Evolution

Towards a biospheric ethic - Modern moral philosophers have based their ethical principles on a grossly distorted view of nature and human society. The result has been a 'technospheric' ethic that seeks to equate progress and the moral good with economic expansion and the dominance of man over nature. A new 'biospheric' ethic is required. Written for the Institute of Science and Society, January 2003.

Intelligence is universal in life - a synthesis of chapters 31, 32 and 33 of The Way: an ecological world view. Published in Rivista di Biologia / Biology Forum Vol. 93 No. 3, 2000. Goldsmith argues that intelligence is no exclusive preserve of humankind.

Richard Benedict Goldschmidt - a discussion of the life and works of the German biologist and evolutionist, author of "The Material Basis of Evolution".

Scientific superstitions, or "The cult of randomness and the taboo on teleology". This article is an extended version of a combination of three chapters, 5, 26, and 27, of The Way: an ecological world view. Also published in The Ecologist Vol. 27 No. 5, September / October 1997.

The need for a feedback mechanism linking behaviour to evolution - Appendix 4 of The Way: An Ecological World View, originally published in 1992. This text is taken from the revised and enlarged edition, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 1998.

To keep to the Way society must be able to correct any divergence from it - chapter 65 of The Way: An Ecological World View, originally published in 1992. This text is taken from the revised and enlarged edition, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 1998.

Progress is anti-evolutionary and is the anti-Way - chapter 64 of The Way: An Ecological World View, originally published in 1992. This text is taken from the revised and enlarged edition, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 1998.

Gaia, seen as a total spatio-temporal process, is the unit of evolution - chapter 21 of The Way: An Ecological World View, originally published in 1992. This text is taken from the revised and enlarged edition, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 1998.

Evolution, neo-Darwinism and the paradigm of science - "Neo-Darwinism does not provide a satisfactory explanation for evolution and however resilient it may prove to criticism, it must eventually give way to a more realistic theory ..." Published in The Ecologist Vol. 20 No. 2, March / April 1990.

Gaia and evolution - "Is it not apparent that neo-Darwinists, still more so sociobiologists, have got it completely wrong; that they have failed to distinguish between pathology and physiology: between the growth of a malignant tumour and the development of differentiated tissue - between anti-evolution and evolution?". This key paper was presented in November 1988 at the Wadebridge Ecological Centre's Second Annual Symposium on "Gaia and her implications for evolutionary theory", and published in The Ecologist Vol. 19, No. 4, 1989.

Thermodynamics or ecodynamics? - Scientists and philosophers have seized on the Second Law of Thermodynamics and hailed it as the key to unravelling the secrets of the Universe. But can the behaviour of the natural world really be understood through the Entropy Law, originally formulated to explain the workings of a steam engine? Published in The Ecologist Vol. 11 No. 4, July / August 1981.