Hi, Platt,
I guess restricting yourself to the physical and biological levels of
explanation depends on what you consider the really important stuff
about the world. I would suggest that if you try to explain the emergence
of "really important" stuff like freedom, free will, creativity and beauty,
Darwinian evolution, as Wilber says "just won't work." Pirsig agrees.
Yes, I think this is true. The emergence of these concepts and realities has
more to do with our cognitive and social evolution than physical evolution.
There have been some interesting attempts to link the physical processes of
evolution with a teleological perspective. The best that I know of is
Teilhard de Chardin, an anthropologist and Jesuit priest, and, as far as I
am concerned, a great and important thinker, whether one agrees with the
teleological argument or not. At its root, is the thought that evolution,
on the whole, produces organisms that reflect qualities like greater
manipulating capacity, ability to think, social organization, etc. One could
say that Darwin's imperatives create a bias toward these kinds of qualities,
still without imputing purpose to the process, and that these qualities give
us our capacity for pursuing even higher values. It is an interesting but
difficult argument, well worth-while examining. His PHENONMENON OF MAN is
probably his most accessible writing, most of which was suppressed by the
Catholic church into the fifties..
LAWRY
> So, students evolution are intensely interested in what lies behind the
> puzzle pieces....and in the process of pursuing this interest have found
no
> reason to adopt a teleological PoV.
PLATT
Probably because those "students" are blocked (and blinded) by the "no
infidels allowed effect" imposed by their science teachers.
No, I don't think it is this, though the phenomenon you describe is a real
one. The classical teleological POV has simply been examined for centuries,
and found wanting. Its most recent resurrection, around the issue of
complexity and chaos, has been found to be untenable upon examination (see
the Glieck book that I mentioned in an earlier post for a summary of some
parts of the examination, or any of Stuart Kauffman's books).
LAWRY:
> Now, memes. Of course memes can't be seen under a microscope and never
> will. Memes are linguistic constructs - expressed ideas - that people use
> and pass on to each other. That they are not physical things (though some
> memeticians do assert that the meme lies in its carrier artifact - I am
not
> one of them) is no diminishment of the utility of the concept, or its
> reality. You will never examine a tone under a microscope (though you
might
> the traces of its sound wave captured in some medium), but you would
surely
> not argue that tones do not exist.
PLATT: Tones can be seen on an oscilloscope and precisely measured. When
you can detect a meme (or trace thereof) on any instrument other than
the fertile imagination of Dawkins and his acolytes, please let me know.
LAWRY:
The oscilloscope only creates a representation of the tone, not the tone
itself. The trace of a meme lies in the language and actions of people and
organizations. These can readily be traced, and so the movement of a meme
identified with precision. So the instrument of detection of a meme is
listening to what people say, and watching what they do.
You seem to have something against the concept of memes ("fertile
imagination...acolytes"). Can you say more about why?
Lawry
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