by Stanley Anderson » September 3rd, 2004, 2:30 pm
[from kbrowne]:
>I expect the whole thing is by Lewis really but I have always rather
>hoped it was a forgery because it is, frankly, terrible.
I like to joke that I hoped it was a forgery because then we would have some hope that the real author is still alive and could actually finish the story:-) As you might guess from that comment, I really quite enjoyed the fragment and I have always thought it was by Lewis
>Don't you think Lewis' remark about God putting the fossils in the rocks
>was a joke, brought in simply for the fun of argument? I doubt if he
>really took that idea seriously.
Well, yes -- Fowler says as much in the article -- perhaps "joke" is too strong a word, but Lewis was using the statement as a lead-in to a deeper investigation of the subject (Evolution in general, that is, not that isolated remark). And when Lewis detected that Fowler was not familiar with the context of the remark, he let it go, as Fowler freely admits about his own ignorance of the source of the quote.
I was surprised to see him (Fowler) trot out the old "Lewis wasn't good at math" comment to support the idea that Lewis' ideas about science were unsound. The whole issue about science and Lewis is a big subject that I couldn't address adequately here, but as a mathematics major in college (thirty years ago, so the rust is showing, I'm sure:-), I don't see such a deficiency in Lewis. Oh of course I have no first hand knowledge of his mathematical abilities, and I know about his failure to complete the mathematics part of his education and all, but although it is hard to put into precise terms, when I read any of Lewis' works, I recognize perfectly clearly in my own mind many of the sorts of things that made me good at mathematics.
Perhaps he didn't master the technical parts of mathematics for whatever reason (I often joke that I can work with equations and theory, but give me a checkbook to balance or keep score in a game and I can't give you a correct concrete answer to save my life:-), but I say that the sort of reasoning and ability to make connections between disparate subjects and being able to step back and see the bigger picture are common aspects that I see in Lewis' writing and in the things that make a mathematician good at what he does.
So, with all that, I question the "evidence" that Lewis did not reason properly about science given his supposed lack of mathematical ability.
--Stanley