Darwin’s Impeccable Methodology

By Kumar David -January 12, 2014

Prof Kumar David

The materialist scientist par excellence: Darwin’s impeccable methodology

Darwin was a more consistent materialist than Marx in theoretical exertion for the reason that the latter’s domain was human society, and inescapably, he had to wander into social consciousness, subjective influences and ideologies, the role of leaders and peoples, and class and race awareness. Darwin’s good fortune was that his field of exploration troubled him with no such intrusions by man or god; hence he was an impeccable practitioner of the materialist methodology. An intelligent designer is redundant to practical science and if he/she/it (hereafter ‘It’) exists, would make not one iota of difference to one scientific theory. That is, ‘It’ has nothing to do with the practice of functioning science whose domain is exclusively materialist. The spirit does not factor in the choice of equations or god set input parameters.

The story that Darwin told

That great designer cannot be observed, measured, weighed, no known spectrometer is sensitive to its spectral spread, no Geiger counter can register its emissions, and no antenna can intercept its electromagnetic radiation. No scientist in the prosecution of scientific work batted an eyelid or stopped to hear a pin drop from It. Scientific activity is exclusively materialistic. That quaint and irrelevant designer occupies a different parallel universe.

Does this mean that outstanding scientists cannot believe in god? Plenty of fine scientists, involved up to the neck in 100% materialist scientific work, are thoroughly religious; so experience says the answer is no. They do not seem to suffer philosophical schizophrenia – I have some difficulty in living in two mentally watertight compartments. I guess this tells us more about the structure of the mind than about the pursuit of science.

If precedence is excuse there is justification for compartmentalised crania. Newton, indisputably the greatest scientist ever, was a strange fellow. One compartment in his brain was sheer genius inventing the calculus, crafting classical mechanics, solving the riddle of the heavens, explaining the tides and delving into the theory of light. But other boxes were decidedly peculiar. He indulged in alchemy to find the ‘philosopher’s stone’ to turn base metal into gold, and invoked the occult seeking to distil the ‘elixir of life’ which grants eternal life. He also wrote arcane tracts on Biblical topics. Thankfully, antiquities greatest scientist-mathematician, Archimedes of Syracuse, who stands between Newton and Darwin in schoolboy rankings of greatest scientist of all time, was like Darwin quite normal and shunned the occult and the theological.  Read More