So this is the reason why I hesitate to label myself a “conservative,” they are attacking Darwin (or what they believe Darwinism is) over at Free Republic. If conservative means to defend America’s western liberal traditions, I’m a conservative. If it means standing with the good Bishop against Huxley, well, that’s a whole different cup of tea….
Comments from Jason
The author of the attack on Darwin is the late David Stove, IMHO a much over-rated Australian philosopher who seems to have had a habit of attacking thinkers he didn’t understand and making a mess of their arguments. Karl Popper seems to be another target of Stove’s ire – ironically his famous book Anything goes accuses Popper of being responsible for irrationalist postmodernism – despite the fact that Popper was one of the few philosophers of science that actual practising scientists like Albert Einstein and Peter Medawar thought highly of. Stove is also championed by the neo-conservative New Criterion crowd, not just grassroots Freepers whose ignorance can be excused. It’s a very disappointing state of affairs but rather ironic that the anti-Darwinian Stove is the neo-cons’ poster boy against ‘irrationalism’ (a category with which they conflate the falsificationism of Popper with the hijinks of Feyerabrand).
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