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New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory — Evolution Not Random

ScienceDaily is reporting a team of biologists has demonstrated that evolution is a deterministic process, rather than a random selection as some competing theories suggested. "When the researchers measured changes in 40 defined characteristics of the nematodes' sexual organs (including cell division patterns and the formation of specific cells), they found that most were uniform in direction, with the main mechanism for the development favoring a natural selection of successful traits, the researchers said."

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  1. Re:Ah, but... by background+image · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hume says it smarterer than I can...

    Hume--and Kant--are also a lot 'smarterer' than me ;-)

    However, Kant did come up with quite a plausible theory for why Hume was not quite right about that (and in doing so, essentially invented epistemology as a separate area of study). Whether or not he successfully demonstrated that his theory was correct is (still) an open question.

    Very briefly what he supposed was that any experience whatsoever of the 'world' is only accessible through certain features of our perceptual and cognitive apparatus. Chief among these are time and space, but in addition, there are twelve a priori categories, including "causality and dependence" according to which experiences are ordered.

    To put it in plainer language, time and space have to do not with reality as such, but with how we perceive reality, while the categories (including causality) and reason allow us to systematize our experiences. It's possible to think of time and space as analogous to being stuck in a space suit with a yellow-tinted visor. You can look through the visor, but everything will look yellow. You can't really be sure that everything--or anything--is yellow, but the only way you can see anything at all is to see it as something yellow.

    The practical upshot of this is that according to Kant, while (contra Hume) genuine scientific inquiry is possible without recourse to faith in causation etc, and while our experience is of a real world, there are definite limits to human knowledge:

    1. because time and space are properties of our perceptual and cognitive apparatus, it is absolutely impossible to discover what the world might be 'like' without reference to them, and
    2. the answers to most of the traditional metaphysical questions--such as questions of the existence of god or the immortality of the soul--cannot be determined scientifically.

    For more information, you can go to the Stanford Encyclopedia, or to the source, but when reading Kant, always be sure to take the proper precautions: take adequate food and water, allow plenty of time to get back before dark, and always let somebody know where you're going...