The expansion of the domain of Darwinism to the human sciences is the biggest and most significant scientific revolution I have ever lived through. However, I am disappointed with the slow progress of the revolution. There's a lot of tenures on the line, and it seems as though some are prepared to fight every step of the way, and others who don't want disruption. As a result, progress is frustratingly slow.So far, I've mainly focussed on memetics - which seems to be the most important domain in terms of applications. Next-most important is probably the field of within-brain evolution. However, for a while I've been aware that Darwinism has a much broader domain of application, going beyond the organic sciences into inorganic realms: turbulence, cracks, erosion, fires, crystals, radiation, etc.
After my next "memes" book, I will probably focus some of my energy on explaining and promoting Universal Darwinism. Universal Darwinism is relatively simple and easy to understand. The field is so badly neglected that a shock-and-awe campaign in the area could easily result in big gains in understanding.
While the inorganic sciences may lack human impact, more widespread acceptance of Darwinism's broader base would imply the correctness of memetic and brain within-brain evolution as sub-fields.
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Yeah, it's taking a long, long time for people to internalize the blindingly obvious logic of differential survival of unplanned variation. It seems to me, though, that when it does fully take hold we won't call it “Universal Darwinism” any more often than people speak of The Theory of Gravity. That is to say, UD will be accepted as obvious, just as self-evident as 2+2=4 (or 2+2=10 in base 3).
ReplyDeleteI suppose people don't really pick up on it because it only rarely happens before their very eyes. But hey, look how long it took for people to get comfortable with heliocentrism. Now it's hard to find anybody who rebels against the notion.