DARWIN'S SMALL-MINDEDNESS

science of the kind Darwin practised isn't simply an affair that links cause and effect but one which in Aristotle's scheme accepts only two out of four ... when Aristotle said cause he meant it four ways but Darwin accepted only two ... matter and motion ... he would not accept either form as a cause or a guiding purpose ... form he took only as a description and purpose only as wishful thinking ... most particularly as if to consecrate this diminution he extolled the small over the large ... micro now became the very essence of macro ... indeed matter itself he puts out of sight with its omnipresent large amorphous universality and will have in its place motion ... evolution now means that things change all the time so that any boundary any species anything that doesn't change is swept out of deepest reality and put as a figment into our imagination ... thus tables people and galaxies are reduced to elements so unstable they're even now burning out and drifting apart trying if not by design then by the necessities of the accidental to become smaller still