Only Darwin

"Only a theory with the logical shape of Darwin's could explain how designed things came to exist, because any other sort of explanation would be either a vicious circle or an infinite regress." (Dennett 1995, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, p. 70)

Genes as social viruses

"Our genes are like a colony of viruses — socialized viruses, as opposed to anarchic viruses. They're socialized in the sense that they all work together to produce the body and make the body do what's good for all of them. The only reason they do that is that they all are destined to leave the present body and enter the next generation by the same route, sperms or eggs. If they could break out of that route and get to the next generation by being sneezed out and breathed in by the next victim, that's what they would do.

Those are what we call anarchic viruses. Anarchic viruses, the ones that make us sneeze, are the ones that don't agree with each other. They don't care if we die. All they want to do is make us sneeze, or, in the case of the rabies virus, make the dog salivate and bite. But most of our genes are socialized viruses, socialized replicators. They're disciplined and cooperative precisely because they have only one way out of the present body: by sperm or egg." (Dawkins in Brockman 1996, The Third Culture)

A continual progress of the desire

"We are to consider that the felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor Summum Bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man any more live whose desires are at an end than he whose senses and imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter. The cause whereof is that the object of man’s desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire. And therefore the voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life, and differ only in the way, which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions in diverse men, and partly from the difference of the knowledge or opinion each one has of the causes which produce the effect desired.
So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power, but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more." (Hobbes 1651, Leviathan, p. 160)

De weg van de minste weerstand

"Telkens weer zeggen mensen diepzinnige of cute dingen en noemen dat filosofisch. Zij willen hun gedachten graag uitzaaien en geven ze prijs aan de wind. Wat jammer nu, de zaden waaien over en schieten geen wortel. Ze komen op de aarde niet aan omdat ze te ijl zijn om beproefd te worden. Zo ijl zijn ze dat niemand dat hoeft te merken.

Nederland beschikt sinds enkele jaren over denkers des vaderlands. De eerste, Achterhuis, vindt dat filosofie tegendenken is. De volgende, zelfbenoemde denker des vaderlands, Gude, zegt: aha, ik ga tegendenken tegen het tegendenken, dus ik doe aan meedenken.

Of je nu meedenkt of tegendenkt, het maakt niet uit, je kunt rustig van filosofie blijven spreken. Dat wil zeggen: je kunt zeggen wat je wilt, er is qua filosofie niets uitgesloten. Dat betekent weer dat het informatiegehalte van filosofie gelijk is aan nul. Informatie is namelijk verschil dat verschil maakt. En dat doet filosofie niet. Wat er gezegd wordt kan vervangen worden door het tegendeel ervan zonder dat er in de wereld iets verandert. Filosofie is indifferent." (Oudemans 2014, Inleiding tot het oratieproject)

"The selfish DNA hypothesis is based on this assumption: phenotypic characters are there because they help DNA to replicate itself, and if DNA can find quicker and easier ways to replicate itself, perhaps bypassing conventional phenotypic expression, it will be selected to do so." (Dawkins 1982, The Extended Phenotype, p. 158)

Een gelukkig gevonden woord

"Een gelukkig gevonden woord is niet willekeurig geponeerd, maar bewaart het geschichtliche spreken der taal in zich om door zijn zeggen de geschiedenis tot de mogelijkheid ener beslissing en verandering te brengen." (Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger: De weg van zijn denken, p. 311)

Historie als museumstuk

"When you are actually challenged to think of pre-Darwinian answers to the questions 'What is man?' 'Is there a meaning to life?' 'What are we for?', can you, as a matter of fact, think of any that are not now worthless except for their (considerable) historic interest? There is such a thing as being just plain wrong, and that is what, before 1859, all answers to those questions were." (Dawkins 2009, The Selfish Gene, p. 267)

"Locke's a priori proof of the inconceivability of Design without Mind [...] is now as obsolete as the quill pen with which it was written, a fascinating museum piece, a curiosity that can do no real work in the intellectual world today." (Dennett 1995, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, p. 83)

Good vs. greedy reductionism

"We must distinguish reductionism, which is in general a good thing, from greedy reductionism, which is not. The difference, in the context of Darwin's theory, is simple: greedy reductionists think that everything can be explained without cranes; good reductionists think that everything can be explained without skyhooks." (Dennett 1995, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, pp. 81-82)

Scientists singing their own "la-la" song

"For over a hundred years, most social scientists have refused to face the Darwinian music - preferring instead to put their fingers in their ears and sing their own 'la-la' song." (Tyler 2011, Memetics, p. 17)

Het lot van een humanist

"For one of Hamilton's readers the impact of the idea of the selfish gene was tragic. George Price taught himself genetics in order to disprove Hamilton's stark conclusion that altruism was just genetic selfishness, but instead proved it indisputably correct - indeed, even improved the algebra and made some important contributions to the theory himself. The two began to collaborate, but Price, who was showing increasing signs of mental instability, turned to religion for solace, gave away all his possessions to the poor and committed suicide in a bare and cold London squat, some letters from Hamilton among his few possessions." (Ridley 1996, The Origins of Virtue, p. 19)

