Review article
Some Contextually-Ideological Aspects of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution with Respect to Its Origin and Promotion
Stjepan Radić
; Catholic Faculty of Theology in Đakovo, J. J. Strossmayer University of Osijek, Đakovo, Croatia
Abstract
In his paper the author examines worldview aspects of Darwin’s theory of evolution with respect to both its origin and its later philosophical and social interpretation. Therefore, the first part of the paper wants to point out the fact that, besides the purely scientific elements, there were other worldview and social elements in which Darwin actively participated that played an important role in creating the theory of evolution. The author places special emphasis to this fact by using the indicative term “contextual colouring” of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The author moves on with special emphasis to the interpretation of fundamental principles of the theory of evolution, that is, its promotion on the general social level. The author comes to the conclusion that this interpretation had a strong instrumentalizing and ideologizing character. As an example of the first (instrumentalizing), the author mentions Ernst Haeckel and his radically materializing world view in the light of Darwin’s theory, and for the latter (ideologizing) aspect, he chose the Marxist reception of the theory of evolution, which saw in it a strong support for its vision of the world and society. Both examples manifest an arbitrary interpretation of fundamental principles of the theory of evolution by pulling them out of their context. The author concludes his analysis with some final insights in which he puts great emphasis to the fact that these instrumentalizing and ideologizing interpretations of evolutionary principles are also present in modern times, in connection with which he (only) mentions the most prominent advocate of this approach, Richard Dawkins.
Keywords
theory of evolution; worldview; mechanicism; instrumentalization; ideologization; Ernst Haeckel – naturalistic monism; Marxism – dialectical materialism
Hrčak ID:
79958
URI
Publication date:
26.4.2012.
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