Romany

On the theme of understanding the accomplishments of anyone within the context of their own time:

"...Shakespeare as a bi-sexual philanderer with delusions of grandeur..."

I KNEW he was ahead of his time.

Thanks to you, Grim and other of similar intellect for an interesting discussion.

As for Darwin, I feel he very much swam against the tide of common ideology and without the courage he had to have mustered we would've remained ignorant of natural selection for much longer. It is a pity that those who seek to disparage (for whatever reason, be it religion or just sheer ignorance) try to score points against persons of note for simply being human. Any four year old can do that.

i agree with kenny and fester: i simply can't see the point of this article. R0bert may be right, that caton's point is the misrepresentation of scientific history. but he doesn't make much of a case for it here. and it doesn't explain his snide manner of judging past opinions from the perspective of the present.

grim and romany, i don't know much about this, but i suspect you may be selling lincoln short. what shorn wrote rings true to me.

the cause of the civil war may have been primarily union rather than slaves, and lincoln was definitely politically pragmatic. but the latter is not a bad thing, and does not clearly indicate lincoln's beliefs and desires. and the former has to take into account the source of the rift, and lincoln's conscious role in that rift.

romany, does it matter one jot if shakespeare was a bisexual philanderer? i presume you only raise that to indicate that it matters to those engaging in a peculiar form of idolatry.

finally, i think runner is trying to prove singlehandedly the existence of a separate, inferior race.

"Perhaps instead of judging figures like Lincoln and Darwin by today's standards, we might appreciate that these figures played a role in formulating the ideas underlying our present civilisation by which so many seem to think themselves superior."

Fester,

I think it's already a fairly widely held view that both Lincoln and Darwin made great contributions - Lincoln as orator/statesman and Darwin as a thinker in science. But, just like in every other field of endeavour, it can pay to objectively look back in history at what wasn't achieved too. The detection of a double standard, for example, whether it be caused by weakness or any other reason (to a third party, the reason's irrelevant really), can provide a strong clue as to what other problems need to be fixed up. In fact, the weakness/frailty that Caton refers to can and should be the seed for the next foray into getting a better outcome for mankind as the next wave seeks to improve on the current situation.

But, how can an improvement be made if there isn't an understanding and acknowledgement of a deficiency or weakness? There are teams of journalists and commentators forensically picking apart every aspect of society every day from analysing the Nick D'arcy assault (on the ABC's Offsiders program this morning) to Kevin Rudd's treatment of a RAAF stewardess. If there are faults/weaknesses/deficiencies/etc, why shouldn't they be given a fair level of scrutiny? If Lincoln, say, made mistakes because he was human, be up front about it and get on and improve on it.

RobP

How can Darwin or Lincoln improve themselves now that they are dead? In the case of D'arcy or Rudd, they have been involved in actions which they know to be wrong, and which are not condoned by society. They are at the water hole and need only take a drink, and I hope that they do so. In contrast, Lincoln and Darwin died long before the water hole was reached. What I take from it all is an appreciation of the great benefits that ideas and knowledge bring to a civilisation; the sense of superiority that comes with them is the downside.

"How can Darwin or Lincoln improve themselves now that they are dead?"

It wasn't about them but about one's ability today, or society's ability collectively, to learn from the mistakes made in the past. If, for example, history views Lincoln as having been weak in some areas or of having a character flaw, it might focus in on what he wasn't able to do or was too afraid to do. Eg, society might realise the need to get in and proactively do things itself as opposed to primarily taking a passive stance by just letting a small group of luminaries talk about doing things.

I'm late on this, mostly because this is a topic about which I know probably too much. My take is close to that of Kenny, Fester and Clownfish (who is thoroughly redeeemed in terms of understanding evolution).

Caton's always struck me as a bit of an odd bod and he has been embarrassingly wrong in the past, but he has to his very great credit the capacity for original thought. I think it's a bit of a stretch to label him a literal Creationist.

Of course Darwin and Lincoln would be considered racists in contemporary terms, as indeed would almost everybody of their class, education and nationalities in the mid-19th century. "Racial" superiority was evident in the colonial experience, which coupled with the extraordinary technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, rendered European nations literally masters of their world.

In those days, the proto-scientific perspectives that later separated ethology from ethnology were rather blurred, and it takes no great leap of the intellect to imagine how such notions of 'natural selection' and 'survival of the fittest' might be applied to political realities like the domination of one so-called 'race' (which remains a valid biological category) over all the others.

From this perspective. those societies at the apex of the global political and technological hierarchy were therefore ipso facto better adapted, and thus more evolved than their colonial subjects. It is precisely this erroneous logic that was taken up by eugenecists and is perpetuated by contemporary racists.

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