#33 — Human sciences are not “soft”, though many social scientists are softheaded, in comparison to natural sciences: they are different though they share some things in common.
Soft as in opinion driven rather than fact driven. Psychology comes to mind as an example. Astrophysics is a hard science, purely data driven.
Evolution (i.e. biological, not cultural evolution) cannot explain ethics because whatever biological evolution we needed in becoming language-using humans this necessary condition is not sufficient to explaining culture.
Evolution can’t explain a lot of knowledge gaps at the present time, either, so the anti-Darwin crowd has invented an entire industry based on trying to upset the entire thing. That this has been labeled the God-Of-The-Gaps-Argument is telling.
The fact that as time proceeds that gaps get filled — and never by the supernatural — says that the general theory is correct despite the obvious fact that some of the details are or may be wrong for a while.
Evolution has one underlying and unifying assumption, which is that what we are is the result of natural forces. That means ethics and morals are assumed to be a natural development even if we don’t yet understand how this happened.
As for any discomfort that we don’t understand something in full at present, I have none. Religion has been around for millenia and has never once been proved correct about any natural real world phenomenon. e.g. science and reason have been handing religion its lunch for 500 years going and I see no change in this.
