On Reading F. F. Centore’s Review of The Problem of Evalution by J. N. Deely, R. J. Nogar (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 889 On Reading F. F. Centore's Review of The Problem of Evalution, by J. N. Deely and R. J. Nogar. Book reviewers, as is well known, are commonly prone to two serious faults. One is the failure to read carefully before they write their evaluation. The other is to criticize the book for failing to be some other book which the reviewer thinks should have been written. Unprofessional though such reviews are, it is unlikely that we will ever see an end to them. The best that one can hope for, perhaps, is that such reviews will be responsibly answered, counteracting the harm and setting the record straight. A case in point is the recent review in this journal by F. F. Centore 1 of a work by John N. Deely and the late Raymond J. Nogar, The Problem of Evolution.2 It is with respect to this particular review that I would like to set the record straight. The Problem of Evolution has a complex structure that cuts across so many lines of classification that its significance is almost certain to be missed by the casual reader-a fact which no doubt explains the serious misrepresentations and misunderstandings evidenced in Professor Centore's review. This book, Professor Centore writes, has as its " main point " " to continue the work of Chardin." 3 "As one might suspect," he writes "' traditionalists ' like Aquinas are not very well treated." 4 Despite attempts to "get-with-it and get-modern," 5 Centore asserts, the work has "missed its opportunity " to tackle "the 1973 problems of specific theories of evolution." 6 Instead, "it represents a 'mentality' which soars up, beyond , and around the lack or presence of facts of the moment." 7 There we have Professor Centore's assessment of The Problem of Evolution: it fosters an irrational attitude, it caricatures traditional philosophy, it deals mainly with outdated problems, and, despite "some good readings, extensively annotated" (Centore gives no specific mention of which are the " good " readings) , the work as a whole is essentially unbalanced and confused. Small wonder that Centore thinks the book " does not seem to have much of a place in modern North American intellectual life." s With all due respect to Professor Centore, anyone who actually read 1 See The Thomist, XXXVII (July, 1978), pp. 611-618. • New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1978. 8 Loc cit., p. 611. Presumably, Fr. Teilhard de Chardin is meant, in which case the use of " Chardin " is a mild malapropism. ' Ibid., p. 612. • Ibid. e Ibid., p. 618. 7 Ibid., p. 612. "Ibid., p. 611. 390 BOOK REVIEWS with care the book thus dismissed would be compelled to doubt that Professor Centore had himself also read the book, properly speaking, before he undertook to write and publish his review. For a reasonably careful look at The Problem of Evolution reveals a work misread and misrepresented by Professor Centore on all major points. I think some criticisms can be made of the book, but they bear little or no relation to the criticisms Professor Centore advances. Here I would like simply to review the actual content of the Deely-Nogar book, for purposes of setting the record straight. The Problem of Evolution falls into three parts. Part I is an essay by John Deely in the philosophy of science, entitled " The Impact of Evolution on Scientific Method." Part II is a carefully organized selection of readings. Part III is a very complete bibliography, keyed, respectively, to the essay in Part I and to each of the six sections of readings in Part II. The complex interrelations running through the work as a whole are rendered manageable, for the sufficiently motivated reader, by an 8-page table of contents supplemented at the end of the volume by a ~5-page double-column index of proper names, subjects, and key terms. By far the most important part of the book is Part I. Readers conversant with the situation of the philosophy of science in North America during the 1950's and 1960's know that the main workers in the field were either of an analytic and positivistic persuasion, taking mathematical physics as the paradigm...