I am on my morning break and don't have time to write it out myself but Charles Darwin, your greatest of all heroes, had similar observations about the problems that your materialism, reductionism and scientism causes for the validity of all human thought, and, Bunky, that has to include science, even evolutionary science and even mathematics. It even applies to the intellectual product of your greathero your greatest, yet unread (by you) oracle, Charles Darwin.
From The Darwin Correspondence Project, a letter from Darwin to William Graham* Quoted in full, not "quote mined" "cherry-picked" or in violation of any of the lexicon of atheist nonsense. Complete with its racism, enthusiastic anticipation of the extermination of racial and ethnic groups in favor of Europeans, [apparently he was under the delusion that the Turks had ceased to exist] his doubts about the significance of human thought, impeaching the reliability of science ON THE BASIS OF HIS THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION, etc. Something which is continued in the absolute debasing of thought by nero-cognitive "science", something which is inevitable whenever you begin by insisting that the material universe is the only thing there is.
What also jumps out at me is also Darwin's claim to have "no practice in abstract thinking" when his life's work gained its highest fame in exactly abstract thinking, since all of it is the product of his imagination, not on observed evidence. I would agree if he had put the word "rigorous" before abstract in that sentence. If he had meant mathematics, it is remarkable how little his theories rely on measurement for what is often claimed as the greatest of all scientific theories. I beg to differ on that estimate.
July 3rd. 1881.
Dear Sir
I hope that you will not think it intrusive on my part to thank you heartily for the pleasure which I have derived from reading your admirably written `Creed of Science,' though I have not yet quite finished it, as now that I am old I read very slowly. It is a very long time since any other book has interested me so much. The work must have cost you several years and much hard labour with full leisure for work. You would not probably expect anyone fully to agree with you on so many abstruse subjects; and there are some points in your book which I cannot digest. The chief one is that the existence of so-called natural laws implies purpose. I cannot see this. Not to mention that many expect that the several great laws will some day be found to follow inevitably from some one single law, yet taking the laws as we now know them, and look at the moon, what the law of gravitation -- and no doubt of the conservation of energy -- of the atomic theory, &c. &c. hold good, and I cannot see that there is then necessarily any purpose. Would there be purpose if the lowest organisms alone destitute of consciousness existed in the moon? But I have had no practice in abstract reasoning and I may be all astray. Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? Secondly I think that I could make somewhat of a case against the enormous importance which you attribute to our greatest men: I have been accustomed to think, 2nd, 3rd and 4th rate men of very high importance, at least in the case of Science.
Lastly I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilisation than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risks the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is. The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world. But I will write no more, and not even mention the many points in your work which have much interested me. I have indeed cause to apologise for troubling you with my impressions, and my sole excuse is the excitement in my mind which your book has aroused.
I beg leave to remain | Dear Sir | Yours faithfully and obliged Charles Darwin.
* William Graham 1839–1911
Philosopher and political economist. Professor of jurisprudence and political economy, Belfast, 1882–1909.
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