Showing papers in "Zygon in 1976"

On the conflicts between biological and social evolution and between psychology and moral tradition.

Abstract: Reports the APA Presidential address delivered at the Chicago convention, August 1975. Urban humanity is considered as a product of both biological and social evolution. Evolutionary genetics shows that when there is genetic competition among the cooperators (as for humans but not for the social insects), great limitations are placed upon the degree of socially useful, individually self-sacrificial altruism that biological evolution can produce. Human urban social complexity is a product of social evolution and has had to counter with inhibitory moral norms the biological selfishness which genetic competition has continually selected. Because the issues are so complex and the available data are so uncompelling, all of this should be interpreted more as a challenge to an important new area for psychological research than as established conclusions. It is emphasized, however, that these are important issues to which psychology should give much greater attention, and that scientific reasons exist for believing that there can be profound system wisdom in the belief systems our social tradition has provided us with. (31/2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

Explanation and Theological Method

Abstract: Religion, Hans Reichenbach has claimed, ‘is abundant in pictures that stimulate our imagination but devoid of the power of clarification that issues from scientific explanation’.1 Philosophers of science have in general found themselves in agreement with this evaluation of religious discourse. Science, they have almost unanimously claimed, has achieved a generalized theoretical knowledge of the fundamental conditions determining the events and processes of the world whereas religion has simply spotted superficial analogies which it has confused with proper generalizations and consequently erroneously regarded as explanations. It would appear, therefore, that the long and often acrimonious debate as to the cognitive status of religious belief must, upon analysis of the concept of explanation alone, be concluded. Thus it appears also that the philosophers of religion who have argued that religion’s concern lies exclusively in providing humanity with a ‘way of life’, rather than a speculative ‘scheme of things’, must carry the day.