Spillover Thoughts in Rereading Time's Magazine's Obituary of Historian Arnold Toynbee: Teleologies of History, Contingency and Sub Specie Aeternitatis
The first part of this chapter analyses what historian of human civilizations Arnold Toynbee would have thought and said of the Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris debate regarding the Burgess Shale in relation to contingency (Gould's point) and teleology (Conway Morris' In addition, the views regarding the teleological interpretation of human history discernible in the Christian and Marxian 'triumphalism' of Saint Augustine and Karl Marx's philosophies of history are also analysed. The views of the evolutionist and historian of science Ernst Mayr on the contingency/teleology debate are noted. The second part canvasses and juxtaposes the seventeenth century philosopher Spinoza's sub specie aeternitatis with those of Toynbee's exhortation to overcome 'intellectual provincialism' in viewing 'human affairs' Contemporary notions (in some circles) of (Intelligent) Design, Consilience and Emergence/Fine tuning are also analysed from what the author of the Chapter considered to be Spinozist viewpoints.
Legal Education and Legal Traditions: Selected Essays