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To: Smokin' Joe

Marxism, and the Hegelian garden in which it grew, asserts “evolution” or change as a progression toward perfection.

However, Darwin and Huxley did not regard evolution as a progression. Specifically, what appears to be “evolution” is in fact just a result of natural selection, e.g.., we don’t see cheetah that are slow-moving because such animals don’t survive long enough to produce offspring. The biological nice that cheetah occupy requires a fast-moving animal.

Hume said that humans often see progression when there is only sequence. His analogy was that we are like a man who is watching a cat walk past a slit on the other side of a fence. He sees the head, then the body, then the tail, and concludes that the head caused the tail.


13 posted on 11/25/2015 9:24:57 PM PST by oblomov
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To: oblomov
Still, the overall attitude is that the earlier and simpler forms are "primitive", whereas the more recent and complex forms are "advanced".

Therefore more recent and complex societies are more "advanced", just like more recent and complicated technologies, etc.

A progression is not necessary for the attitude to emerge, even if it is strongly implied.

The abuses of the logical pattern remain.

15 posted on 11/25/2015 10:49:21 PM PST by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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