I guess critiquing Darwin was always going to be a challenge. At least the Marxists are used to being criticized.

No offence taken Poirot though thankyou for your concern. I think I offended Yabby with my quip about 'is he/she a disciplinarian!?' I guess that wasn't funny.

I am pretty certain about the separateness/connectedness polarity thing, and that it is applicable to evolution theory. And just like Peter Hume's idea, "Grand schemes, and evolutionary schemata, are no good unless they can accurately take account of how they arise out of individual actions.", my theory is not testable, so I am happy to assert it as a valid belief until the cows come home.

At least I am saying that it is a belief whereas Bugsy seems to think that he/she is telling the truth (all the while sneering at me for not being able to recognise it). Am I supposed to roll over and put up with it? I'm pretty sure that, while the reading might be up to date, Bugsy can't see the forest for the trees.

Your theory? What theory? You keep asserting that evolutionary theory hasn't taken x or y into account and is looking at things wrong. Or at least the scientists who work with evolutionary theory are. I think this is an error. You filter everything through your yin-yang coloured glasses. People who actually work in science do not. That is all. In fact many scientists at least try to make no assumptions as to what they will find and let the data suggest to them what is going on.

Your reading may be up to date with philosophers, but not with the scientists. I find most philosophical writing to be similar, well behind. Even Popper copped a lot of criticism in his day for not being up to date with how the scientists were thinking. Marxists are used to criticism, because Marxists still completely believe Marx. Darwin has already been critiqued and updated and recognised as the originator of the theory, but we've moved on.. Many things right, many wrong, but not natural selection. We've tested it. You're critiquing Darwin and asserting that your reading is up-to-date? Oh please.

This is how the dialectic is used in science. We look at two competing theories that can explain the data. We look at what doesn't fit in either, and so try an synthesise them in to one theory that can explain all the data at hand and then test it and replace it with something better.

It's time to test your philosophy Gilbert, you've taken one good step in publicly publishing it. But your current audience is even less up to speed on the subject than you are. Time to try exposing your ideas to people who are up to speed if you want to learn. A philosophy audience preferablyd, because scientists wouldn't even tell you why you are wrong, they'd just ignore you, which is worse.

You complain that I can't see the forest for the trees, I think you've found a couple of trees and are calling them a forest.

Time to call a forester and show them what you've found.

Gilbert, just to highlight what I am talking about, ask yourself: What does 'ecology' mean to you?
This might help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology

You've mentioned evolution, 'collectivism' and the importance of studying communities and environments etc. Yet you never mentioned ecology, not once.

Why is that?

Gilbert, I can state Darwin's theory in a nutshell. Can you state what yours is in a nutshell?

*I think I offended Yabby with my quip about 'is he/she a disciplinarian!*

Not really Gilbert, nothing much offends me, but the following
did amuse me:

*so in order to sound intellectually impressive, and hopefully convince myself one day that I can take myself seriously, I need to use a title that few people understand.*

Perhaps you are learning from the french philosophers, they are
experts at impressive sounding gobbeldygook. I can't remember
the name of the well known scientist right now, perhaps somebody
else can. He was aware of this habit, so purposefully wrote
a paper full of gobbbeldygook, but with impressive language.
Sure enough it was published in one of the journals.

.

Bugsy, "..you never mentioned ecology, not once."

Fair comment. As the link suggests, ecology is the "..study of the relation of living organisms to each other and their surroundings." Upon reflection, I think it would have been good to include a discussion of 'ecology' in the article. Next time!

So if we combine ecology wth the study of the evoltion of organisms from the perspective of the individual, we would be approaching the dual drivers of natural selection that I spoke about? You almost sound like you like my idea!

The combination of these two to date may be covering most of the territory as far as the scientific study is concerned, but I still don't think that we have quite got our heads straight.

How many theorists are advocating the idea that our tendency to evolve in communities, and our tendency toward altruism can best be understood in terms of an essential connectedness between us? Kropotkin doesn't have many friends in the field. Instead we get ideas like reciprocal altruism and 'the selfish gene' which try to explain away benevolence in terms of an underlying separateness and selfishness.

I am not saying that those ideas are wrong, it's just that they only represent half of the picture, much like Freud gave us the 'motivations of isolation' and Smith gave us competition as the driver of a healthy economy.

Shifting our perspective will alter the way that we undertake our study and practice of all three of these 'sciences'. It is a new paradigm!