Biology seems to be the only science that conserves, in an extended version, a more than one hundred years old Research program: Darwinism. Although it is not just the Darwinism of Darwin - who knew nothing about DNA, RNA or proteins- the persistence of this explanation about the origin of species is weird. It keeps on conserving a rigid nucleus that has survived an important crisis that took place at the beginning of XX century. The Neo-Darwinism of the Fifties has surpassed this crisis.
Recently, abolition of teaching of the Darwinism (or teaching it along with alternative evolutionary models) in Natural Sciences lessons of certain American schools has been attempted. From then, the idea of a beginning of fracture in a structure considered so impregnable has become popular. In the discussion were involved those whom, as Behe, were for the idea of an Intelligent Design. Popular disagreement has increased still more by taking knowledge of alternative models, such as Kauffman’s Complex Systems Theory, or as Margulis’s Symbiogenesis. That happened after years learning at school -in a clearly vulgarized and wrong way - that "Men descend from monkeys".
In consequence, certain Spanish Universities accepted to give conferences about Intelligent Design in its cloisters. Many scientists, who returned to Darwinian project, objected this.
Darwinism does not die by a generalized indifference due to this controversy.
This discussion has also stimulated the resurgence of alternative ideas proposing modifications in physic rules statements. These ideas invoke an astral plane of cosmic forces, named “counter-space", capable of creating atoms "from nothing". They also invoke the capacity of mitochondrion to operate like particle accelerators, capable to transmute pure chemical elements into others by means of a cold fusion process.
I’ m specifically thinking about an spanish engineer trained in the school of Rudolf Steiner called Francesc Fígols. This author develops a sort of wonderful coherent dream in which he joins all the commonly named pseudo sciences, like homeopathy, with other disciplines seated just in the periphery of science, like Gaia Theory. He claims that life had not an origin in Earth, because Earth was always alive. Mountains formerly had properties of fluidity and locomotion, as well as Earth has emerged from Sun, like a sort of developing embryo. Earth has sheltered embryonic living forms that ramified into "crystallized species ". For a while, a central human core waited for the proper conditions to lose its cartilaginous character in order to acquire a solid and perfect skeleton, with a maximum capacity brain, doing better than other hominids. This hominids were not more than degenerated forms of what was going to come. There has never been one more opposite position to Darwin’s, although it’s based on nearly the same evidence.
It is not too strange that a dream like this had appeared at a time of paradigm crysis like which Biology suffers nowadays. I say “dream” to oppose it to official science, understood like “vigil”.
It is not an original idea. Plato spoke of an involution of the species, and even then he sets humanity at the top of the living hierarchy. I only want to discuss two of the Fígol’s ideas, summarized from the reading of the book Cosmos and Gea.
In first place, his theory requires too many changes in other scientific disciplines to be accepted as an alternative project of investigation respect of Darwinism. For instance, he assumes the existence of forces coming from the totality of Cosmos towards the living beings. These forces would give them form in an astrological way. In addition, he accepts cold fusion and creation of stuff "from nothing". All this turns to be unacceptable due to which I would name a "necessary conservatism".
It’s a simple thing: if everything is allowed, nothing can be explained. The creation and the transmutation of stuff put ourselves one step behind which the own Darwinism would dare to accept in matter of hazard. Movement of life could even transcend the physical and chemical restrictions. There is no science without rules, nor rules without restrictions and principles of conservation. In a universe where a fact cannot be repeated (not even approximately), nothing is a fact.
Secondly, it is interesting that Fígol’s theory draw on to the same Darwin’s argument for the non-existence of a complex fauna in the Pre-Cambrian era: the soft bodies do not leave fossil traces. This is why men in cartilaginous or embryonic state have not been discovered. The common trunk from which has sprout the mineralized branches was constituted -according to Fígols- by that embryonic men.
All this does not mean that this charming work, mixture of science, magic and science fiction, lacks of some sparkles of ideas, sparkles of possible future scientific development. I would compare this Fígol’s work with Olaf Stapledon’s "Star Maker" (a novel containing an interesting anticipation of Symbiogenesis Theory).
