Evolusjonsbiologi som teologisk og filosofisk prosjekt

Abstract

Both modern evolutionary biology and its critics, the ID movement and the young earth-creationists, work from the presuppositions of mechanistic world view, where the premodern interest in form and inherent teleology is replaced by a one-sided focus on external causality. Darwin rejects Paley’s theological interpretation of the mechanistic world view, and the article argues that this rejection is relevant also in relation to the ID movement’s resurrection of Paley’s perspective. However, the mechanistic world view is philosophically problematic both in its theological and materialist instantiations and should be replaced by an approach that along the lines of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle considers the world’s intelligibility as basic also in the context of evolutionary biology and philosophy of science.