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Foreword
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Foreword I am honored to write the foreword for this book. This invitation indicates that at least at some points the exclusion of humanistic concerns from the sciences is breaking down. Here even a theologian has been invited. I look forward to the day when it will be widely recognized both that theology is too important to be left to professional theologians and that science is too important to be left to professional scientists. We need an inclusive vision that makes sense of our experience of the world and of all that science has taught us about it. I am a philosophical theologian. Like many humanists, I have an understanding of my world that is extensively informed by science; so I have a lay understanding of several fields. One field in which I have been particularly interested is the history of life on the planet, usually called evolutionary biology. I collaborated with an ecologist, Charles Birch, on a book titled The Liberation of Life. More recently I edited the contributions that resulted from a small conference that took place at our graduate school of theology (and Whiteheadian philosophy) in Claremont, California, for publication in a book titled Back to Darwin: A Richer Account of Evolution. The contributors included biologists (of whom Lynn Margulis was one), other scientists, philosophers, and theologians. I am a strong supporter of evolution but am quite critical of the way it is usually presented by what we outsiders call “neo-Darwinism.” I am opposed to reductionism and determinism, and I find the dominant presentation of evolution to be characterized by both. It is my judgment that this commitment of so much of science derives from the seventeenthcentury metaphysics with which modern science grew up rather than from the actual modern observations and data. This metaphysics has been outgrown in advanced regions of physics, but it has maintained its hold on mainstream biology. x Foreword When the evolution of species, including the human species, was demonstrated by Darwin, scientists did not change their view of nature as matter in motion but rather simply extended it to include human beings. The implication is that the ideas presented by scientists are to be explained by reducing them to matter in motion rather than attending to their meaning and the detailed evidence in their favor. This reductio ad absurdum suggests something I do not believe. We are not zombies. Neither we nor other animals, plants, or microorganisms have evolved from automata. If we take account of animal (including human) experience and activity, this reductionism can be overcome. More of the actual evidence garnered from many scientific fields can be coherently explained. We can study the evolution of what in this book are called “selves” as well as the evolution of bodies. Both “symbiogenesis” and “Gaia” refer to the activity of living things as causally explanatory of what happens. Hence I am prejudiced in their favor. Of course, I have tried to attend to arguments against them, but these have not seemed strong. I believe that their systematic omission from typical explanations of evolution reflects the metaphysical prejudice of which I have spoken rather than lack of evidence. All of this is to say that I approach this book with enthusiasm. I know of no other book like it. The closest with which I happen to be familiar is Evolution in Four Dimensions by Eva Jablonka and Marian J. Lamb. It is written as a single integrated argument against genetic determinism rather than a collection of papers. But the scientific data provided in it deal with only a small fraction of the subject matter presented here. The authors of these chapters are quite diverse, but in general the book presents living thing as selves that act rather than as machines manipulated by genes. Genes certainly play an important role, but the writers are open to a much wider range of forces operating with living things and therefore in their evolution. The extensive attention to the early stages of evolution places what zoologists discuss in illuminating perspective. Not being a scientist, I cannot speak with authority on the subject of the scientific accuracy of all that is said. However, I have very little doubt that the authors are all responsible scientists. They present evidence without forcing it to fit with the scientific metaphysics that plays so large a role in modern biology. They do not go far to draw the conclusions that are of special philosophical interest...