Science, philosophy, and metaphor in Ernst Mayr's writings
Science, philosophy, and metaphor in Ernst Mayr's writings
复制标题
恩斯特·迈尔著作中的科学、哲学和隐喻
DOI：
10.1007/bf01062565
复制
发表时间：
1994
影响因子：
0.8
通讯作者：
J. C. Greene
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. C. Greene
与朱利安·赫胥黎爵士一样，恩斯特·迈尔也是进化生物学中新达尔文主义综合论的奠基人。迈尔已九十岁高龄，仍然非常活跃，他所秉持的世界观在很多方面与赫胥黎的世界观相似，但在重要方面又有所不同。 2 与赫胥黎一样，他寻求科学，尤其是进化生物学，以放松传统宗教和唯心主义哲学对现代思想的束缚，并为新伦理、新世俗信仰和新人类形象提供科学基础。 3 但是，对于赫胥黎来说，这种伦理宗教动机几乎主导了他所写和所做的一切，而在迈尔的例子中，发现和阐述新版本的自然选择进化论的科学冲动，让自然主义系统论者占据了重要地位，一直是驱动力。赫胥黎放弃了一所伟大大学的固定职位，转而撰写书籍和论文，旨在传播基于达尔文生物学的新信仰，而迈尔直到晚年才转向生物学的历史和哲学。然而，正如我们将看到的，迈尔和赫胥黎作为进化生物学家和新达尔文主义人与自然观的倡导者有很多共同点。和赫胥黎一样，迈尔是反还原论者和反决定论者，同时也是反生命论者、反目的论者、反神论者和反创造论者。和赫胥黎一样，他认为查尔斯·达尔文是一位思想家，他发展了一种对机械还原论和神创论终极论致命的科学世界观，并为进化发展的历史有机主义概念奠定了基础。和赫胥黎一样，他认为科学已经变得越来越独立于宗教和哲学：“没有什么比达尔文革命更明确地表明科学从宗教和哲学中解放出来了。” 4 与赫胥黎一样，迈尔相信科学可以提供对现实的描述，从而为伦理学提供充分的基础。因此，这应该很有趣
Like Sir Julian Huxley, Ernst Mayr ranks as a founding father of the neo-Darwinian synthesis in evolutionary biology. At ninety years of age and still very active, Mayr upholds a worldview similar in many ways to Huxley's, but different in important respects. 2 Like Huxley, he looks to science, and especially to evolutionary biology, to loosen the grip of traditional religions and idealistic philosophies on modern thought and to provide a scientific basis for a new ethics, a new secular faith, and a new image of humans. 3 But whereas for Huxley this ethical-religious motive dominated nearly everything he wrote and did, in Mayr's case the scientific impulse toward discovering and expounding a new version of the theory of evolution by natural selection, giving pride of place to the naturalistsystematist, has been the driving force. Whereas Huxley gave up a secure position in a great university in order to write books and essays designed to propagate a new faith based on Darwinian biology, Mayr turned to the history and philosophy of biology only in his later years. Nevertheless, as we shall see, Mayr and Huxley have much in common both as evolutionary biologists and as advocates of a neo-Darwinian view of man and nature. Like Huxley, Mayr is antireductionist and antideterminist and at the same time antivitalist, antiteleologist, antitheist, and anticreationist. Like Huxley, he looks to Charles Darwin as the thinker who developed a scientific worldview fatal to both mechanistic reductionism and creationist finalism, and who laid the groundwork for a historico-organicist conception of evolutionary development. Like Huxley, he believes that science has become increasingly inde-pendent of religion and philosophy:" Nothing signaled the emancipation of science from religion and philosophy more defi-nitely than the Darwinian revolution." 4 Like Huxley, Mayr believes that science can supply a description of reality capable of providing an adequate basis for ethics. It should be interesting, therefore, to