Talk:Evolution (metaphysics)

Not philosophy

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)

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)

Philosophy v Religion

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

There is a problem with this page, and apparently others having to do with "integral thought." It seems that this new age movement has a lot of interesting ideas which they are hesitant to call religion. This page and perhaps some others seem to portray these religious beliefs (which are just fine to have btw!!) as not religious. The whole thing is getting mish-mashed together as if THIS is what philosophers have to say about evolution. It's not.

This page would more properly be titled "Evolution (integral thought)"

Gregbard 21:11, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Requested Move Discussion

Oppose move. I'm not very knowledgeable on this particular subject. However, there's no inherent contradiction between "religion" and "philosophy," and this page clearly deals with philosophy. Whether or not it also qualifies as a kind of "faith," or "religion" doesn't sufficiently argue in favor of the proposed move. Also, calling something "philosophy" is not the same as claiming it is science, legitimate, "proven," or that it is embraced by academia. A great many of history's philosophers were deeply involved in spiritual matters, many of their beliefs or theories have either been disproven, or discredited by academia, and the ones whose writings are studied in philosophy class are generally the ones who are seen as having influenced world thought, or represented a significant aspect of world thought, regardless of the legitimacy of their claims. Those whose writings were later seen as minor contributions, or were hardly influential on world thought may not be taught in universities today, but they were never-the-less "philosophers" too. "Philosophy," therefore, seems the perfect lable for this, whatever your perspective on the subject may be. Only the future can tell whether this will remain in any way notable.zadignose 01:07, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 22:31, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that Involution (philosophy) was recently moved to Involution (metaphysics). Perhaps this is a good compromise between religion and philosophy. Note that in the Wikipedia article on Metaphysics, Religion and spirituality falls in the middle of the list of subjects that fall under the heading Central questions of metaphysics. Cott12 19:27, 10 August 2007 (UTC)