Charles Robert Darwin
1809-1882 · Philosophy of Science · Household name
Darwin was an English naturalist who explained how eyes and wings get built with nobody aiming at them, by evolution through natural selection: small inherited differences, more young born than can survive, and enormous stretches of time. He put human beings in the same story and traced conscience back to the social instincts of animals. On God he drifted toward agnosticism, calling purpose a question past our reach.
Signature
The position Darwin is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Natural Processes
- leans Mechanistic
- Human Nature
- Evolved Animal
Positions on the 3 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Mechanistic (19 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (25 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- leans Global (75 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
17 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Darwin refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Agnosticism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Good and Evil
- Natural Emergence
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Ethics Basis
- Other
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Hard Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Death
- Agnostic
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Adaptive Function
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Evolved Animal
What is human nature?