This volume consists of six articles, three letters to the editor and two book reviews. The articles are arranged thematically.

Part One, which focuses on the interpretations of Darwinism, includes four articles.

Michael Ruse, in his paper “Darwin and Design”, argues that Darwin accepted fully that organisms are design-like — that, in other words, they exhibit “final causes”. According to Darwin, natural selection explains why this happens. He denied, in Ruse’s view, that this feature demands the hypothesis of a designing consciousness. Read the text...

J. Scott Turner, in his article “Do Species Want to Evolve?”, gives a positive answer to the question posed in its title. In his view, the fundamental thesis of Darwinism, to the effect that only purposeless natural selection can generate new species, is wrong. The author argues that adaptation and hereditary memory are purposeful phenomena, and this, in his opinion, undermines the idea of undirected natural selection. Read the text...

Stephen Dilley, in his article „Charles Darwin’s Use of Theology in the Origin of Species”, argues for the thesis that theology played an important role in the formulation of Darwin’s scientific views as presented in his magnum opus. He justifies this claim by appealing to analyses of the theological language employed by Darwin. According to the author, Darwin made use of positiva theology to justify the theory of inheritance with modifications, and to undermine the idea of special creation. Read the text...

Michal Jakub Wagner, in his article “The Liminal Nature of the «Eclipse of Darwinism» as a Critical Phase in the History of Evolutionary Biology”, argues that previous interpretations of the so-called “eclipse of Darwinism” have a serious problem explaining how the development of the Darwinian paradigm has unfolded, insofar as this is taken to consist firstly in Darwin’s changing the direction of the development of biology, then in the rejection of his approach in favor of non-Darwinian theories, and finally in the emergence of a modern synthesis. According to the author, the widely shared belief that there has always been one main line of scientific development, with no room for a period of indeterminacy (in the sense of one in which science was not dominated by a single research perspective) is responsible for such a state of affairs. Read the text...

Part Two, concerning the roots of modern science, contains two articles.

Michael Esfeld, in his article “The Metaphysics of Cartesian Science”, discusses the question of how Cartesian science achieves its objectivist stance; he subsequently focuses on the issue of the development of modern science. In the second part, the author presents an argument for why Cartesian science faces a significant obstacle in the form of human thought and action — one which then allows him to evaluate Cartesian dualism. Read the text...

Gonzalo Munévar, in his article “The Origin of Modern Physical Science: Some Passages from A Theory of Wonder”, presents the main arguments of his latest book, A Theory of Wonder: Evolution, Brain, and the Radical Nature of Science, and outlines the theory developed there, which he calls “evolutionary relativism”. This article is an attempt — of a kind that is rare these days — to defend epistemological relativism on the basis of Feyerabend’s principle of proliferation. The latter recommends inventing alternative viewpoints and, based on them, examining what is considered relevant evidence. Read the text...

The volume closes with three letters to the editor and two reviews.

Bradley Monton, in a letter to the Editor entitled “How Can an Atheist Defend Intelligent Design?”, recalls his intellectual melees with people from the academic world who could not understand that one could take the theory of intelligent design seriously without being a proponent of it. Read the text...

In his letter to the editor entitled “The Inference to Intelligent Design is Independent of Any Religious Claim: The Wonder of Water”, Michael Denton explains why, even for an agnostic, the evidence of the environment’s having been fine-tuned to the existence of life on Earth makes rejecting the design thesis a very difficult matter. Denton bases his arguments on various properties of water that allow him to claim that this has been fine-tuned in just this kind of way. Read the text...

Cornelius Hunter, in the letter to the editor titled “What Monton Seems to Miss?” notes that Bradley Monton is appealing to theists and atheists to agree with his statement that science can, in principle, provide evidence for design in nature. However, according to Hunter, Monton seems to have overlooked that the two key issues in his argument: the origin of species and the random-chance-versus-design controversy are heavily theologically and metaphysically laden. And this theological and metaphysical ladenness shapes the content of scientific beliefs. Read the text...

Hicham Jakha, in his review of Janet Levin's book The Metaphysics of Mind (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge — New York 2022), entitled “From Mind to Body and Back”, not only provides the reader with an extensive and interesting discussion of the book. Jakha also notes that Levin has not examined several important theories of mind. Nevertheless, Jakha notes, the book has “philosophical rigor and depth”, which allows him to recommend this book to any reader interested in this issue. Read the text...

Albert Lukasik, in his review of Jacek Neckar’s book Ewolucyjna psychologia osobowości. O psychologicznej naturze człowieka w ujęciu darwinowskim [The Evolutionary Psychology of Personality: A Darwinian Perspective on the Psychological Nature of Man] (Wydawnictwo Akademickie SEDNO, Warszawa 2018) entitled “Człowiek zwierzęciem zróżnicowanym” [Man, the Differentiated Animal], begins by pointing out the three main goals that guided Neckar in writing his monograph. The author of the review then goes on to carefully discuss the contents of the book’s six chapters. This leads him not only to conclude that Neckar’s monograph addresses the most relevant issues in evolutionary psychology and the psychology of personality, but also to note that the book represents an original attempt to achieve some syntheses of various theories of personality with evolutionary explanations. Read the text...