Gaia—Darwin’s
idea:
once more with meaning
by
Alison Harwood
ABSTRACT:
Dennett asserts that Darwin’s idea can reconcile valued human concepts
with scientific explanation and in this way preserve humanity’s belief and
pride in its own uniqueness. On the contrary, as represented by Dennett,
Darwinian explanation eliminates meaning, the element which grounds particularly
human concepts, because of its emphasis on reductionism. However, the failure
lies not in reductionism per se, but
in the tendency to its near-exclusive emphasis. To retain meaning, a wholistic
view is necessary; one which combines reductivism, materialism and mechanistic
explanation as well as such things as internal causation and cooperative
inter-relations, and uses a multi-disciplinary scientific approach. This
combination enables the employment of explanation which is top-down, but
nevertheless soundly supported by reductionist principles. The Gaia hypothesis
is an evolutionary explanation which, in employing this type of wholistic view,
places an emphasis on life force as a generalised principle from which meaning
can derive.
According
to Dennett, Darwinian explanation is seen to eliminate meaning and in this way
to threaten belief in the value of human concepts. However, he argues that
Darwin’s idea merely seems dangerous, and instead actually strengthens
the value of human ideas by eliminating the mystery previously attached to
them. I will argue to the contrary: that Dennett’s presentation of Darwinian
explanation reinforces it as threatening humanity’s confidence in itself,
through the emphasis on reductionist principles and the dismissal of wholism. It
will be shown that, in falling victim to a common misinterpretation of the Gaia
hypothesis as teleological, Dennett misses a valuable opportunity to reinforce
his argument because Lovelock’s idea, as evolutionary explanation with
meaning, provides the answer to reconciling Darwin’s idea with human concepts.
Through an approach which, by the employment of both reductionist and wholistic
principles, combines both top-down and bottom-up explanation, the Gaia
emphasises the power and mystery of life, and suggests a generalised concept of
divinity from which humanity can derive meaning.
Evolution’s
explanation of humanity as a meaningless by-product of arbitrary processes means
that human qualities and achievements, no longer unique, must be reconfigured as
mere “artifacts”,1 and that the concept of meaning becomes
problematic. Meaning has been fundamental to human existence for as long as
humanity can remember because, as Dennett says, we like to ask “why”.2
Meaning grounds explanations of why things happen or exist, and these
explanations constitute our understanding of reality and thus shape the nature
of our existence. However, as Dennett explains, when “the biggest ‘why’
question”, the meaning of life, becomes nonsensical, so do smaller ‘whys’.3
As evolution’s answer to the biggest ‘why’ question is that life has no
meaning, it is feared that evolution “will not just explain but explain away the Minds and Purposes and Meanings that we all hold
dear”.4 To Dennett, the “seductiveness” of evolution’s
explanatory power, as seemingly all-encompassing, is its most dangerous aspect5—it
encourages incorrect explanations that may result in the “intolerable moral
implications”6 of nihilism: if everything
is meaningless, why should we care about anything? Therefore Darwin’s idea seems dangerous. However,
according to Dennett, like determinism, the danger lies not in its truth, but in
the consequences of belief in its truth.7
Therefore,
to Dennett, evolution’s implications are “far-reaching”.8
Because Darwinian explanation seems to eliminate meaning, it threatens necessary
existential human concepts and, in an environment transformed by the Darwinian
principle, they must be rethought: like faith, they must either evolve or become
extinct.9 But is evolutionary explanation applicable to concepts like
faith? If everything is meaningless, what can
we have faith in? As Dennett asks,
“Does Darwin’s dangerous idea give us anything in exchange for the ideas it
calls into question?”10 He believes it does. According to Dennett,
the danger of Darwin’s idea is illusory, and rather than denying the
“‘miracles’ of life and consciousness”, it instead makes them more
miraculous than ever.11 He believes that, correctly applied,
Darwinian explanation illuminates human concepts by clarifying “why”
questions in the light of scientific explanation12—through
demystification.
