The Templeton Foundation has asked several distinguished researchers the question
"Does evolution explain human nature?"
The responses vary, and are in the form of essays available here:
http://www.templeton.org/evolution/
Of particular interest is Martin Nowak's reply which mirrors the ethos of this blog in a sharp and succinct way. Nowak is and has this to say:
"Music is part of human nature. There is also something very intuitive about numbers and geometric objects, and the ability to do some basic math seems to be part of human nature.
Yet the great theorems of mathematics are statements of an eternal truth that comes from another world, a world that seems to be entirely independent of the particular trajectory that biological evolution has taken on earth. The great symphonies of Beethoven and Mahler capture glimpses of a beauty that is absolute and everlasting. Beyond the temporal, materialistic world there is an unchanging reality.
My position is very simple. Evolution has led to a human brain that can gain access to a Platonic world of forms and ideas. This world is eternal and not the product of evolution, but it does affect human nature deeply. Therefore evolution cannot possibly explain all aspects of human nature."
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Great comments on mathematics an Platonism, I'll comment on it another day: Evolution and transcendence come together only in the human brain - there is a pickle for the platonists. Because our objective concepts, hopes and mind tools cannot be studied outside our way of thinking and belief to pinpoint any attributes of a higher reality is a bit tricky.
As to the Tempelton, I really like their questionnaire, but I am not to keen on the selection of thinkers: Joan Roughgarden and Martin Nowak are theists but David Sloan Wilson among others aren’t. This mirrors theoir answers. The question posed (like much that the Tempelton foundation supports through its funding and publications) is not in any way a scientific question and so the answers are not very enlightened. Nowak has no way of supporting his thesis of Platonism, but he utilizes art, mathematics and music as his main point. Since he is not a neurologist, sociologist or an art theorist I can easily trace many flaws in his reasoning, but then again – the question is a philosophical one. Extremely open-ended and vague.
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