R.I.P. Gertude Himmelfarb — Critic of Darwinism
The passing of historian Gertrude Himmelfarb on December 30 2019 was brought to my attention by an article from the Discovery Institute¹. It describes her as a “consummate scholar of the first rank” and “one of America’s leading scholars and intellectuals”. It is now over 60 years since one of her greatest achievements Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution² was published. I read it several years ago, and was very impressed.
People following me on Medium will know that I have previously written many articles critical of Darwinism³. Himmelfarb has been one of my inspirations. The article, which includes a quote from her, says that “far from constructing sound empirical arguments, Darwin usually engaged in rhetorical sleight-of-hand where ‘possibilities were promoted into probabilities, and probabilities into certainties, so ignorance itself was raised to a position only once removed from certain knowledge’ ” (p 335).
Other questions from her introduction are:
- “How did it come about that one so limited intellectually and insensitive culturally should have devised a theory so massive in structure and sweeping in significance?”
- “Was Darwinism a legitimate heir of Darwin?” How did an abstruse scientific treatise “become a metaphysics, politics and economics?”
- How is it that “a scientist, with the most innocent of intentions and the best of faith, can give birth to a theory which has an ancestry of which he may be ignorant, and a life of its own over which he has no control?” (all quotes Pviii)
The last comment suggests that those who followed Darwin have elevated his tenuous theory to a status way beyond what it deserved. We know who these people are, and their motivation — fanatical atheists like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Coyne and Julian Huxley. Darwinism has become a cornerstone of what we might call the modern Scientific Dictatorship.
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I hope you have enjoyed this article. I have written in the past about other topics, including spirituality, metaphysics, psychology, science, Christianity, politics, and astrology. All these articles are on Medium, but the simplest way to see a guide to them is to visit my website (click here and here).
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Footnotes:
2. Chatto & Windus, 1959
3. for a guide, see under Evolution on this page of my website.