Demystification
is achieved through scientific explanation which relies on reductionist and
materialistic principles and Dennett champions Darwin’s idea—“reductionism
incarnate”—as illustrating how, when carefully used, reductionism can
succeed in a conversely unified and wholistic explanation.13 Although
reductionism, by isolating component parts and mechanisms from their context,
would seem to preclude a wholistic view unless these components can be
re-assembled convincingly, to Dennett, it becomes problematic only when used to
excess to become “greedy reductionism”,14 in which the underestimation of complexity results in the
falsification of phenomena. As scientific, Darwinian explanation isolates and
reduces organisms to physical components to explain them in physical terms.
Therefore abstract and evaluative concepts which transcend these terms are
inexplicable because they are ‘metaphysical’—beyond the physical. However,
Dennett argues that if they are demystified, their metaphysical appearance is
dissolved and they then become explicable under the evolutionary principle. For
example, the concept of meaning can be explained as a survival mechanism that
has evolved through the use of intellectual faculties to determine responses to
external stimuli.15 These responses are guided by evolution’s
underlying purpose—the replication of genetic information. However, although
this type of explanation seems to
preserve these concepts, preservation has a condition attached: it is based on
evolution’s meaningless purpose: reduced to mechanisms these concepts become
‘inhuman’. If the answer to the biggest ‘why’ question is genetic
replication, human beings are nothing more than organisms participating in an
‘inhuman’ struggle for existence.
Dennett
argues that transcendent concepts can be preserved as specifically human through memetic explanation.
Memetics explains transcendent elements reductively, but uses the meme as a
cognitive unit which transcends the ‘inhuman’ gene. To Dennett, preservation
is enabled by the argument that origin does not determine value because, through
evolution, origin and final function differ. For example, if genes are regarded
simply as the original source of
intentionality, then human identity, explicable as an evolutionary product that
facilitates survival through social behaviour, can be retained as a concept
which has meaninglessly evolved but nevertheless remains transcendent. However,
Dennett admits that the “prospects for elaborating a rigorous science of
memetics are doubtful”16 because the evolutionary descent of memes
cannot be traced. As the meme has not yet been identified, memetics remains
conjectural: although reductionist, it lacks material and mechanism, and so is
not scientific. Furthermore, Darwinian explanation of human concepts in terms of
survival is incommensurable with “why” questions: the view of meaning as a
survival mechanism is inadequate for the question of the meaning of life
because, for human beings, life transcends mere survival.
Human
concepts certainly require re-examination because Darwin’s idea has
illuminated them as apparently incommensurable with scientific explanation.
However, Dennett’s proposal that we relinquish our “Minds, Purposes and
Meanings” to Darwin’s idea, to have them returned transformed—demystified,
unified and more solidly grounded—is ambitious. If he is correct, evolution
precludes belief in humanity as unique, yet maintains humanity’s confidence in
itself as unique—a contradictory claim. It is contradictory because, although
reductionist explanation is able to re-examine human concepts, it somehow
remains impotent within their realm. I suggest that Dennett’s call for
demystification points to the reason why: while science aims at the explanation
of mystery, human concepts, as specifically human, are intrinsically
inexplicable and mysterious. For example, the answer to the biggest ‘why’
question, the meaning of life, is a mystery; the biggest why question is the
biggest for precisely this reason. Darwinian explanation’s solution is to
eliminate this mystery by denying meaning, the question’s object of enquiry:
without it, the question itself is rendered nonsensical. For this reason,
demystification may be the source of the problem rather than the solution.
In
the human realm, meaning cannot be eliminated so easily. What human beings
intend by ‘meaning’ is what gives us things like poetry, love and wonder;
things which enable us to do what is specifically human: to transcend mere
survival and instead participate in it with all aspects of our evolved being.
