What is ideological about that?
Do some reading about it please. Form your own thoughts. I’ll be busy today. Have a good one.
No thanks, I’ve known all about it for 50 years. What is ideological about it?
Ideologies do exist, but Darwinism isn’t one of them.
Darwin devoted his adult life to thinking about problems from a scientific point of view. As he plunged himself into more of an analytical approach to problems he became less and less interested in the arts. I don’t see what that has to do with any ideology. Darwin showed a bit of regret in his change in interests, but I fail to see how that leads to the conclusion that Darwinism is an ideology.
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He did? Here is the quote:
Do you see natural selection mentioned anywhere in there?
You’ve known “all” about Malthusianism for 50 years? Wow - amazing!
Unfortunately, that sounds untrue.
“what is ideological about it?”
Just type into an internet search engine, e.g. Google Scholar, “malthusianism” and “ideology”. Multiple academic papers that address it will avail themselves to you. 2020, 2018, there are many recent and current papers on Malthusianism that you didn’t read 50 years ago. Okay? Or still not okay because of some incredulity principle?
If you say “no thanks” even to those newer articles about ideological Malthusianism, that’s fine too! It just sounds like you’re dismissing any threat to the supposed “heroic” image of Darwin, since arguably Darwin’s most important idea came, as Darwin openly admits, from Malthus, and anything less that “heroic Darwin” you won’t stand for, listen to or allow even to be suggested as closer to the man’s character and actual history than your reading requires. In saying this, am I completely off-base, or rather closer in the neighbourhood of how you currently see Darwin’s “super-heroic” place in human history?
Thinking that Malthusianism does not count as an ideological approach to population and population control represents a fringe position in the literature that addresses it. Thus, it makes much more sense as a way of shared understanding between people to classify both Malthusianism and neo-Malthusianism as “ideologies”, in order to properly assess them and their effects on society. This may be a different way of “organizing knowledge” than natural scientists are used to, but social scientists are free to push away naturalism and come to different conclusions about “reality” and “the world”.
Malthus’ work had a significant impact on Darwin, one of the only “political economy” thinkers that Darwin drew on heavily for his work. This is widely acknowledge in the literature. Indeed, if one really wanted to dig into and explore Darwin’s regret (as I don’t, because Darwin’s work is largely irrelevant in the fields I work, when properly assessed), looking closely at the impact Malthus’ worldview had on Darwin’s would be a good place to start. When “natural science” / “naturalism” is framed in a way that dehumanizes people from religious faith into agnosticism, e.g. as contemporary “evolutionary religious studies” teaches, then the “regrets” that may arise from this “transformation” by Darwin should be part of the conversation. Too often, they are left out as “irrelevant”, when on the human side, they are very relevant and helpful to understand the broader science, philosophy, theology collaborative discourse.
Thus, the considerable anti-Malthusianism found worldwide today may offer a real, significant and valuable contribution in helping to interpret Darwin’s regret, so that we may avoid it and/or warn others about it nowadays. Two of my favorites in the 20th and into the 21st centuries for this are women economists (& both have Malthusianism mentioned in their wiki pages):
Ester Boserup: Ester Boserup - Wikipedia
Elinor Ostrom: Elinor Ostrom - Wikipedia
Ostrom’s work you wouldn’t have come into contact with 50 years ago, Klax, right? Boserup’s you might have. Both are worth exploring further in our current era. Good day.
Not in that quote. See here, 21 years earlier: | Darwin Correspondence Project
"The term “Selection” I see deceives many persons; though I see no more reason why it should than elective affinity, as used by the old chemists. If I had to rewrite my book, I would use “natural preservation” or “naturally preserved”." - Darwin
Obviously Darwin hadn’t thought this through, and didn’t fully explain himself (it was just a letter, after all), otherwise he would also have had to change the title where “preservation” is already used for “favoured races”, into another word. Which other term, Charles? Obviously not “selection”. Afaik, he never provided one.
Feel free to pronounce that here at BioLogos, I disagree.
It is encouraging that you acknowledge the existence of ideologies. Please let them know about this at Peaceful Science.
Between us, though, would you be willing to give a rough count of the number of hours you’ve spent focusing specifically on the topic of “ideology”, iow, reading, writing, engaging in conversation about it in particular? I ask because most biologists I know couldn’t name the author of a single book that focuses on ideology, or address the varieties of ideology available currently on “the market”, nor have they engaged in group discussions about how ideology has impacted the history of biology.
The Faraday Institute’s Denis Alexander (molecular biology) was part of a team effort on this that you might want to check out. They of course discuss Darwinism there. Richard Lewontin wrote about biology and ideology too.
