Ernst Mayr, distinguished elder statesman of twentieth-century evolution, has blamed the delusion of discontinuity — under its philosophical name of Essentialism — as the main reason why evolutionary understanding came so late in human history. Plato, whose philosophy can be seen as the inspiration for Essentialism, believed that actual things are imperfect versions of an ideal archetype of their kind. Hanging somewhere in ideal space is an essential, perfect rabbit, which bears the same relation to a real rabbit as a mathematicians perfect circle bears to a circle drawn in the dust. To this day many people are deeply imbued with the idea that sheep are sheep and goats are goats, and no species can ever give rise to another because to do so theyd have to change their essence. There is no such thing as essence. No evolutionist thinks that modern species change into other modern species. Cats dont turn into dogs or vice versa. Rather, cats and dogs have evolved from a common ancestor, who lived tens of millions of years ago. If only all the inter- mediates were still alive, attempting to separate cats from dogs would be a doomed enterprise, as it is with the salamanders and the gulls. Far from being a question of ideal essences, separating cats from dogs turns out to be possible only because of the lucky (from the point of view of the essentialist) fact that the intermediates happen to be dead. Plato might find it ironic to learn that it is actually an imperfection — the sporadic ill-fortune of death — that makes the separation of any one species from another possible. — Richard Dawkins, The Ancestors Tale
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 02:10:45 +0000
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