Purpose in the Living World?: Creation and Emergent Evolution

by Jacob Klapwijk

• ISBN13: 9780521729437
• ISBN10: 0521729432
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-01-12
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Are evolution and creation irreconcilably opposed? Is 'intelligent design' theory an unhappy compromise? Is there another way of approaching the present-day divide between religious and so-called secular views of the origins of life? Jacob Klapwijk offers a philosophical analysis of the relation of evolutionary biology to religion, and addresses the question of whether the evolution of life is exclusively a matter of chance or is better understood as including the notion of purpose. Writing from a Christian (Augustinian) point of view, he criticizes creationism and intelligent design theory as well as opposing reductive naturalism. He offers an alternative to both and an attempt to bridge the gap between them, via the idea of 'emergent evolution'. In this theory the process of evolution has an emergent or innovative character resulting in a living world of ingenious, multifaceted complexity.

Author Biography

Jacob Klapwijk is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Philosophy, Free University, Amsterdam.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. viii
Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Does life on earth have a purpose?	p. 4
A quest for meaning	p. 4
Planned approach	p. 7
Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Augustine's idea of time	p. 9
Creation and creationism	p. 9
Life based on an intelligent design?	p. 12
A bridge between science and faith?	p. 20
Creation stories and their practical intent	p. 28
Augustine: time is a creature of God	p. 32
Darwin, neo-Darwinism, and the naturalistic continuity claim	p. 37
Darwin's theory of evolution: the CVST algorithm	p. 37
Evolution theory and evolutionism	p. 41
The ambiguity of naturalism	p. 44
Continuity and reducibility?	p. 46
Miller's pre-biotic broth and the premises of evolutionism	p. 53
Origin of life: a category mistake	p. 53
Survival of the fittest: a tautology	p. 59
Evolution of science: a performative contradiction	p. 65
A cold shudder along Darwin's back	p. 71
The durability of biological species	p. 73
Gradualism and punctuated equilibria	p. 75
The ancient lithographic bird	p. 77
God, time, and taxonomy	p. 84
The emergence theory of Morgan and Alexander	p. 90
Emergence according to Morgan and Alexander	p. 91
The intentionality of human consciousness	p. 94
Metaphysics and the standpoint of experience	p. 97
Luctor et emergo: what is emergent evolution?	p. 103
Mozart and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"	p. 103
Organizational levels in nature	p. 106
Entities and modalities	p. 115
Supervenience, correlation, and idionomy	p. 118
Chimpanzees and the HIV virus	p. 125
Michael Behe and his mousetrap	p. 128
Toward a general theory of emergent evolution	p. 139
John Searle and the mystery of consciousness	p. 140
Peter Checkland and the structures of society	p. 146
Ontological stratification	p. 153
Hominization and the philosophy of mind	p. 160
Emergent evolution as a conceptual scheme	p. 160
The human person and the mask	p. 164
The anthropic principle	p. 172
Biological constants? Conway Morris	p. 176
Methodological naturalism	p. 181
The problem of David Chalmers	p. 185
Augustinian faith and evolutionary science	p. 191
The creation account and the story of becoming	p. 191
Fides quaerit intellectum: a hermeneuric horizon	p. 195
Pakicetus, the swimming ungulate	p. 203
Personal experiences	p. 208
The organism is a whole. The world is a habitat	p. 211
J.C. Smuts, holism, and evolution	p. 212
Enzymes, neurons, and emotions	p. 213
The life-world	p. 220
From biosphere to noosphere	p. 225
New Age and Brahman	p. 230
The slumbering temptation of essentialism	p. 234
Is there a creation order? Herman Dooyeweerd	p. 235
The standpoint of experience and metaphysics	p. 239
The reflective-empirical method	p. 242
The reflective-empirical method and living nature	p. 246
Type laws: an essentialist error	p. 248
Escaping essentialism	p. 254
Questions surrounding the emergence process	p. 259
Hidden configurations in nature: prions	p. 259
John Paul II on the evolution problem	p. 264
Ontological profile and evolutionary process: Neanderthals	p. 268
The last great narrative	p. 272
Enkapsis in nature. Is there an Omega point?	p. 275
Self-subordination in Baja California	p. 276
"Desert storm" and other miracles	p. 278
The kingdom of God as final stage? Teilhard and Laszlo	p. 281
Human experiences are ambiguous	p. 287
Bibliography	p. 293
Index	p. 304
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