Purpose in the Living World?: Creation and Emergent Evolution
Cambridge University Press, 12/4/2008
EAN 9780521729437, ISBN10: 0521729432
Paperback, 322 pages, 21.5 x 13.7 x 1.5 cm
Language: English
Are evolution and creation irreconcilably opposed? Is 'intelligent design' theory an unhappy compromise? Is there another way of approaching the present-day divide between religious and so-called secular views of the origins of life? Jacob Klapwijk offers a philosophical analysis of the relation of evolutionary biology to religion, and addresses the question of whether the evolution of life is exclusively a matter of chance or is better understood as including the notion of purpose. Writing from a Christian (Augustinian) point of view, he criticizes creationism and intelligent design theory as well as opposing reductive naturalism. He offers an alternative to both and an attempt to bridge the gap between them, via the idea of 'emergent evolution'. In this theory the process of evolution has an emergent or innovative character resulting in a living world of ingenious, multifaceted complexity.
Preface
Introduction
1. Does life on Earth have a purpose?
2. Creationism, intelligent design, and Augustine's idea of time
3. Darwin, neo-Darwinism and the naturalistic continuity claim
4. Miller's pre-biotic broth and the premises of evolutionism
5. A cold shudder along Darwin's back
6. The emergence theory of Morgan and Alexander
7. Luctor et emergo
what is emergent evolution?
8. Towards a general theory of emergent evolution
9. Hominization and the philosophy of mind
10. Augustinian faith and evolutionary science
11. The organism is a whole. The world is a habitat
12. The slumbering temptation of essentialism
13. Questions surrounding the emergence process
14. Enkapsis in nature. Is there an omega point?
Bibliography
Index.