Duck-Rabbits

Leven

"Anything that can use the resources of the world to get copies of itself made is alive; the most likely form for such a thing to take is a digital message - a number, a script or a word." (Ridley 1999, Genome, p. 15)

Darwin-boeken verzamelaar

The reality of variation

"For the typologist, the type (eidos) is real and the variation an illusion, while for the populationist the type (average) is an abstraction and only the variation is real." (Mayr 1959)

Een onachterhaalbare oorsprong

"Een oorsprong kan zich niet tonen zonder datgene te veronderstellen waarvan ze oorsprong had moeten zijn en zonder haar absoluutheid te verliezen. De 'echte' oorsprong, als die er is, onttrekt zich dus aan elke formulering. Een verwijzing naar een oorsprong kan alleen een spoor of een supplement van een oorsprong opleveren, opgenomen in een web van betekenisrelaties die eindeloos blijven verwijzen naar wat onbereikbaar blijft, naar wat altijd al vooraf is gegaan." (Evink, Het verlangen alles te zeggen)

Het primaat van de taal

"In the beginning was the word. The word proselytised the sea with its message, copying itself unceasingly and forever. The word discovered how to rearrange chemicals so as to capture little eddies in the stream of entropy and make them live. The word transformed the land surface of the planet from a dusty hell to a verdant paradise. The word eventually blossomed and became sufficiently ingenious to build a porridgy contraption called a human brain that could discover and be aware of the word itself." (Ridley 1999, Genome, p. 11)

Door een beeld bevangen

"113 'Het is toch zo -' zeg ik telkens opnieuw bij mijzelf. Ik heb het gevoel of ik het wezen van de zaak zou begrijpen als ik mijn blik maar eenmaal heel scherp op dit feit kon instellen, als ik het in het brandpunt kon krijgen.

114 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (4.5): 'De algemene vorm van een bewering luidt: het is zo en zo'. - Dat is het soort bewering dat je ontelbare malen bij jezelf herhaalt. Je gelooft alsmaar de essentie van iets na te trekken en volgt in werkelijkheid alleen maar de vorm waardoor we het bekijken.

115 Een beeld hield ons gevangen. En we konden er niet uit, want het lag in onze taal, en het leek of die het alleen maar onverbiddelijk voor ons herhaalde." (Wittgenstein 1976, Filosofische Onderzoekingen, p. 85)

Een zich verhullend aspect

"When you are actually challenged to think of pre-Darwinian answers to the questions 'What is man?' 'Is there a meaning to life?' 'What are we for?', can you, as  a matter of fact, think of any that are not now worthless except for their (considerable) historic interest? There is such a thing as being just plain wrong, and that is what, before 1859, all answers to those questions were." (Dawkins 2006, The Selfish Gene, p. 267)

"Het darwinisme is één grote aspectwisseling. Wat mij interesseert is: Dat aspect wordt zo alles overheersend, dat de mogelijkheid om nog te zien dat het een aspect is wegvalt. Eigenlijk vinden wij alles wat vroeger over het leven is gezegd onzin. Maar dan is de vraag: is het een aspect? Kun je dat nog zeggen?" (Oudemans 2001, Humanisme en Biotechnologie, p. 146)

In the light of evolution

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." (Dobhansky)

"Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems much henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of though must follow this is what evolution is." (Teilhard de Chardin)

A cybernetic machine

“It is very hard to give a non-supernatural account of the human brain and human emotions, feelings and apparent free will, without regarding the brain as, in some sense, the equivalent of a programmed cybernetic machine.” (Dawkins 2008, The Extended Phenotype, p. 17)

The river-bed of thoughts

"94. I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctnes. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.

95. The propositions describing this world-picture might be part of a kind of mythology. And their role is like that of rules of a game; and the game can be learned purely practically, without learning any explicit rules.

96. It might be imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical propositions, were hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical propositions as were not hardened but fluid; and that this relation altered with time, in that fluid propositions hardened, and hard ones became fluid.

97. The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself; though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other.

99. And the bank of that river consist partly of hard rock, subject to no alteration or only to an imperceptible one, partly of sand, which now in one place now in another gets washed away, or deposited." (Wittgenstein 1969, On Certainty, p.15)

In het lood staan

"Het denken, gehoorzaam aan de stem van het zijn, zoekt daarvoor het woord, het woord waarin de waarheid van het zijn ter sprake komt. Pas wanneer de taal van de mens die door de geschiedenis getekend is aan het woord ontspringt, staat ze in het lood. Staat ze in het lood, dan wenkt haar de waarborg, dat zijn de klank-loze stem zal horen van verborgen bronnen." (Heidegger 2009, Wat is Metafysica?, p. 83 [54])