Even if human concepts are mere products of evolution, in distinguishing us as
uniquely human, they found our pride in ourselves and enable us to be
uniquely human. To be consistent with this view, evolutionary explanation
must somehow retain meaning.
Previously,
cosmologies, mythologies and religions answered ‘why’ questions by providing
valuation and comprehensible order through metaphorical explanation which was
personal, relational and wholistic, and so valorised human concepts as unique.
While reductive Darwinism, in positing these concepts as mechanisms, succeeds in
explaining away their meaning and thus their value, mythologies and religions
give them meaning, through telos, or purpose. However, as Blackburn explains, a teleological
explanation posits purpose as somehow bringing about existence by retrospective
causation through an agent.17 It therefore entails the existence of a
transcendent being: if something exists, it must exist for a purpose; if a
purpose exists, so must something prior exist as its source, which must
transcend what exists. Philo’s hypothesis of the universe as an “organised
body…which seems actuated with a like principle of life and motion” and is
animated by a “Deity”18 posits God as a transcendent source, and
is presented by Dennett as an example of teleological explanation. As Philo
explains, it derives from analogy to human experience: the mind’s control of
the body is adapted to a realm beyond human understanding—the order exhibited
in the universe.19 According to Broderick, this type of analogy can
also result in the “egocentrism”20 of “black holism”,21
in which the source is the observer’s mind. Because the source is a first
cause from which explanation, purpose and meaning derive, teleological
explanation is ‘top-down’. However, as Dennett says, it is circular, subject
to the infinite regress of the origin of the first cause,22 and is
therefore incompatible with scientific explanation.
Explanation
employing the idea of God is also incompatible with modern science because, as
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra proclaimed, according to modern western thought,
“God is dead”. As has been shown, to be reconciled with human concerns
evolutionary explanation must be scientific yet also allow meaning. As a
solution, Dennett proposes that God could be “turned into a symbol for
something less concrete”23: a more generalised divine concept which
is not only compatible with evolutionary explanation, but also necessary to
support our belief in meaning. It will be seen that the Gaia hypothesis fulfils
this function through its foundation: the idea of the earth as a living
embodiment of the mysterious force of life.
Lovelock’s
Gaia hypothesis says: “the physical and chemical condition of the surface of
Earth, of the atmosphere, and of the oceans has been and is actively made fit
and comfortable by the presence of life itself”.24 Lovelock
postulates that the Earth is governed by a self-regulating principle that
maintains life through processes involved in the mutual interaction of
organisms, both with each other, and with physical conditions. In the same way
that a complex organism is animated and maintained by the coincidence of various
biological processes and systems, the Earth is a living entity animated and
maintained by both its physical properties and the life it contains. For
example, biological processes of respiration, photosynthesis and digestion use
and generate gases such as oxygen, carbon dioxide and methane which affect the
atmosphere; and solid waste alters the constitution of the Earth’s crust by
adding elements like carbon and calcium. In addition, the arrangement of life on
the Earth’s surface regulates global temperature by albedo, the absorption or
reflection of heat according to dark or light coloration.25
Conversely, geological activity constantly disturbs the Earth’s crust, freeing
elements which are added to the atmosphere, land and sea. A multitude of
interacting processes form a complex and autonomous cybernetic system composed
of controls and feedback loops and driven by the free energy maintained by the
chemical disequilibrium arising from life’s presence. This system maintains an
essential balance that sustains life.
