Challenging Design: How Best to Account for the World as It Really Is

Evolutionary psychology and intelligent-design theory both need to be able to account for the empirical world, or the world as it is. This essay is an attempt to clarify the challenges these theories need to meet, if the relevant empirical findings are replicable. There is evidence of change in the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Zygon
Main Author: Kennair, Leif Edward Ottesen (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2003
In: Zygon
Further subjects:B intelligent-design theory
B Homicide
B mate selection
B Human Nature
B cheater detection
B stepchildren
B Evolutionary Psychology
B evolutionary theory
B Dualism
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
Description
Summary:Evolutionary psychology and intelligent-design theory both need to be able to account for the empirical world, or the world as it is. This essay is an attempt to clarify the challenges these theories need to meet, if the relevant empirical findings are replicable. There is evidence of change in the biological world and of modularity of mind, and there is a growing body of work that finds evolutionary theory a convincing and fruitful account of the “design” of the mind. Three major empirical findings within evolutionary psychology are presented and discussed. The author claims that Cartesian dualism, as it is usually meant within psychology—a split between body and mind—is false, but that Descartes' original division between body and soul has not been challenged and is not challenged by the evidence that the mind is also a biological entity. The article concludes that the convergence of theology and science is to be found in the onus to discover the truth about the world as it really is, and this calls for an ability on both parts to account for the empirical world.
ISSN:1467-9744
Contains:Enthalten in: Zygon
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/1467-9744.00520