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From Logos to Bios: Hellenic Philosophy and Evolutionary Biology

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From Logos to Bios: Hellenic Philosophy and Evolutionary Biology From Logos to Bios: Hellenic Philosophy and Evolutionary Biology by Wynand Albertus de Beer submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of D Litt et Phil in the subject Religious Studies at the University of South Africa Supervisor: Prof Danie Goosen February 2015 Dedicated with grateful acknowledgements to my supervisor, Professor Danie Goosen, for his wise and patient guidance and encouragement throughout my doctoral research, and to the examiners of my thesis for their helpful comments and suggestions. From Logos to Bios: Hellenic Philosophy and Evolutionary Biology by W.A. de Beer Degree: D Litt et Phil Subject: Religious Studies Supervisor: Prof Danie Goosen Summary: This thesis deals with the relation of Hellenic philosophy to evolutionary biology. The first part entails an explication of Hellenic cosmology and metaphysics in its traditional understanding, as the Western component of classical Indo-European philosophy. It includes an overview of the relevant contributions by the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists, focussing on the structure and origin of both the intelligible and sensible worlds. Salient aspects thereof are the movement from the transcendent Principle into the realm of Manifestation by means of the interaction between Essence and Substance; the role of the Logos, being the equivalent of Plato’s Demiurge and Aristotle’s Prime Mover, in the cosmogonic process; the interaction between Intellect and Necessity in the formation of the cosmos; the various kinds of causality contributing to the establishment of physical reality; and the priority of being over becoming, which in the case of living organisms entails the primacy of soul over body. The first part of the thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications of Hellenic cosmology and metaphysics for evolutionary biology, including an affirmation of final and formal causality over and against its rejection by the modern scientific project. The second part commences with a delineation of organic form and transformation, emphasising the mathematical foundations thereof. It continues with a critical consideration of the modern evolutionary theory on both scientific and philosophical grounds. In the process a fundamental distinction is made between micro- and macro-evolution, involving the reshuffling of existing genetic material which is acted upon by natural selection, and the production of new genetic material by means of macro-mutations, respectively. In the remainder of the thesis the macro-evolutionary process is described as mainly lawful, directed and convergent, instead of contingent, undirected and divergent as postulated in the modern evolutionary synthesis. This approach does not preclude the recognition of exceptions, due to the limitation of Intellect by Necessity – that is to say, of teleology by mechanism. Key terms: Cosmology; Logos; Demiurge; Substance; Causality; Teleology; Intellect; Soul; Form; Matter; Transformation; Evolution; Nomogenesis; Orthogenesis; Convergence 1 Contents 1 Introduction 5 2 The Indo-European background 8 2.1 Introduction 8 2.2 Indo-Hellenic parallels 10 2.3 Being and Manifestation 16 2.4 Essence and Substance 21 2.5 Matter, measure, and number 25 2.6 Time and space 27 2.7 Sphere and cube 29 2.8 The metaphysical concept of evolution 30 3 Presocratic cosmology 36 3.1 Introduction 36 3.2 The Milesians 37 3.3 Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans 40 3.4 Heraclitus 45 3.5 Parmenides 49 3.6 Anaxagoras 52 3.7 Empedocles 53 3.8 Diogenes 55 3.9 Conclusion 57 4 Plato 58 4.1 Introduction 58 4.2 Fundamentals: being and becoming 62 4.3 Thesis: the role of Intellect 69 4.4 Mediation: the receptacle of becoming 78 4.5 Antithesis: the role of Necessity 81 4.6 Synthesis: the co-operation of Intellect and Necessity 82 4.7 Conclusion 87 5 Aristotle 88 5.1 Introduction 88 2 5.2 Physics and metaphysics 88 5.2.1 Natural and artificial 90 5.2.2 Substance 91 5.2.3 Form and matter 92 5.2.4 Potency and actuality 96 5.2.5 Causality 98 5.2.6 Chance and necessity 100 5.2.7 Movement and change 103 5.2.8 Cosmology 104 5.2.9 Generation and destruction 106 5.3. The Prime Mover and Theology 107 5.4 Philosophy of nature, or bio-philosophy 109 5.4.1 Form 110 5.4.2 Reproduction 111 5.4.3 Soul 113 5.4.4 Scale of nature 117 5.5 Teleology 118 5.6 Conclusion 122 6 Neoplatonic cosmology 124 6.1 Introduction 124 6.2 Plotinus 127 6.3 Porphyry 134 6.4 Iamblichus 135 6.5 Proclus 138 6.6 Harmonising of Plato and Aristotle 145 7 Implications of Hellenic cosmology for evolutionary biology 149 7.1 Introduction 149 7.2 The Presocratics 150 7.3 Plato 157 7.4 Aristotle 160 7.5 The Neoplatonists 168 7.6 The Great Chain of Being 