Evolution is Hegelian Process-Metaphysics
Marx and Darwin (and their acolytes)
are Hegelian metaphysicians –
ALL is process, and process is all
From Astrobiology.com:
“Life is really, really good at solving problems. If you look around, there’s so much diversity in life, and that all these things come from a common ancestor seems really surprising to me,” said Luis Zaman, an evolutionary biologist at U-M and lead author of the study. “Why is evolution so seemingly creative? It seems like maybe that ability is something that evolved itself.”
Whether evolvability itself can evolve is a question, Zaman says, because the major fuel of evolution are the mutations that increase an organism’s fitness, increasing their ability to survive in the current environment, the most. But evolvability is not about increasing fitness. Instead, evolvability increases the future potential of an organism’s fitness.
“This forward-looking feature of evolvability makes it contentious,” Zaman said. “We think it’s important. We know it happens. Why it happens and when it happens is something we’re less clear about. We were trying to figure out: Can we see the evolution of evolvability in a more realistic computational model?”
Evolution is Hegelian process-metaphysics
by John D. Wise, PhD
Sigmund Freud famously postulated the “unconscious mind” to explain the fact that so many of us (how do we even speak of it now without using his language?) are not conscious of the drives and motivations that lie hidden deep within us, and that our outer rational life is the mere tip of an iceberg emerging above the tumultuous sea of conscious existence.
The word “unconscious” (in German unbewusst) was arguably coined by German idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854), whose book System of Transcendental Idealism played a transformative role in my graduate work at the University of CA, Irvine. Freud’s solution presented a metaphysical picture of consciousness as a submerged mountain progressively surging upward to burst through the surface of the sea into the sunlight of rational conscious human life.
Freud postulated that this sunlit consciousness was “unconscious” of both its origins and its ascent from the muck of the seabed – that the conscious mind “suppressed” these dark and dirty origins and kept processes from entering the sunlit conscious mind. This is why Freud’s theory is called depth psychology.
The problem?
How can the conscious mind suppress that of which it is unconscious? In order to “censor” the unconscious content, it must first be conscious of the content-to-be-censored, resulting in a contradiction – a conscious unconscious, or as logicians would state it: A and not-A.
The solution?
Consciousness must be an emergent phenomenon that begins in the muck of the seafloor and ascends to progressively higher levels until it rises above the waves into the sunlight, now complex and highly ordered, but (really) nothing other than the seafloor muck that has endured the “natural” and necessary process that compels its ascent. In a word, the unconscious becomes conscious, ascending the ladder to ever-higher consciousness, while at the same time being the same thing as the muck from which it sprung. Consciousness is nothing but the process itself of becoming conscious.
Sound familiar?
It should, as this is the alternative logic – one might fairly call it an anti-logic – of 18th century philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831). This “logic” pervades the modern mind and soul (Ezekiel 14). It is the essence of Marxism, socialism, Freudian theory, Darwinism, postmodernism, Wokism, the advance of atheism and a host of other modern maladies that are systematically dismantling the scientific, moral and cultural achievements of the Western world nourished and enabled by Christianity.
What has all this got to do with the concept of evolving evolvability?
Everything.
Hegel’s philosophical system is built on the denial of a fundamental law of (Aristotelian) logic – the law of non-contradiction. In natural language this states that it cannot be the case that both a proposition and its negation are true.
In logical notation: ~[A and ~A].
In other words, Hegel’s dialectical logic embraces contradiction – that which Aristotelian logic forbids. In practice this embrace means that contradiction is simply a part of (or, using Hegel’s terminology, “a moment in”) the process that is logic. Hegel’s logic embraces contradiction as the engine of progressive development.
For Hegel, “all that exists is logical, and all that is logical exists.”
This is process-metaphysics.
Like Einstein’s E=MC2, what is is reducible to a single fundamental “thing” (philosophers call this “monism”) from which all else is compounded: in Einstein’s case the fundamental underlying substance is energy; in Hegel, it is the progressive process of logic.
What is also evident, however, to any thinking being (and Hegel was a stunningly brilliant thinker) is that logic – the process of thought – is inextricably anchored in mind. If mind did not underlie reality, it could not emerge from it. Like the scientific law of biogenesis – life can only come from life, so consciousness can only emerge from consciousness. Hegel’s logic (here, anyway) is impeccable: if consciousness is to emerge, then at some level it must be the very substance from which everything emerges.
For Hegel, as we saw analogously with Freud, there is an ever-ascending logic to reality, a process of becoming conscious. For Hegel, though, there is no independent material “muck,” just the initial (contradictory) conjunction of an unconscious consciousness. From this, all else will emerge. Hegel calls this fundamental “substance” of reality, appropriately, “Spirit.” Because it begins as an unconscious-consciousness it possesses, in ever-increasing clarity, a goal-directedness – it is the process of becoming conscious.
Now to seal the deal.
Marx and Darwin (and their acolytes) are Hegelian metaphysicians – ALL is process, and process is all – but neither wanted Hegel’s mystical notion of Spirit. How can a scientific materialistic monist accept that?
