Abstract
Evolution has always been considered a battleground between religion and science. Despite that perception, there are some indications that religious beliefs have influenced and continue to influence some current interpretations in evolutionary biology. To that end I present evidence on how pervasive the theological idea of predestination, which has been long discussed in the the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions, has influenced some of the elucidations of the nature of biological evolution. I will concentrate on the history of ideas about the evolution of cave organisms to epitomize the strong influence of religion on some evolutionary ideas as shown not only by some of the interpretations but also by the terminology still used today. I conclude that scientists need to understand the historical and philosophical framework of their research if they really want to claim that their work is really value-free. This paper discusses the influence of religious thought on evolutionary thinking particularly regarding cave biology.
Highlights
Part of the conventional wisdom in scientific circles dominated by reductionist views of research is that science is or can be both value-free and ahistorical
The idea of predestination defined as the doctrine that contends that God predestines from eternity the salvation of certain souls, has been debated for a long time in theological circles (For earlier discussions on this issue see Weizsäcker (1859), Das Dogma von der göttlichen Vorherbestimmung im 9
Geographers have argued that the emergence of regional inequality within developing countries and of the emergence of giant urban centers are the result of conflict between ‘predestination’ and ‘self-organizing’ approaches to economic geography (Krugman 1999)
Summary
Part of the conventional wisdom in scientific circles dominated by reductionist views of research is that science is or can be both value-free and ahistorical. In this paper I will argue that the notion of predestination has had a strong influence in the evolutionary ideas developed in the western world, when it comes to explanations relative to the loss of phenotypic (morphological, behavioral, and physiological) features during evolution as epitomized by organisms living in caves and
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