as considering more philosophers to include in this article, like Aristotle.

Interestingly, the entry on evolution in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is actually about Darwinism. --goethean ॐ 16:08, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

There's not much said about evolution by philosophers qua philosophers (Aristotle, for example, in so far as he says anything interesting, does so wearing his natural-science hat) until the nineteenth century. The issue is prominent (some have argued that it's too prominent) in the modern philosophy of biology. Thomas Huxley, Antony Flew, Francisco Ayala, Ernst Mayr, David Hull, Michael Ruse, Stephen Jay Gould, and Elliott Sober are all useful names here.

One problem here is the question of what "evolution" means; it seems all too often to be interpreted as meaning nothing but "change" (or, at best, "improving change"). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:33, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

As an update and a response to Slrubenstein's original question, I'd like to merge the articles on spiritual evolution and evolution (philosophy). This will result on information about German idealism and other philosophers being added to this article. I've stuck the text of the articles together at my userpage and will procede with editing. If anyone else is interested, they can edit it there or it can be moved to evolution (philosophy)/draft. --goethean ॐ 21:11, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removed dubious bit

This needs to be verified if it is to be re-inserted:

Created by Charles Darton in 1935, this theory describes how everything evolved. The mutations in the universe contribute to this, meaning that the DNA in anticodons have little acid thus resulting in evolution. This theory also describes why bugs can't talk, and why humans can do to a genetic mutation in the cytosine of RNA, on the rim of the double helix shape of the DNA. It was proved right by Kylee Tripoli in 1939.

Vsmith 03:15, 1 March 2007 (UTC)