This stuff is real, even if some people would ignore it, so I do hope others will follow the links and references, instead of stopping at the low bar you’re now setting for them @T_aquaticus, as a way to better understand ideology. Please don’t try to cover over the research that is out there and available from good scholars on this topic. Merci! https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/667770
No mate, I know actually all there is to know about it. There’s nothing new in anything you cite. You know nothing about it that I don’t and neither does anyone else. There is nothing ideological in the simplistic and not even wrong proposition that geometric population growth can’t be matched by linear food production. This is extrapolated to resources in general by apocalyptic environmentalist alarmists with their multiplicity of ignorant non-evidence based beliefs, unfortunately affecting Western government policy making the situation worse. That is ideology. The situation being inequality, which is anathema to true Christian ideology.
As for “true Christian ideology”, I’d suggest you run that one by your local up-the-hierarchy (unless you accept none, in which case, carry on, no answer needed). Kosher phrasing or not?
Sy Garte learned here in 2015 from his wife that “Christianism” is an ideology. Whatever “Christianity” means, though, it isn’t mere ideology.
No apology forthcoming if that sounds somehow “conservative” to anyone; at least it’s “conservational” to the teachings of the historical Christian Church.
Yes, I agree that alarmist environmentalism counts as an ideology too.
So, cite a disinterested academic reference to the simple theory of Malthusianism as an ideology, as opposed to the subtlety of Malthusian ideology, i.e. ideology predicated on the invalidated scientific proposition of Malthusianism, or get off the pot.
“the simple theory of Malthusianism as an ideology, as opposed to the subtlety of Malthusian ideology”
This makes no sense. Besides, you already invalidated participation by claiming know-it-all status (“I know actually all there is to know about it.”). Not quite a “Christian” witness at BioLogos?
The expression you intend is “sh#% or get off the pot(tie) (toilet bowl)”, yes? Could you perhaps try to sanitize that a bit please?
His only regret was anthropomorphizing natural selection. These types of metaphors are still common in all sciences. I don’t see how that applies to the topic at hand.
Just a friendly reminder that nobody here in the public forum represents Biologos in any capacity. It’s a rough-and-tumble crowd sometimes. You get what you get, for better and worse.
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Fitter traits tend to be passed on at a greater rate than less fit traits. Can you please tell me why you think this is an ideology, especially given the fact that this process is easily demonstrated in living populations?
It is a fact that the growth rate of species is limited by the availability of resources. It would be interesting to hear how people think this is an ideology.
Quite. Is thermodynamics?
I’m sorry? You’re the one who lowered the tone yet further, wipe it yourself. The expression I intend is the one I use. The rest is up to you. The invalidation is entirely yours by making up ideologies that don’t exist. Is that through ignorance of grammar and ideology or disingenuity?
By 10 years, no. Ohhhh, Roger is the same story as yours. Idiosyncratic definitions.
To say “one of his regrets” instead of “his only regret”, would be both more humble and more accurate. No doubt there were more than one. “Heroic history Darwin” of course had “no regrets”, so at least you’ve gone from zero to one. 
Either “anthropomorphizing natural selection” or “naturalizing human selection” (which is why Wallace had departed from Darwin re: “natural selection” alone by 1890), I agree are both problematic features of “evolutionary” theories, thinking, science, ideas, etc. So is ideological “selectionism”, which is well-established in the literature and will perhaps summarily be dismissed by those who 1) haven’t heard of it before now, or 2) simply refuse to call it an “ideology”, for a variety of curious reasons.
Please see here how William Henry Harvey read Darwin’s letter to him above.
“You regret having used the term Natural Selection, as tending to mislead, & propose Nat. Preservation as a better phrase.” | Darwin Correspondence Project
Darwin didn’t respond to Harvey this time.
The notion of Darwin’s regret about “natural selection” seems to be a logical reading of what Darwin wrote to him. It may not to you and you are entitled to make up your own story however you want. His is the same way that I interpreted Darwin’s words also, 160 years later. Perhaps others reading this will see it that way too.
Earlier in the correspondence, to which Darwin replied, Harvey had written:
“I can only regard Natural Selection as one Agent out of several;—a handmaid or wetnurse—so to say—but neither the housekeeper, nor the mistress of the house. … Natural Selection, no doubt, is ready to take advantage of such contingent variations, but cannot be said either to explain, or to originate them. If therefore these are necessary, at starting, to set natural selection in motion, we are surely calling up a wholly different Agency to any set forth in your theory.”
Of course, Harvey continues with what everyone here’s heard before, in language that almost no one here accepts when it comes to the “D” word:
“In every variation from type, in every correlation of parts, there are evidences of Creative Power, such as no secondary agency, like that of Natural selection accounts for; and I think also there are evidences of one Great Design, beginning at the simplest elementary form, & culminating in the “fearfully & wonderfully made” framework of man.” https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2898.xml