Philosophy
changed after Darwin published his book on evolution named On
the Origin of Species.
Wegener’s discovery of plate tectonics and the expanding awareness
of the size and scale of the Universe with construction of larger and
larger telescopes coincided with the 20th
century advances in biological learning and changed the way people
look at the world. Philosophy also changed while theology was
challenged. By the start of the third millennium human social
sciences and history were viewed as of decreased importance; surface
activities of bioforms on an insignificant planet in a remote part of
the galactic habitation zone of a spiral galaxy itself just a speck
of sand amidst billions of galaxies. The scale of science and its
effect upon human thinking tended to dwarf the interest in
philosophical works such as G.W.F. Hegel had developed in his tome
The
Phenomenology of Spirit
[1807].
German romanticism and its existential regard for the individual in
society shadowed the increasing epistemological theoretical drift
toward relativism and subjectivism as meaning became detached from
traditional philosophical and theological attachment because of the
power of evolution and cosmology developing together as a great
empirical truth.
Philosophers and
historians continued to work of course, even as they kept one eye
upward toward the Hubble image captures of 12 to 13 billion year old
starlight from what was considered to be near the beginning of the
Universe give or take a half a billion years. Philosophers such as
C.S. Pierce developed semiotic works about symbols. Frege and other
advanced symbolic logic onward from Aristotle’s classical along
with the mathematical of Leibniz and advance of progress of logic.
The Vienna Circle of philosophers led the way with others such as
Wittgenstein in the field of the philosophy of logic and its
intersection with the meaning of language, the epistemology of
cognition and eventually analytic philosophy. W.V.O Quine not only
developed analytic philosophy investigating words and their meaning
as Platonic essents or forms with real or nominal values, he
investigated the relationship of words to objects, from which one may
readily consider the nature of objects for-themselves as members
cohering within a continuum of quantum field phenomena; solid state
physics. Quantum physics parallel the rise of Darwinist evolution
ideas in cosmology and biology and reinforced the tendency of many to
regard life as virtually phenomenal to an extent found in Buddhism.
The appearance of so
many strong new influences on human thought of a circumspective,
philosophical kind was a challenge to philosophers to respond to the
new material with new ideas. Some philosophers became echoes of the
Darwinian science as philosophers of science. Some theologians choose
to ignore the field entirely and focus just upon scripture, and that
was reasonable enough except as it rendered them unable to consider
how the Bible relates to the new understanding of the empirical world
or to provide meaningful Christian apologetics regarding it.
Darwinian evolution
philosophy in the world became eventually a popular with such
strength that it conquered political leadership in Europe and in much
of the entertainment and broadcast media spanning the globe. Business
found it generally acceptable as it enabled fortune 500 leaders to
dismiss moral concerns more readily and better put on the blinders of
business to externalities and to focus on profits wheresoever that
leads.
The
rise of abstract expressionism in the arts from impressionism to
cubism and beyond reflected the advance of epistemological and
linguistic relativism and subjectivism. Paradoxically people could
look at the images of the vast Universe and even consider it as part
of a great Multiverse and find it meaningless with just their own
experience of it as meaningful, at least for-themselves. Subjectivism
and relativism was reflected in reductionism in every field even unto
the quantum level, and time and being as mass were phenomenal events
perceived locally without any sort of transcendent value of such a
nature that similar events could be occurring in an infinite number
of Universes. Philosophers too seemed to have been taken up in some
instances with the Darwinian power of evolution finding little enough
in humanity except as it might evolve too, and tragically losing the
capacity to keep a concept of God as a Supreme being of power and
capacity larger than a Multiverse. Darwinism as universal evolution
seemed to have no place for the Bible in it. And that is where this
book of mine is concerned. I take another opinion about it. God
probably can create a Multiverse like a zillion angels as it were, on
the head of a pin.
