REDISCOVERING DARWIN
by DAVID LOYE
Prologue:
Darwin and the World
That Could Have Been
Why take a new look at Darwin?
After 100 years of thousands of books in at least 100 languages, poked through by five generations of scientists and other scholars, could anything still be left of relevance to us today?
To begin, what is "survival" and who are the "fittest"? What's driving the new rise of the old politics of hate, the economics of all-for-me, the ice melting, seas rising, monstrous new hurricanes, the rampage of the new authoritarians, and the round the clock threat of nuclear annihilation, and the rest that drives the body blow to sanity that shoves this question at us?
Where did we go off track, and how can we
get back on track in evolution?
Here for the first time at length, in page after page, is what Darwin originally wrote about his great theory of evolution.
But this time we'll not stop with only the magnificent first half of his theory. That was established with publication of The Origin of Species in 1861. Ten years later, hidden within Darwin's The Descent of Man, came the completion of his grand vision of human evolution—and then the incredible burial by the mindset of "survival of the fittest" and "selfish genes" still everywhere devastating our lives and time.
What follows is the story of the discovery of the hopeful higher half of his theory that Darwin scattered throughout the sprawl of The Descent of Man and the mystery of how on earth it was so effectively erased for over 100 years.
How could it go for so long unnoticed that in Origin's classic sequel on human evolution, Darwin wrote only twice of "survival of the fittest" but 95 times about love. And this with only a single trivial entry for love in the loveless index still in use worldwide.
Even more remarkable in a battered world desperately in need of moral guidance is the Darwin who wrote 92 times not of selfishness but of the Moral Sense as the ultimate over-riding prime driver of evolution.
Yet here we are, caught within the grip of the Darwin sold to us as scientific proof of the cynical claim that the worldwide moral imperative of "do unto others as ye would have them do unto you"—that is, caring and concern for the welfare of others, A.K.A. altruism—is nothing more than a wily artifact driven solely by selfishness and selfish genes.
Why has it taken so long for us to see, let alone solve, what for so long has in effect held us captive within an immense scientific and social murder mystery?
Darwin and the World That Could Be
Who did it? How? Why?
I've written this book to reach both general readers and my fellow scientists. Despite the difficulties of reaching both in a single book, I've done this because it will take the drive of a rare new level of our mutual understanding if we are to push on past all that in blindness and madness is trying to drive us backward in evolution.
How can we speed up the evolution of our species and slow down the devastation of our planet before it's too late?
It seems impossible, but imprisoned within the denial of what Darwin most deeply valued is the crippled giant who still lives in our lives. And here, in his own words, out of chapter after chapter recovering the rest of his theory, the "lost"rest of Darwin's theory unfolds.
In Part I: A Startling Discovery you'll find the foreshadowing of what became today's immeasurably greater threat of nuclear annihilation. How during the Cold War scientists from both sides met secretly in Budapest to see if we could replace the survival of the fittest mindset, then driving us toward destruction, with a better theory of evolution.
You'll see how we set out to gain order out of chaos with chaos theory for a starter. And the buried history spanning the 19th, 20th, into the 21st century, which shows how the rest of Darwin was, with the best of intentions, wiped off the slate of history.
Part II: Recovering the Rest of Darwin's Theory explores the past, present and future of all that his well-intentioned but tunnel-visioned successors dropped from Darwin. A new understanding of sex, love, community, and of greatest importance, the eternal prime guidance of the moral sense.
Here you'll also find the shock of Darwin's long ignored case for spirituality and the place and function of religion in evolution. And the surprise of how, in what he wrote of "the morality of women," Darwin even became a cautious forerunner of male support for the women's movement.
It reads like the role call for all that really matters!
You'll also find what happens if you set out to find out what buried the rest of Darwin. How this book that begins with the overtones of a spy novel, becomes a detective story, becomes a murder mystery, and ultimately a scientific story of adventure and romance.
In short, you'll find the buried science and story of how we lost the chance to gain the world that could have been. But instead got the world that is. But now still have a fighting chance to gain the world that should have been by joining the drive of all those among us—well known by name and works--who serve as earth's new explorers of the better world, who you'll meet, and get to know in this book.
And this too, of greatest meaning to me personally. In completing this book in my nineties, in looking ahead and resonating to the wonder and horror of life over much of the 20th into the 21st century, it's the course I hope this book will take into the future.
We older ones are too locked into our own agendas to get to where this book shows we not only need to but must go. But among our students, and their students, and on down the line for significant others coming new to this task, are those who in this book can find what they need to push on and get there.
It is our job to identify them, and encourage them to make this cause theirs, and to support them in every way we can. But it will take the fresh, eager, indomitable arousal of oncoming generations, in joy riding on the vision that drives our species, to get us back on track in evolution.
You will know who you are when the time comes.
Bon voyage!
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Rediscovering Darwin
Book Details:
Rediscovering Darwin
The Rest of Darwin's Theory and Why We Need It Today
Author: David Loye
Publisher: Romanes Press, February 12, 2018
Language: English
Paperback: 204 pages, ISBN: 9780692984024
eBook ISBN: 9780692060643