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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index
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To: average joe who wrote (188756)3/6/2009 9:52:56 AM
From: neolibRead Replies (2) of 306849
 
An area where Ayn was basically out to lunch was her limited understanding of competition vs cooperation in biological systems. Yet she took her view (which admittedly, was rather prevalent in evolutionary biology at the time) and used it as a basis for her epistemology. Much has changed in evolutionary biology since she cast her views in stone, and that is just a tad bit of a problem for Objectivism these days. The current carnage lying around you is partly the direct result of clinging to philosophy over reality.

If you are unaware, her views of biology were limited to the Alfred Russel Wallace, "Nature, red in tooth and claw" version of natural selection. While this is an important part of the history of life on earth, it is lunacy to think that framework can explain the interactions of a social species such as humans, or our evolutionary origins. Life is much richer and more complex than that simplistic view.

Its a nice illustration of the fact that a dominant theory in science evolves over time in contrast to an axiom in philosophy. Ayn built a sand castle on an axiom which turned out to have serious flaws. The system she took the axiom from has gone on increasing its knowledge and altering its views, but the philosophy Ayn built does not have that flexibility.

Err...well it didn't. I suspect going forward we will see some remarkable changes in that regard. Greenspan has already demonstrated that. Others will follow.
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