Quotes from David C. Stove

Now, why is it that the idea of intention keeps turning up in explanations of adaptation, intruding even into ones where it is supposed to have no place? And why is it as hard, as we saw in the preceding section that it is, to translate the idea of intention out of the explanation of any particular adaptation? "Surely

If "final causes" means purposes, or purposive activities, then Darwinism not only does not "expel" them: it builds them into the very foundation of its explanation of evolution. Even

In fact this ultimate degree of Darwinian faith, which blinds the faithful to even the most obvious facts of human life, is far commoner at present than it ever was before. But

ALTRUISM WAS, from the very start, a problem for the Darwinian theory of evolution, if not something worse than a problem. As a result, Darwinians have always been under a certain temptation to "cut the knot," and deny the very existence of altruism. This

sociobiologists are not merely willing, but devoted, "Slaves of the Gene."" They believe that an organism-a man, say-is epiphenomenal to his genes: an effect, not a cause. Or at least, they believe that a man is about as epiphenomenal to his genes, as his singlet (for example) is to him. Wilson spoke for all sociobiologists, when he said: "An organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA."24 Fourth:

Sociobiology, then, is a religion: one which has genes as its gods. Yet

Sociobiology is not incomprehensible, but it is one of the religions which are obviously false. The

Namely, that for every once that Dawkins says that genes are not purposive, he says a hundred things (many of which I have quoted) which imply that genes are purposive. And

Darwinians have always owed their readers a translation manual that would "cash" the teleological language which Darwinians avail themselves of without restraint in explaining particular adaptations, into the non-teleological language which their own theory of adaptation requires. But they have never paid, or even tried to pay, this debt.

New religionists, such as Williams, Dawkins, and Wilson, regard people and all other organisms as the helpless puppets, tools, or vehicles, of hidden purposive agents of more than human power and intelligence, whose only goal is to produce the largest possible number of their replicas in the next generation of organisms. But

Nor have any Darwinians ever given, to this day, any such reconciliation of their theory with the teleological language which they employ as freely as though they were disciples, not of Darwin, but of Paley. Presumably

Darwinians, then, have never paid, or even acknowledged, the debt they have all along owed the public: a reconciliation of their teleological explanations of particular adaptations with their non-teleological explanation of adaptation in general. And not only have they never paid this debt: they have in fact become progressively less conscious, with time, of the fact that they owe this debt. This

It has turned out, in fact, to be far harder to translate teleological into non-teleological language than had been anticipated by philosophers; or at any rate, by philosophers friendly towards Darwinism (as virtually all the writers in question are). Whether such translation is possible at all is more than anyone knows. As