Global Spiral :: Authors

Michael Ruse

Michael Ruse, Ph.D. is Professor of Philosophy and Zoology at Florida State University.

The author of many books including Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction?, Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology, The Philosophy of Biology, and Taking Darwin Seriously. New publications forthcoming include Can a Darwinian be a Christian? The Relationship Between Science and Religion, The Evolution Wars, and Cloning (edited volume). He is also the founder and editor of the journal Biology & Philosophy, and editor of the "Cambridge University Press Series in the Philosophy of Biology" (8 volumes published and 10 more volumes contracted).

Is Evolution Just another Religion?
Of course, no one claims that evolutionists want to found an alternative religion rather as the positivists in the last century founded a whole new church, with secular saints and worship and other paraphernalia of the social side to religion. Rather, the claim is that evolution becomes more than mere science and turns into a source of meaning and optimism and renewal and so forth -- not to mention moral dicta -- to help us to move forward through life.

Controversy over the Nobel Prize in Medicine
It is as least as likely a hypothesis that Damadian was ignored by the Nobel committee because they did not want to award a Prize to an American fundamentalist Christian as that they did not think his work merited the fullest accolade.

Stephen Jay Gould: An Appreciation
"Young people of all ages, in America and elsewhere, have grown up on Gould's scintillating monthly essays, published without break for twenty-five years, in the magazine Natural History. They have been charmed and intrigued and stimulated and excited. The have themselves been turned to science, realizing that there is simply nothing more worthwhile than trying to puzzle out the mysteries of the creation around and within us, and that the true miracle of life is that grubby little primates like us humans can find out so much about the universe and its inhabitants."

I Was Hungry, And Ye Gave Me Meat
"England is an abattoir, with stacks of stinking, slaughtered kine, with greasy smoke palls rising over the countryside, with ruined farmers, with an election postponed, with tourism slashed, with nothing but gloom forecast for the future. And all for the want of a lamb chop or a nice cut of prime rib. Which makes one think, it really does!"

Human Creativity Considered Critically
In short, my position is that all three points that Billy Grassie wants to emphasize -- the need for post-Darwinism, the special nature of humankind, particularly humankind in culture, and the uncomfortable relationship between Darwinism and Christianity -- prove on closer examination to lead one away from Billy's position rather than towards it.

Cultural Context Yet Again
"... the world is probably a lot queerer than we imagine or we could begin to imagine. Of course, we think we can know everything and that all is objective and true - if evolution left us all doubting simple truths in a Humean sort of way, we would not be successful animals. The proto human who spent his or her time worrying about the nature of causal connection lost out in the struggle for existence, as did the proto human who doubted that one has any moral obligations to anyone else. But, this truth notwithstanding, I think we should be very wary of believing we have a direct line to absolute truth."

Is Philosophy Useless? The Case of Human Cloning
Which all goes to make me think that when real decisions have to be made about moral action - or any action - philosophy is useless. Religion can give you answers, because - well because, religion is in the business of giving answers and is not too bothered about a little reason along the way.

Konrad Lorenz, National Socialism, and Epistemology
"Whatever the ultimate status of religion, there is probably a strong subjective element to it. Whatever the ultimate status of science, there is surely a strong objective element to it. But do not think that we have simply subjective epistemological chalk and objective epistemological cheese. You can separate out the context of discovery from the context of justification, but anyone who studies real science will see that it is deeply cultural impregnated... Not that this should be any great surprise -- except to your average scientist. Only those who have been indoctrinated to think that science is uniquely a thing beyond culture could hold such a daft cultural belief that science is uniquely a thing beyond culture."

Being Mean to Stephen Jay Gould
Ruse concludes: "[Gould's] general stand on the science/religion question is quick, slick, and shallow. But do not let that blind you to the fact that he makes some really important arguments."

Evolutionary Reflections on The Great War and the New Millenium
As it happens, war - the Great War in particular - is often taken to be a counter-example to a Darwinian account of human nature. How it is, critics ask, that men went over the top to near-certain death? Surely this is the ultimate counter to a biologically fashioned nature which makes survival and reproduction the overwhelming causal factor? Something else - culture or the like - has to kick in here, to override biology.

Review of Kenneth Miller's "Finding Darwin's God"
I would say that in his defense of evolution and critique of Creationism, he is extremely successful. Indeed, I think he offers some of the best material I have ever seen on the subject. I find his treatment of Christianity in the face of science and other objections rather less successful. You might object that you could have forecast that this would be my opinion before either of us had read Miller's book. I am an ardent Darwinian and a non-believer - a philosopher to boot. What would you expect of me?

Selfish Genes and Kindly People
"What we are then," writes Ruse, "is an uneasy mixture of both - saint and sinner - and this of course is just what philosophers like Plato and preachers like Saint Paul have been saying since time immemorial. I do not find surprising this coincidence of science and philosophy and theology. Why should truth be opposed to truth?"

Philosophy and Sex: Not a Happy Couple
...[H]ere my intent is to suggest that, although Christianity as such is clearly implicated, the undoubted negativity towards sexuality in the West owes as much, if not more, to the great figures in my own field: philosophy.

Review of Ian McEwan's "Enduring Love"

Social Darwinism and National Socialism
Apart from anything else, Haeckel assumed the mantel of Darwin's great German supporter - he called his position "Darwinismus" - and if Gasman's charge is well taken we seem to have a line from Down House (Darwin's home) and the Origin right through to Auschwitz and the Holocaust.

Review of Stephen Jay Gould's "Rocks of Ages"
"I simply do not see how the Jew or Christian can or should leave matters untouched at this point, passively accepting the science as given and gutting the religion of absolutely central content: evolution is contingent and hence we humans cannot make claim to special status."

Is Evolution a Secular Religion?
"Like many of my generation, I grew up thinking that science is the way, the truth, and the life - and Karl Popper is its prophet, to mix up metaphors. I thought that there is a real world out there, that science's job is to map this world, and by george it does a pretty good job at it. Then in the 1960s... and the rest is all history."

Review of Holmes Rolston's "Genes, Genesis, and God"

Review of E.O. Wilson's "Consilience"
"I am in nature an extremely religious person, but I find myself simply unable to respond to grand exhortations of ultimate meaning. 'Big' religions, like traditional Christianity and Wilsonian evolution are alien to the personal, almost mystical sense of awe, which I have inherited from my childhood faith."

Review of Michael Ruse's "Monad to Man"