Copyright Daniel Omar Stchigel. All rights reserved.
Recently, abolition of teaching of the Darwinism (or teaching it along with alternative evolutionary models) in Natural Sciences lessons of certain American schools has been attempted. From then, the idea of a beginning of fracture in a structure considered so impregnable has become popular. In the discussion were involved those whom, as Behe, were for the idea of an Intelligent Design. Popular disagreement has increased still more by taking knowledge of alternative models, such as Kauffman’s Complex Systems Theory, or as Margulis’s Symbiogenesis. That happened after years learning at school -in a clearly vulgarized and wrong way - that "Men descend from monkeys".
In consequence, certain Spanish Universities accepted to give conferences about Intelligent Design in its cloisters. Many scientists, who returned to Darwinian project, objected this.
Darwinism does not die by a generalized indifference due to this controversy.
This discussion has also stimulated the resurgence of alternative ideas proposing modifications in physic rules statements. These ideas invoke an astral plane of cosmic forces, named “counter-space", capable of creating atoms "from nothing". They also invoke the capacity of mitochondrion to operate like particle accelerators, capable to transmute pure chemical elements into others by means of a cold fusion process.
I’ m specifically thinking about an spanish engineer trained in the school of Rudolf Steiner called Francesc Fígols. This author develops a sort of wonderful coherent dream in which he joins all the commonly named pseudo sciences, like homeopathy, with other disciplines seated just in the periphery of science, like Gaia Theory. He claims that life had not an origin in Earth, because Earth was always alive. Mountains formerly had properties of fluidity and locomotion, as well as Earth has emerged from Sun, like a sort of developing embryo. Earth has sheltered embryonic living forms that ramified into "crystallized species ". For a while, a central human core waited for the proper conditions to lose its cartilaginous character in order to acquire a solid and perfect skeleton, with a maximum capacity brain, doing better than other hominids. This hominids were not more than degenerated forms of what was going to come. There has never been one more opposite position to Darwin’s, although it’s based on nearly the same evidence.
It is not too strange that a dream like this had appeared at a time of paradigm crysis like which Biology suffers nowadays. I say “dream” to oppose it to official science, understood like “vigil”.
It is not an original idea. Plato spoke of an involution of the species, and even then he sets humanity at the top of the living hierarchy. I only want to discuss two of the Fígol’s ideas, summarized from the reading of the book Cosmos and Gea.
In first place, his theory requires too many changes in other scientific disciplines to be accepted as an alternative project of investigation respect of Darwinism. For instance, he assumes the existence of forces coming from the totality of Cosmos towards the living beings. These forces would give them form in an astrological way. In addition, he accepts cold fusion and creation of stuff "from nothing". All this turns to be unacceptable due to which I would name a "necessary conservatism".
It’s a simple thing: if everything is allowed, nothing can be explained. The creation and the transmutation of stuff put ourselves one step behind which the own Darwinism would dare to accept in matter of hazard. Movement of life could even transcend the physical and chemical restrictions. There is no science without rules, nor rules without restrictions and principles of conservation. In a universe where a fact cannot be repeated (not even approximately), nothing is a fact.
Secondly, it is interesting that Fígol’s theory draw on to the same Darwin’s argument for the non-existence of a complex fauna in the Pre-Cambrian era: the soft bodies do not leave fossil traces. This is why men in cartilaginous or embryonic state have not been discovered. The common trunk from which has sprout the mineralized branches was constituted -according to Fígols- by that embryonic men.
All this does not mean that this charming work, mixture of science, magic and science fiction, lacks of some sparkles of ideas, sparkles of possible future scientific development. I would compare this Fígol’s work with Olaf Stapledon’s "Star Maker" (a novel containing an interesting anticipation of Symbiogenesis Theory).
Copyright Daniel Omar Stchigel. All rights reserved.
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