In
describing Philo’s divinely animated universe as its anticipation, Dennett
presents the Gaia hypothesis as teleological. However, here he falls victim to a
common misunderstanding of Lovelock’s idea: as Allaby says (in Broderick), it
is an “attractive scientific model” which is sometimes distorted by the
attachment of “mystical excrescences”.26 Lovelock denies the
teleological criticism, maintaining that the Earth’s self-regulation is “a
consequence of an automatic, but not purposeful, goal-seeking system”.27
Although he concedes that properties inherent in the universe which are at
present incomprehensible are responsible for the inevitability of life and Gaia,
he cannot agree with “the assertion that it was created with this purpose”.28
Gaia’s goal is the same as that of evolution—the continuance of life. In
both, this goal is achieved by meaningless processes: in evolution by
replication and in Gaia by self-maintenance as a living system and, as a
cybernetic system generated and maintained by the order deriving from the
cumulative effects of a multitude of meaningless processes, Gaia needs no
designer. Misinterpretation of Gaia as teleological results from hasty
assessment which looks no further than the representation of the Earth as a
self-regulating entity and therefore equates animation with consciousness and
leaps from design to designer.
Lovelock’s
hypothesis is based on geophysiology, the study of the earth as a living entity,
which employs atmospheric chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, geology and
biology. Therefore it is scientific. In addition, it explains the evolution of a
variety of physical and biological processes, both separately and in
combination, to form Gaia as a living entity which is itself gradually evolving,
and thus employs the evolutionary principle, extending it to explain not just
the development of biological species, but also of the Earth as a unified global
phenomenon.
To
Dennett, the Epicurean hypothesis of order deriving from the “blind unguided
force” of the continual motion of matter pre-empts Darwin.29 It
also anticipates Gaia. For Hume, an empiricist, this idea generated by analogy
from rationalist principles was refutable due to a lack of empirical evidence.
The only evidence, the existence of order in the universe, is presupposed by the
hypothesis itself. However, rather than evidence, this hypothesis is supported
by what Dennett calls the “Principle of the Accumulation of Design”30
which is used by modern science in Chaos Theory. According to Gleick, Chaos
Theory emerged from notions that disturbed physicists: the universe’s creation
of “interesting structures” and the fact that “a purposeless flow of
energy can wash life and consciousness into the world’.31 Citing
Ford’s description of evolution as “ ‘chaos with feedback’, he notes
that although the universe is “randomness and dissipation”, its dissipation
is itself “an agent of order”32: order can mysteriously appear
from chaos. Lovelock suggests that the nature of the universe itself may have
cheated chaos,33 and the Gaia hypothesis exemplifies this
accomplishment. As he says, like evolution, it “starts in the middle”,
avoiding the issue of primal origin, and is therefore similarly
“manageable”.34 It explains life’s development as a random
evolutionary process: order derives from disorder, for no reason except that it
is possible through the sympathetic accumulation of random processes. According
to Broderick, the uncaused nature of order is the significant feature of this
“bottom-up” operation.35
The
breadth of both Darwin’s and Lovelock’s explanations, which encompass the
evolution of life on Earth, make them unprovable in practical terms. However, as
Dennett explains, once Darwin had shown the design accumulation process to be
operative, he only needed to further illustrate how it could maintain itself, by
itself.36 However, to Dennett, Darwin’s answer, the mechanism of
natural selection, was “hopeless”37 without a unit of heredity.
Mendel’s genetic research and the later discovery of DNA identified this unit,
confirming Darwin’s mechanism and rendering his theory scientifically viable.
Scientific acceptance of the Gaia hypothesis is similarly discouraged its
unconfirmed mechanism. Lovelock recognises the need to identify evidence of
“planet-sized control systems” which are able to regulate climate, chemical
composition and topography in order to substantiate his hypothesis as a
theory.38 He concedes that although evidence for Gaia’s vitality
seems prolific
and obvious, it remains insufficient to convince “mainstream scientists”,
who need “a mechanism”.39 According to Dennett, in evolution,
Darwin discovered “a large class of related algorithms that he had no clear
way to distinguish”.40 In the same way, Gaia depends on a multitude
of mutually interdependent mechanisms that are difficult to isolate (a condition
required by mainstream science) because of the complexity for which they are
responsible. In addition, they constitute the hypothesis’s supporting
evidence. To convince mainstream science that these mechanisms perform their
postulated functions, a general principle similar to natural selection is
required. Lovelock posits the principle of homeostatis, “the maintenance of
relatively constant conditions by active control”,41 as Gaia’s
mechanism. However, homeostasis cannot be reduced to a ‘unit’ or single
mechanism and so currently holds similar status to that of natural selection
before Mendel.
