Dear Maxine and Colleagues,
Concerning your presentation I have a couple of questions. About dance,
first, let me inquire about another important aspect it may have,
perhaps a "vital" one . In a number of species, dance is related to the
mutual pre-exploration between potential reproductive partners. The
individual fitness of the candidate(s) are evaluated quite strategically
along the movements of dance, at least in the essential adaptive traits.
Cultural layers of human societies may have created further "meanings"
to dance (artistic, gimnastic, educative, therapeutic, etc.) but at the
very roots of this human phenomenon the exploration between genders
continues to be of the essence, I think. Those qualities you mention of
tensional, linear, aerial, and projectional are in themselves excellent
ways to observe the whole person: not only in the motoric dimension, but
also concerning some related intellectual-emotional capabilities. The
"gestalts" Alex mentions are colored very differently depending on the
social/cultural contexts in which the same dance may take place. It is
quite interesting that the folk inter-gender dance is performed in
"safe" public spaces, and that it often conveys a feminine advantage
(better synchronization of movements, more interest for fashionable
pieces), etc. etc. Although perhaps it does not apply to most of present
day "disco dance". Along your points, I was reminded that many years
ago, someone in fis list wrote about the informational implications of
"Tango" (originally a dance between castaway males in Argentina's
immigrant squalors) ... it is a pity I can remember very little about that.
And the second comment concerns the paleoanthropological tools. The
analogy between the two major forms of tools and the two major tooth
forms is very well developed.I quite agree, and also would like to ad a
relationship with human gut-microbiome. We needed "artificial" teeth
because with our terrific brain growth, the overall metabolic needs
escalated almost 20%. However, at the same time the gut size (&
contained microbiome) was reduced 50% in comparison with any
Anthropoidea of our size. This is an impossible budget to maintain,
unless the development of collective intelligence applied to our feeding
and created completely original ways. These new ways were made possible
by language, group identities, tools and artifact creation... but it was
the new feeding style what pushed along this adaptive loop. We have
called the new ways as "cooking", but actually it was a pre- or external
digestion, achieved with those artifactual "molars and incisives", plus
boiling, roasting, etc. And also by incorporating "external
microbiomes"--fermentation-- for our service: bread, wine, beer, cheese,
etc. The essential new foods of civilization. Cooking made us humans...
how a "social brain" was created, and how our phenomenology became
captive of group collective thinking might be a topic deserving further
analysis.
Thanking in advance for the tolerance!
Best--Pedro
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*Phenomenology and Evolutionary Biology*
***(1): Phenomenology
*As written in the Preface to the 2^nd edition (1979) of The
Phenomenology of Dance, “Certainly words carry no patented meanings,
but the term ‘phenomenology’ does seem stretched beyond its limits
when it is used to denote either mere reportorial renderings of
perceptive behaviors or actions, or /any/ descriptive rendering at all
of perceptible behaviors or actions. At the least, ‘phenomenology’
should be recognized as a very specific mode of epistemological
inquiry, a method of eidetic analysis invariably associated with the
name Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology; and at the most
‘phenomenology’ should be recognized as a philosophically-spawned
terms, that is, a term having a rich philosophical history and
significance.”
A phenomenological analysis of movement given in The Phenomenology of
Dance follows the rigorous methodology set forth by Husserl. The
methodology is integral to understandings of phenomenology as well as
to its practice. Husserl distinguished two modes of the methodology.
One mode is termed “static,” the other is termed “genetic.” The aim in
static phenomenology is to uncover the essential character of the
phenomenon in question or under investigation. The aim in genetic
phenomenology is to uncover the source and development of meanings and
values we hold.
The abbreviated phenomenological analysis of movement set forth below
follows a static phenomenology. The abbreviated phenomenological
analysis of the origin of tool-making follows a genetic phenomenology.
The first analysis elucidates the inherently dynamic character of
movement, and in ways quite contrary to the idea that movement is a
force in time and in space and quite contrary as well to the
dictionary definition of movement as a “change of position.” The
second analysis answers questions that paleoanthropologists,
archaeologists, and anthropologists leave unanswered. The analyses
present basic aspects of animation that anchor the relationship
between phenomenology and the life sciences. In particular, the point
of departure for both phenomenology and the life sciences is /animate/
being not just in the sense of /living/ creatures, but in the sense of
/moving/ creatures, creatures who, in and through movement, are
sustaining their lives, mating and reproducing, and so on. In short,
movement is fundamental to animation, a decidedly significant entrée
to understanding basic aspects anchoring a relationship between
phenomenology and the life sciences. Following these analyses is a
final section on the descriptive foundations of both phenomenology and
evolutionary biology and on their common concern with origins...
(cont., see attached file)
*(****4) Descriptive Foundations*
**While it is common to speak laudingly of the keenness and scope of
Darwin's observations, it is not commonly recognized, certainly not
explicitly, that his observations, as written, describe his
experiences. His written observations are in fact equivalent to his
experiences in the sense that they detail what he saw, felt, heard,
smelled, and even tasted. Though focal attention is consistently--one
might even say, exclusively--riveted on his theory of natural
selection, Darwin's descriptive writings are of fundamental
significance, for it is these descriptive writings that ground his
theory, that are its foundation. More broadly, evolutionary
understandings and explanations of Nature are in the end tethered to
an experientially-derived descriptive literature. Reading this
literature, we learn a good deal about nonhuman animals. We learn that
they are perceptive, thoughtful, and affectively moved by creatures
and things in their environment, and we learn further that their
perceptive, affective, and thoughtful ways are intimately relatedto
our own. In short, Darwin's descriptive accounts of the natural living
world reveal something about the lives of others and in turn something
about our own lives.
I highlight the descriptive foundations of evolutionary theory in part
because these descriptive foundations have fallen by the wayside,
particularly in the highly visible present-day writings on evolution
by neuroscientists and cognitive scientists. “Darwinian bodies” are
not automatons. Neither are they robots lumbering about on behalf of
selfish genes nor are they head-end neurological mechanisms, as per
cognitivists of all stripe who collapse bodies into brains. I
highlight the descriptive foundations of evolutionary theory equally
to call attention to experience, specifically to the fact that
descriptive foundations are grounded in experience. Descriptive
foundations do not come by way of reducing the living world to genes,
collapsing it into brains, or modeling it along the lines of a
computer. Descriptive foundations are laid by way of direct experience
of the living world. Only by hewing to experiences of that world have
we the possibility of arriving at veridical descriptive accounts of
nature and in turn, at explanations of nature.
I follow up these aspects of Darwinian evolutionary biology to show
their confluence with phenomenology. Phenomenology, like Darwinian
evolutionary biology, is methodologically essential to understandings
of human nature; like Darwinian evolutionary biology, it too is
tethered to experience and is basically a descriptive project; and
again, like Darwinian evolutionary biology, it too is concerned with
origins. What we think of and separate academically as disparate
fields of knowledge are undergirded by descriptive foundations. The
descriptive challenge lies in languaging experience and being true to
the truths of experience, a challenge common to both fields of study.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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