Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 85

REVIEWS

it is impossible to identify precisely the "unit
of selection": is it the gene, the phenotype
of the individual organism, or the whole
species? The attempts by Wilson, Dennett,
and others to "explain" such phenomena as
morality or religion are nothing more than
fantastic "Just So" stories, without empirical
foundation or theoretical discipline.
The fuzziness of the theory becomes even
more problematic when Wilson and Dawkins
try to extend the Darwinian metaphor into
so-called cultural evolution, with supposed
selection of "memes," indefinable units of
cultural transmission. I wish that at this
point Caiazza had closed his case by pointing
out (as Alvin Plantinga has recently done, fol-
lowing the trail blazed by G. K. Chesterton
and C. S. Lewis) that Wilson's Darwinian
reductionism is self-defeating, since theoriz-
ing about evolution would be just one more
piece of material phenomena to be reduced to
the instrumentality of mere survival. Accord-
ing to Darwinists, the Darwinian "meme"
has been selected for its propensity for self-
replication, a selection that is by definition
indifferent to truth or rationality.
In chapter 10 (the third chapter of Part III),
Caiazza uses Stanley Milgram's famous
experiments about the power of authority
as a paradigm of modern social science. He
captures well the irony of Milgram's project,
which exploited the unique authority of sci-
ence at midcentury to try to demonstrate that
authority itself is the root of all evils. Like all
postmodernists, Milgram saw "authority" as
something exercised by other people, never
by academics, scholars, or scientists like
himself. It is precisely this blind spot that
has unleashed so much social dislocation in
the latter half of the twentieth century, as the
reductionists of modern social science have
destroyed the necessary structures of liberty
in the name of liberation.
As Caiazza persuasively argues, empirical

social science's failures lie primarily at the
theoretical level, since it lacks the resources
for navigating the potentially infinite variety
of human relationships. Since all human
action contains, at least potentially, an ele-
ment of reason, no merely mechanical model
can ever be adequate. Again, if the operations
could be reduced to a mechanism, the result
would be to undermine rationality itself.
Moreover, Gödel's incompleteness results
demonstrate the irreducibility of rational
thought to any computable algorithm.
Part  IV consists of a somewhat miscella-
neous collection of three chapters. Caiazza
notes the precipitous decline in the prestige
of science within literary and popular cul-
ture in the twentieth century in chapter 11,
citing both dystopian science fiction and
philosophical deconstructionism. In chap-
ter 12, Caiazza presents a disjointed triptych
of three important contemporary figures:
Elaine Pagels, the scholar of Gnosticism;
Richard Dawkins, the apostle of athe-
ism; and Pope Benedict, with a focus on
his important Regensburg address on the
interdependency of Christianity and philo-
sophical reason. Caiazza provides a plausible
explanation of the appeal of ancient Gnosti-
cism to many Americans, fitting as it does
with a somewhat narcissistic turn to the self
and with an increasingly casual attitude to
the demands of morality. Caiazza brings to
light the philosophical vacuity of Dawkins's
arguments (or, more precisely, the lack
thereof) in his The God Delusion.
Finally, Caiazza provides a useful sum-
mary of Benedict's most important lecture,
one that was widely misunderstood and
that provoked an international spasm of
violent protests on the part of some Mus-
lims (ironically providing evidence for one
of Benedict's claims, namely, the unique
bond between Christian spirituality and
philosophical discussion). Benedict argues
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Modern Age - Fall 2014

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