QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

from evolution on which consciousness had been bestowed by capricious fortune and whose
uncertain fate was constrained by a small fraction of the cosmos. 282
3.2.1. The rise of materialism
Published in 1859, Darwin’s Origin of Species made the study of evolution the central focus of
scientific discussion. From the philosophical point of view, Darwinism signified adoption of the
same way of thinking which, according to both Galilei and Descartes, was considered
appropriate in connection with inorganic nature. “Final causes” were no longer required even in
the world of organisms now that the development of species in nature could be explained by
natural selection. The adoption of a mechanistic-deterministic way of thinking in natural science
had a powerful influence not only on biology but also on people’s thoughts and research into
cultural phenomena. As a result of mechanism-determinism, “fitness for purpose” began to be
adopted in the field of psychology when experimental psychology embarked on scientific
research into mental phenomena in the 1800s.
Human civilisation was no longer seen as an isolated domain, but as just a province of the world
ruled by laws which was investigated by physicists and biologists. In sociology, for example,
Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer enforced strictly scientific ways of thinking. 283 Subjective
appraisals by researchers also began to be avoided in the humanities. Even though, for example,
Wilhelm Dilthey and Heinrich Rickert stressed the fundamental differences between the
humanities and natural science, language, art and religious phenomena were generally
considered to be facts resulting from a chain of causality and they were investigated
accordingly. 284
The feeling that it was possible to achieve extensive knowledge by mathematical and mechanical
methods while retaining the support of adequate evidence inevitably resulted in these sciences
being assigned a unique status. By emphasising the objective facts of nature, man’s subjective
side essentially became forgotten: neither his internal state nor changes in it could be directly
282 Tarnas 1998, 280, 327-332.
283 Following the natural sciences, Comte divided sociology into statistics and dynamisc.
107