Homeostatis
is a “colligative property”,42 existing in collections of
organisms and deriving from interactions on all levels: organic, collective and
environmental. Colligative properties derive from what Birch calls “internal
relations”, self-generated causal factors that determine an organism’s
responses to its environment and transcend the total of individual properties in
the collection. Birch considers both internal and external relations and
champions a wholistic ecological model of life. However, as he says, this
“strikes at the heart of the strictly mechanistic and reductionistic model”43
which treats organisms as isolated entities whose effective force is determined
merely by their composition in terms of material parts and mechanical processes,
and therefore recognises only external causation. Through consciousness, human
beings are unique among other organisms in their awareness of themselves and
their environment. Because their existence depends on interaction with each
other and the world around them they both affect and are affected by their
surroundings. Within this interaction personalities, relationships and societies
exist which in some way transcend their component parts and mechanisms and for
this reason human beings and their concepts cannot be explained in terms of
reductionist principles alone. In the same way that reductionism is incompatible
with human concepts, postmodern scientists such as Birch argue that it is also
inadequate for the investigation of unconscious organisms, and instead advocate
a wholistic approach which embraces the complex inter-relations between
organisms and their environments through the recognition of bidirectional
influences. The Gaia hypothesis is similarly wholistic, and to make it
accessible to mainstream science, Lovelock provides an ecological Gaian model,
“Daisyworld”, a simplified version of the “sheer complexity of the biota
and the environment” which illustrates that the “close coupling of life and
its environment change the nature of the whole system”.44
As
is illustrated by Broderick’s derisive criticism of “black holists”,45
mainstream science generally eschews the wholisitic view as presumably
teleological. However, although Gaia’s wholism makes its scientific status
tenuous, the hypothesis is at the same time mechanistic and reductionist. As
Broderick says, it is “strictly materialist” yet “ as ‘holistic’ as it
gets”. He agrees with Allaby that as a scientific model, it depends on
“extreme reductionism” but also notes its potential to provide “top-down
explanations of many phenomena at our human realm”.46 Although
top-down explanation is generated by Gaia as a global phenomenon, its
constituent processes can be isolated and explained mechanistically. Thus the
Gaia hypothesis is both top-down and bottom-up; wholistic and reductionist, and
for this reason promises to succeed where Darwinism fails. In examining human
concepts reductively yet maintaining their value within an inter-relational
context, Gaia could preserve them in the face of evolutionary explanation.
Comparison of the hypothesis with the Ancient Greek idea of Gaia will show that
this promise is further strengthened by its appropriation of existential
mythological themes.
The
Gaia hypothesis takes its name from Gaia, the Ancient Greek goddess who emerged
from Chaos to become immanent in the Earth as life’s energising force. The
Greek mythological belief that both the Earth and its life originated solely
from Gaia is that of parthogenesis, belief in conception by a single entity,
which according to Eliade is the “mythical expression of the self-sufficiency
and fecundity of Mother Earth”.47 To the Ancient Greeks, Gaia was
the divine power of nature, and the Earth, pervaded by this force, was a
self-sufficient living entity.
The
presence of radioactive material in the Earth’s crust led Lovelock to explain
the Earth’s origin as fallout from a supernova event, “a catastrophe of
cosmic dimensions”48—an explanation which is remarkably similar
to the Ancient Greek belief of Gaia’s emergence from Chaos. Also, according to
Goldhill, Hesiod’s Theogony records
that Gaia “gave birth to Uranos (the sky), ‘so that he might surround her
and…be a secure home for the blessed gods forever.’”49
Lovelock’s hypothesis similarly explains the creation of the atmosphere to
form a “secure home”, this time not for the gods, but for life: heat and
pressure, generated by radioactive elements, released gases from the Earth’s
crust. Two factors that determine viability for life—pH level and redox
potential—were set by hydrogen, and temperature was maintained by carbon
dioxide’s insulating properties. A stable climate, evidenced by geological
records, was subsequently maintained to enable the emergence of life.