“Easy!”, says Marx (he learned so well from Darwin!) “Turn Hegel upside down,”[1] substituting materialism for Hegel’s idealism (non-material) – Spirit. This is why Marx’s theory is called “dialectical materialism” – it is Hegel’s dialectical logic applied to metaphysically material monism. Darwin and Marx presuppose (on faith) an ever-ascending process of reality, an EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS, substituting materialism for Hegel’s Spirit, denying the fundamental reality of consciousness. As with Freud, consciousness is derivative, emergent from something else.
Here’s the rub.
The substitution comes at a high price: cognitive and evidentiary dissonance. The material is by itself neither life nor logic, but both life and logic are a part of the world in and with which science operates – without them science, knowledge, and rational consciousness itself, are inconceivable.
Admittedly, science can proceed while denying the contradiction – witness the history of biological science for the last 150 years! Hegel’s logic and Freud’s depth psychology have, after all, laid the groundwork for such conscious self-deceit,[2] seizing a logic (Hegel’s) built on the logical embrace of contradiction. But Hegel’s Spirit haunts Hegel’s logic. The two are inseparably united. You can’t have one without the other, and magical charms and incantations like natural selection (choiceless choice) can keep the contradiction at bay for only so long.
As they say, the truth will out.
Today’s fascination with the evolution of evolvability, I contend, signals a crisis of “outing” truth. Whether they like it or not, whether they want to follow it or not, the logic of evolution (Hegel’s) in scientific confrontation with empirical reality is driving evolutionary biology back to Hegel’s Spirit – to a goal-directed and intentional conscious reality.[3]
Materialism contradicts the logic of evolution. Which will give place to the other?
Reading the quote with which we began this paper, it is evident that Darwinian theory must now explain the evolution of evolvability – the sheer fact of life’s triumphs is not tenable for materialist monism. The evidence logically requires goal-directedness and conscious action.
Watch and share this Short Reel about this article.
Hegel knew this. He was consistent.
The theory of biological evolution, after 150 years of denial (in the Freudian sense) is being compelled to return to its philosophical roots.
This is the meaning of the evolution of evolvability – the concession that consciousness is logically implied by reality, or there would be no reality of which to be conscious.
“In Him we live, move, and have our being” said Paul to the Athenians in Acts 17:28. We would all do better to place our faith and confidence in Him than in this “science falsely so-called.”
References
[1] Marx’s words, not mine.
[2] My dissertation deals extensively with Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion (in Being and Nothingness) of a lie to oneself which he terms “bad faith.”
[3] To what David Coppedge properly terms pantheism in this excellent article: https://crev.info/2015/10/op-ed-time-to-ditch-natural-selection/. I am no partisan of pantheism or Hegel, but both are a far cry from the silly contradictions in which Darwinian theory muddles. They, at least, are not fundamentally at philosophical odds with themselves.
John Wise received his PhD in philosophy from the University of CA, Irvine in 2004. His dissertation was titled Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology and the German Idealist Tradition. His area of specialization is 19th to early 20th century continental philosophy.
He tells the story of his 25-year odyssey from atheism to Christianity in the book, Through the Looking Glass: The Imploding of an Atheist Professor’s Worldview (available on Amazon). Since his return to Christ, his research interests include developing a Christian (YEC) philosophy of science and the integration of all human knowledge with God’s word.
He has taught philosophy for the University of CA, Irvine, East Stroudsburg University of PA, Grand Canyon University, American Intercontinental University, and Ashford University. He currently teaches online for the University of Arizona, Global Campus, and is a member of the Heterodox Academy. He and his wife Jenny are known online as The Christian Atheist with a podcast of that name, in addition to a YouTube channel: John and Jenny Wise.
Comments
Excellent article! I was unaware of the Hegelian root of Darwinism. Regarding “science can proceed while denying the contradiction – witness the history of biological science for the last 150 years,” I would like to point out that while biology did “proceed,” any significant advances were apart from, or even despite, the story of universal common ancestry.
I believe another important root was Deism, a step toward atheism that was accepted as other doubts grew in “modernism.” The final straw came with early “geologists,” particularly Hutton and Lyell, in going beyond the proper limits of science, most famously set forth by Sir Francis Bacon. It was argued that (the Deistic) God would not interfere with the natural order He created and would not do anything that would throw off our understanding about Nature (as do Old Earth advocates today). This move from methodological naturalism (or simply studying nature) to philosophical naturalism (assuming natural processes explain everything) made such areas of science the province of materialism and atheism, though some didn’t see that and many continue to deny it.
While it was simple (too simple) to paint a picture of geology taking shape by the gradual buildup of small additions, Darwin completed the picture through a mental slight-of-hand: claiming (or implying) that all the changes needed to account for all the differences in living things could be accomplished by accumulating small changes. Thus, emergence is a key to evolutionary thought.
The idea of “emergence” goes deep and has spread to other areas. The Santa Fe Institute, which explores complexity science, leans heavily on it, partly through the influence of evolutionism, which is regarded as one of the pillars of complexity science. And, as this article notes, there are signs that underlying contradictions are beginning to cause problems. The evolution of function requires teleology, and thus ideas about a “blind watchmaker” that eliminate the watchmaker altogether, evolution evolving to evolve, and other mental gymnastics to support the miracles required with nothing but random-deterministic processes of natural law with no lawgiver.