"I support ignorance. There is my philosophy. I have the tranquility of ignorance and faith in science. Others cannot live without faith, without belief, without theology [or theory - the original is smudged. JSW]; I do without all of these. I do not know, and I shall never know; I accept this fact without tormenting myself about it." [Stebbins, p 135f]
The French is this (can anyone translate the final sentence for me?):
Je supporte l’ignorance: c’est là ma philosophie. J’ai la tranquillité de l’ignorance et la foi de la science. Les autres ne peuvent vivre sans foi, sans croyance, sans théorie. Moi je m’en passe. Je dors sur l’oreiller de l’ignorance. Je ne sais pas et je ne saurai jamais, je l’accepte sans me tourmenter, j’attends. Je ne tombe pas pour cela dans le nihilisme, je cherche à connaître les rapports.
I think the final sentence says he is no nihilist about this, but only wants to know the actual ratios of things. It's a nice counter to the view that science is all we know. We might in fact do best by dropping the idea that science is knowledge, and just get along with science as itself...
All links, research and references from Gary Nelson, to whom thanks, as always. Claude Bernard is to French science in many ways as Darwin is to English and Mach is to German. However, there are only about three known photographs of him in existence.
Bernard, C. Philosophie. Manuscrit inédit. Texte publié et présenté par Jaques Chevalier avec une préface de Justin Godart. Paris, Hatier-Boivin. (1954)
Stebbins, Robert E. (1974), "France", in Thomas F Glick (ed.), The Comparative Reception of Darwinism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 117-163.
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On the subject of Bernard:
'The Things We Do: Using the Lessons of Bernard and Darwin to Understand the What, How, and Why of Our Behavior' Gary Cziko, 2000.
http://tinyurl.com/3d5dv7
I haven't gotten around to that one yet, but I have read some of Cziko's Without Miracles. Terrence Deacon gave 'The Things We Do' a good review.
http://tinyurl.com/3xewz5
Going on my very rusty French, the last line literally translates as: "I do not fall because of that into nihilism: I seek to understand the reports"
What he's saying is that ignorance does not cause him to lose hope, but instead spurs further effort.
Gary Nelson sent me this translation:
"I support ignorance. That is my philosophy. I have the tranquility of ignorance and faith in science. Other persons cannot live without faith, without belief, without theology. Me, I pass these by. I sleep on the pillow of ignorance. I don't know. I will never know. I accept it without tormenting myself. I wait. Even so, I do not descend into nihilism. I attempt to understand the relations of things."
I particularly like the phrase "the pillow of ignorance"...
My new motto!
Yep, the last translation is right into it. But Ellis's translation is far from being bad (that's really no rusty French at all!), given that "reports" and "relationships" are completely homonymous ("rapports"). Even correctly translated, there is much ambiguity about this last part of the sentence. The idea behind the last word is about "the links", but we are left without knowing what is supposed to be linked.
Mr Wilkins I realise that this is rather late and that you already have several excellent answers but I thought another opinion would not hurt. My own French is more than somewhat rusty so I asked a friend who is a bilingual native speaker (German/French) to translate the last sentence. She is also a multi-lingual linguist and occasional translator. We sometimes work together on English German translations. Her translation of the final sentence is as follows
"I do not fall because of this into nihilism, I try to recognise the connections"
Hope that this is of some use Thony C.
Thanks all. I'll pass this on to Gary.
John,
This may be a consistent epistemology to hold and has a certain appeal, but how do you differentiate between claims like theistic evolution and Gosse's views? It seems to me that both are utterly unjustified and unjustifiable in principle, but under this view have equal claim to being knowledge claims.
I admit to being confused by this issue, but it seems central to me in the dispute between intelligent design and YEC. Or should we just say scientific claims have the same status as either of these ... which seems to me to give up the fight.
Looking for enlightenment. :)
Mike
That's a post on its own, Mike, but IMO the difference is one of degree, not kind. Gosse's argument was that purely natural explanations lacked crucial information, to wit, that the world was created in the middle of a series of developmental and causal cycles, and so natural explanations lacked the resources to properly give the past. Theistic evolution is the argument that while things look unguided, there is a hidden variable - God's interventions - that makes our outcome via evolution probable, despite the fact that on a purely natural account, we might very well not have evolved.
I think Darwin's criticism of Gray is to the point. He wrote in a letter:
"The mind refuses to look at this universe, being what it is, without having been designed; yet, where one would most expect design, viz. in the structure of a sentient being, the more I think on the subject, the less I can see proof of design. Asa Gray and some others look at each variation, or at least at each beneficial variation (which A. Gray would compare with the rain drops which do not fall on the sea, but on to the land to fertilize it) as having been providentially designed. Yet when I ask him whether he looks at each variation in the rock-pigeon, by which man has made by accumulation a pouter or fantail pigeon, as providentially designed for man's amusement, he does not know what to answer; and if he, or any one, admits [that] these variations are accidental, as far as purpose is concerned (of course not accidental as to their cause or origin); then I can see no reason why he should rank the accumulated variations by which the beautifully adapted woodpecker has been formed, as providentially designed. For it would be easy to imagine the enlarged crop of the pouter, or tail of the fantail, as of some use to birds, in a state of nature, having peculiar habits of life. These are the considerations which perplex me about design; but whether you will care to hear them, I know not."
Theistic evolution seeks via special pleading exemptions from the action of natural selection and other natural processes for one, and only one, case - humanity. Darwin was right to object. If God must be appealed to for that case, then He may be appealed to for all. It's all or nothing.
There's one way one might be a good theistic evolutionist, in my view. It was proposed by Eric Gaskill in the 1930s. "Creation" doesn't mean making causal arrows go this way or that. It means making causation itself happen. In sum, God upholds the existence of all things, and they do what they do because of that. But this undercuts the motivation for TEism, which is to explain how it is humans evolved.
One quibble: TE (at least in its more thoughtful proponents' hands, e.g. Ken Miller) seeks less to "explain how it is humans evolved" than it does to give an explanation of science that does not preclude a "direct" (for some value of the word) role for God in the evolution of humans.
I suppose that the more minimalist you are towards the "knowledge" content of science, the more tolerant of the TEs' attempt you'll be.
Sounds like the same thing to me, John.
Maybe I'm reading more into it than it can bear but to TEers the explanation of how humans came to evolve doesn't come from TE -- that come from revelation, experience of God, etc., that "shows" that God arranged it -- TE itself, to the extent it goes beyond ordinary evolutionary theory at all, only "explains" why it is not obvious to science that God arranged it.
I'll offer another translation, long after the fact:
I deal with ignorance: it's my philosophy. I have the tranquility of ignorance, and the creed of science. Others can't live without faith, belief, without theories. Me, I get along without these things. I line my nest in ignorance. I don't know, and I'll never know, I accept this without tormenting myself, I reserve judgement. This doesn't drive me into nihilism; I seek to understand what I find.
It's not littoral, but if I put it into whatever non-lingual abstract form I seem to use in my head, and let it come back out in the other language, this is the rendering that is closest. Things translate into and out of French rather the way pigs fly.