Thus
the Gaia hypothesis embraces the ideas of parthogenesis, creation from chaos and
the immanence of nature’s power in the Earth and, like Greek mythology, it
gives life meaning—the maintenance of Gaia as a wholistic living entity
embodying the splendour of life. In this way it supplies Dennett’s more
generalised concept of divinity, but remains compatible with evolutionary
explanation as a meaningless algorithmic process which can nevertheless generate
the complex patterns and systems that constitute planetary life. Both Darwin and
Lovelock, in explaining the appearance of order from chaos, support the
possibility of the evolution of consciousness according to scientific
principles, as Broderick says, as “a higher level of global organisation”,50
and therefore also support the subsequent evolution of concepts like mind,
language and culture. However, while Dennett’s Darwinism fails to preserve
human concepts, the Gaia hypothesis retains their uniqueness because, although
isolated and examined, components are seen also as constituting a living whole.
Its reductionism is balanced by wholism, which respects the mystery of life as
an overall process.
As
Lovelock says, “Gaia can be both spiritual and scientific”.51 In
positing the Earth as a self-generated living entity, it could encourage awe for
the indeterminate cosmic power of Being and for our world as an instantiation
of this power. Thus it suggests a generalised concept of divinity, addressing
the human desire for the metaphysical without positing the existence of a
supernatural entity. In addition, if human concepts are seen also as
instantiations, their value is preserved. In comparison, Darwinian explanation,
without a wholistic view, resembles “greedy reductionism”—although the
idea of an awe-inspiring cosmic force is embedded within it, this idea is
obscured so well by evolution’s meaninglessness that maintenance of belief in
the value of human concepts is difficult.
The
mystery of order from chaos, and the participation of all forms of life in this
ordered reality to form Gaia as a living entity can be extended to a view of
reality itself as a living force:
something worthy as an object of wonder and awe, and thus a concept from which
we can derive a meaning for life. In positing Gaia as the ultimate evolutionary
product, Lovelock’s hypothesis is evolution with meaning—and
the illumination of meaning achieved by its wholistic view renders it successful
as a salvation from the ‘dangers’ inherent in scientific explanations of
something so fundamental to human existence as the explanation of reality.
Therefore Dennett’s argument would have been better served by an investigation
of the Gaia hypothesis rather than a casual mention connecting it with the
teleological argument.
Dennett’s
description of evolutionary explanation as unifying “all of biology and the
history of our planet into a single grand story”52 puts a huge
responsibility on the storyteller. The issue illuminated here is not that
Darwin’s story is wrong, but that it could be better narrated: with a little
mystery and wonder thrown in to secure the faith of its readers. Although
life’s development is explained by evolution, its origin and essence remain
fundamentally mysterious: despite science’s best efforts, life itself remains
a mystery. This mystery can either be ignored, as guilty evidence of science’s
inadequacy, or recognised as a source to which we could direct our biggest
‘why’ question. What is the meaning of life? We don’t really know, and it
will perhaps always remain a mystery. Be that as it may, an evolutionary
explanation which incorporates the idea of Gaia prevents this mystery from being
problematic, and instead illuminates life as a powerful and mysterious force
worthy of awe, wonder—and faith.
NOTES
1. Dennett, D C, Darwin’s
Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, Penguin, 1995, p. 144.
2. Ibid.,
p. 24.
3. Ibid.,
p. 25.
4. Ibid.,
p. 82.
5. Ibid.,
p. 521.
