Thoughts on The God Delusion: "Darwinism"

I was reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and something occurred to me. While I worked my way through the section about the evolution vs. intelligent design debate (which any book about atheism should address), the word "Darwinism" kept popping up. Every time the word was used, I became more and more conscious of it; something about it bothered me.

The thing that struck me is this: why is Darwinism an "-ism"? The -ism suffix is generally used for names of religions (e.g. Judaism, Catholicism, Hinduism), or a philosophical stance (e.g. existentialism, Marxism, even atheism itself), or a political movement (e.g. feminism, abolitionism).

Darwinism, being a scientific theory, doesn't fit into these categories. I can't think of any other scientific theories with the -ism suffix. Wouldn't it be like calling the Laws of Motion "Newtonism", or general relativity "Einsteinism", or genetics "Watson and Crickism"? (Or maybe "Watsonism-and-Crickism" to be more fair to Watson.)

I wonder if the use of the word "Darwinism" weakens the evolution argument in the public eye, because it makes it sound like something less than an established theory. Maybe "Darwinism" has a very precise meaning that I'm unclear on, but it is commonly used when discussing evolution and natural selection. The debate between evolution and creationism (which is appropriately an -ism) is a public, cultural one; and the public, in my opinion, is not so concerned with precisely defining terms.

A word like "Darwinism" lends itself to attacks of this sort: "See? It's just some guy's opinion!" I'd like to see the word used less, at least for the purposes of cultural debate. Charles Darwin obviously deserves a lot of credit, but in this case, a more decisive term may be more useful.

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My buddy made an interesting post about the perception of "straight acting" among homosexuals. It just goes to show how every group has its own prejudices.

One thing I want to comment on, his comparison between "straight acting" and "banana":

This is analogous to referring to an Asian person as a "banana" (which doesn't seem to carry the same negative connotations).

This isn't quite accurate. The term "banana" is not as neutral as my friend makes it out to be. Personally, I don't take offense at being called a banana, but the whole concept of an Asian person acting white can be the cause of some friction. My banana status is ambiguous enough that sometimes I've been able to listen in at conversations between parents of more full-fledged bananas, and I can tell, it's really something that they have strong feelings about. They sincerely wish that their kids were "more Chinese." In my own family, there's never been outright unhappiness about the issue, but I can occasionally sense an air of passive disapproval. (We don't call it "banana" in Cantonese, there's another term for it that I won't even attempt a translation of... it's some shit about bamboo or something.)

And I can only guess what FOBs think about bananas. I wouldn't know, because I stay away from those people as much as I can...