Guest Lecture this Week

At this Thursday's lecture we have a guest lecture from WHO researcher and SFU Professor Emeritus Dr. Bruce Alexander -- one of the world's leading scholarly authorities on addiction.

The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit is Dr. Alexander's recent book from Oxford University Press arguing from a Dawinian position that free market capitaism is the cause of addiction.

Dr. Alexander's recent study for the Centre for Policy Alternatives, The Roots of Addiction in Free market Society, is available online in portable document format. You can read about him in Britain's Daily Telegraph and Guardian.

Dr. Alexander's lecture this Tursday will be on the crucial intellectual humanism of Charles Darwin.

Fallacies and Critical Responses to Darwinism

The two logical fallacies pertinent to Darwinism and critisisms of Darwinism are as follows:

1. The Genetic Fallacy. This is to mistake an explanation of the origin of an idea for a statement relating to its truth, falsity, validity or invalidity.
2. The Fallacy of Affect. Judging the truth, falsity, validity or invalidity of an idea in terms of consequences of that idea. (A form of non sequitur.)

In seminar this week we will look to understand this in connection to Samuel Butler's criticisms of Darwin in the course essay "The Deadlock in Darwinism." We can use three types of non-Darwinian examples to frame our discussions.

• "Socialism is a failure because President Obama's policies have ruined the economy."
• "Opposition to the gun registry in Canada comes from right-wing types." 
• "The God Delusion" is wrong in its attack on God because Richard Dawkins hates religion."

We'll work to arrive at a conclusion on the relevance of Samuel Butler's attitude toward Charles Darwin to the criticisms he levels against natural selection.

Limits versus No Limits

We are proceding now from an understanding of a opposition over the concept of limit in science.

Alexander Pope, in Essay on Criticism, admiringly observes that "Nature to all things fix'd the Limits fit, And wisely curb'd proud Man's pretending Wit."

Francis Bacon boasts to the contrary in the New Atlantis that the new science is dedicated to the "enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible." Bacon illustrates his concept with a frontispiece to his Instauratio Magna of a ship sailing through the classic ne plus ultra ('no more beyond') of humankind -- the Gates of Hercules -- above the motto (from the Book of Daniel 12:4), "Many will pass through and knowledge will be increased": i.e. plus ultra. 

(Click on the image to enlarge.)

Mid-Term Creative Evaluation Essay

For the Mid-Term Essay write between four and five Times New Roman 12-point font double-spaced pages in length evaluating the applicability of either the E.O. Wilson or the Alexander Pope class handout to an understanding of the primary course material, in light of seminar discussion.

You are, in other words, being asked to demonstrate your ability to synthesise primary scholarly material, secondary scholarly material and scholarly discussion.

So for instance you might take a classfellow's seminar contribution as a thesis or a unifying thread to evaluate how a particular section of Swift's "Voyage to Laputa" chapter in Gulliver's Travels constructively satirises E.O. Wilson's essay "Intelligent Evolution."

This assignment has a creative option. If you wish to exercise your creative faculties to create an alternative to an academic essay--a documentary, a literary homage in the mode of one of the course authors, a musical score, a canvas--then follow the instructions for proposing a creative alterative found on the Pertinent & Impertinent links list on the course website.

The assignment is due in hard copy in lecture on October 21st.

Sir Francis Bacon "On Atheism"

Following upon lecture, these quotations are relevant (the second echoing Descent of Man on the same topic.)

"A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion." Of Atheism.

"I had rather believe all the fables in the legends and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind." Of Atheism.

I include here the painting of Sir Francis to which I alluded: study the picture in light of the description in New Atlantis of the Scientist from Salomon's House.