170 3 8 Form and transformation 177 8.1 Introduction 177 8.2 Organic form 178 8.3 Theory of transformations 181 8.3.1 Rectangular co-ordinates 183 8.3.2 Three-dimensional co-ordinate systems 186 8.3.3 Relevance 187 8.4 The limits of transformation 188 9 Modern evolutionary theory 196 9.1 Introduction 196 9.2 Darwin and natural selection 197 9.3 Dobzhansky and the modern evolutionary synthesis 200 9.4 Gould and punctuated equilibrium 204 9.5 Criticism 208 9.5.1 Variation versus speciation 209 9.5.2 The origin of organic complexity 210 9.5.3 Sudden speciation followed by stasis 212 9.5.4 The analogy of artificial breeding 214 9.5.5 The improbability of contingency 215 9.5.6 From simple to complex 216 9.5.7 Progress and evolution 218 9.5.8 The struggle for existence 221 9.5.9 Utility versus teleology 222 9.5.10 Materialism versus levels of being 224 9.5.11 Transformation versus manifestation 225 9.6 Conclusion 227 10 Evolution according to natural law 228 10.1 Historical background 228 10.2 The origin of adaptations in organisms 231 10.3 Law, chance, and design 233 10.4 The role of selection 238 10.5 The course of evolution 246 4 10.6 Ontogeny and phylogeny 242 10.7 The orthogenetic formation of characters 244 10.8 The role of the geographical landscape 245 10.9 The polyphyletic origin of similar forms 248 10.10 The formation of new species 250 10.11 The limits between species 251 10.12 Mutational theory 253 10.13 The laws of evolution 255 10.14 Darwinism versus nomogenesis 257 10.15 Palaeontological confirmation of mass mutations 257 10.16 Biochemical confirmation of lawful evolution 263 10.16.1 Protein folding 264 10.16.2 Further evidence 266 10.17 Conclusion 266 11 Directed evolution 267 11.1 Introduction 267 11.2 Historical background 269 11.3 Constraints on variation 274 11.4 Biochemical evidence 281 11.5 Organic plenitude 284 11.6 Constraints on plenitude 287 12 Convergent evolution 289 12.1 Introduction 289 12.2 Convergence of internal characters 291 12.3 Convergence of external characters 298 12.4 Convergence of psychical phenomena 303 12.5 Convergence and evolution 305 13 Conclusion 307 14 Bibliography 311 5 1: Introduction In this thesis we endeavour to demonstrate the relevance of Hellenic philosophy for evolutionary biology. The evolution of life on Earth has been one of the most contentious issues in the natural sciences and beyond ever since the publication of Charles Darwin’s theory of organic descent by means of natural selection in 1859. Since the rise of the so-called Neo-Darwinian synthesis during the second quarter of the twentieth century, the resultant tradition popularly known as ‘Darwinism’ has become firmly established as biological component of the modern scientific paradigm. The latter was founded in the seventeenth century by Galileo, Descartes, Bacon and others, and has ever since rested upon the twin pillars of materialism and mechanism, in terms of which everything can be explained in terms of quantitative laws (Nasr 1981: 49). Due to this ‘scientific revolution’ an ever-increasing number of people in the Western world came to view the natural sciences as a more reliable source of knowledge than the revelations of religion or the deductions of philosophers. This in turn led to the rise of a naturalistic world-view, in terms of which the universe was entirely due to the operation of autonomous natural laws (Swift 2002: 391-392). By the nineteenth century the traditional notion of a Great Chain of Being (based mostly on the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle), according to which all levels of reality are related in a cosmic hierarchy with God at the summit, had become horizontalised and temporalised (Nasr 1981: 49-50). This ontological deprivation, as it were, provided the opportunity for Darwin to propose a theory of evolution as the best explanation of biodiversity outside of Divine creation, which he had come to reject. However, Darwin’s theory soon became a dogma in order to replace religious faith among those who have discarded God, which is how the Darwinian theory of evolution has survived to this day – in the words of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, as ‘a convenient philosophical and rationalistic scheme to enable man to create the illusion of a purely closed Universe around himself’ (1981: 50). It is our intention to make a contribution towards a more lucid understanding of biological evolution through a two-fold methodology: first, by an explication of Hellenic cosmology and metaphysics in its traditional understanding, over and against its distortion in modern academic circles (such as the presentation of the Presocratics as naïve speculators or proto- materialists, of Aristotle as an anti-Platonist, and of the Neoplatonists as religious extremists); 6 and second, by drawing out relevant aspects of Hellenic cosmology and metaphysics for evolutionary theory.
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