6. Ibid.,
p. 20.
7. Dennett, D C, Elbow
Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting, The MIT Press, 1984, p. 14.
8. Dennett, op.
cit., (note 1), p. 19.
9. Ibid.,
p. 516.
10.
Ibid., p. 520.
11.
Ibid., p. 521.
12.
Ibid., p. 25.
13.
Ibid., p. 82.
14.
Ibid., pp. 81-2.
15.
Ibid., p. 426.
16.
Ibid., p. 369.
17.
Blackburn, S, The Oxford Dictionary
of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 374.
18.
Dennett, op. cit., (note 1), p. 31.
19.
Hume, D,. “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, in Flew, A (ed.), David
Hume: Writings on Religion, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1992, p. 233.
20.
Broderick, D, The Last Mortal
Generation: How Science Will Alter Our Lives in the 21st Century, New
Holland, 1999, p. 160.
21.
Ibid., p. 159.
22.
Dennett, op. cit., (note 1), p. 25.
23.
Dennett, op. cit., (note 1), p. 18.
24.
Lovelock, J E, Gaia: A New Look at
Life on Earth, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 152.
25.
Lovelock, J E, The Ages of Gaia: A
Biography of Our Living Earth, W W Norton & Company, 1988, p. 36.
26.
Broderick, op. cit., (note 21), p. 170.
27.
Lovelock, op. cit., (note 27), p. 39.
28.
Ibid., p. 205.
29.
Dennett, op. cit., (note 1), pp. 32-3.
30.
Ibid., p. 72.
31.
Gleick, J, Chaos: Making a New
Science, Vintage, 1998, p. 308.
32.
Ibid., p. 314.
33.
Dennett, op. cit., (note 1), pp. 62.
34.
Lovelock, op. cit., (note 27), p. 222.
35.
Ibid.
36.
Broderick, op. cit., (note 21), p. 161.
37.
Dennett, op. cit., (note 1), pp. 20.
38.
Lovelock, op. cit., (note 26), p. 63.
39.
Lovelock, op. cit., (note 27), p. 34.
40.
Dennett, op. cit., (note 1), pp. 51.
41.
Lovelock, op. cit., (note 26), p. 11.
42.
Lovelock, op. cit., (note 27), p. 18.
43.
Birch, C, “The Postmodern Challenge to Biology”, in Griffin, D R
(ed.), The Reenchantment of Science:
Postmodern Proposals, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1988, p.
70.
44.
Lovelock, op. cit., (note 27), p. 35.
45.
Broderick, op. cit., (note 21), pp. 145-170.
46.
Broderick, op. cit., (note 21), pp. 169-170.
47.
Eliade, M, The Sacred and the
Profane: the Nature of Religion, (Trask, W R, trans.), Harcourt, Inc., 1987,
p. 145.
48.
Lovelock, op. cit., (note 26), p. 15.
49.
Goldhill, S, “The Birth of the Gods”, in Willis, R (ed.), World Mythology, Duncan Baird, London, 1996,
p. 129.
50.
Broderick, op. cit., (note 21), pp. 162.
51.
Lovelock, op. cit., (note 27), p. 217.
52.
Dennett, op. cit., (note 1), pp. 20.
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CONSULTED
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Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, Penguin, 1995.
4. Dennett, D C, Elbow
Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting, The MIT Press, 1984.
5. Eliade, M, The
Sacred and the Profane: the Nature of Religion, (Trask, W R, trans.),
Harcourt, Inc., 1987.
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Making a New Science, Vintage, 1998.
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(ed.), The Reenchantment of Science:
Postmodern Proposals, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1988.
8.
Hume, D,. “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, in Flew, A (ed.), David Hume: Writings on Religion, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois,
1992.
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10.
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Life on Earth, Oxford University Press, 1989.
11.
Willis, R (ed.), World Mythology, Duncan
Baird, London, 1996.