James Vs Darwin
Darwin's Biology Viewed Through James' Psychology
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If I had to put my finger on what constitutes the outstanding errors in the evolutionist theory, it would take only a few sentences. The first is the reversion to the pre-1600’s--pre-scientific!--naïve realist view of knowledge, particularly the illusion that the physical world is what ‘scientists’ observe. Few people pay any attention whatever to the fact that Albert Einstein called naïve realism “a plebeian illusion.” The second is the directly linked error of assuming that Darwin and his disciples know what a human being is. Naïve realists cannot help but assume that human beings are what they think they see, namely, biological organisms. James, though he had reasons for not adopting Plato’s and Descartes’ recognition that human beings are immaterial selves, was equally adamant about the fact that human beings are not biological organisms. He went so far as to call the idea of brains as unified organs “a fiction of popular speech.”
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About the Book
James yearned to weave science and religion into a popular philosophy useful for the everyday life of everyday people of faith. He saw that many of them were defenseless in an increasingly agnostic, even atheistic culture. "Thousands of innocent magazine readers lie paralyzed and terrified in the network of shallow negations which the leaders of opinion have thrown over their souls," he wrote in 1882. To which he added, "If I, . . . like the mouse in the fable, have gnawed a few of the strings of the sophistical net that has been binding down [the human heart's] lion strength, I shall be more than rewarded for my pains."
Were he to return, he would surely be even more unhappy with the leaders of opinion, but also with the responses of people of faith, who either seek refuge in untenable fundamentalist reliance on religious scriptures or else view science and religion as two wholly separate, independent spheres of knowledge.
Building on three previous books about James’s philosophy, as well as on three books about related topics, the present text will explain why no one professing to ‘do science’ in this third millennium can ignore the psychology behind all discoveries.
About the Author
Frederick R. Bauer is an associate professor of philosophy at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and has been teaching since 1967. Besides his Ph.D., he holds an MA in counseling psychology. Dr. Bauer lives in Worcester, Massachusetts, with his wife.