Dear Maxine and colleagues, It seems to me that the assumption of an origin takes a heavy load on this theory. We know that order can emerge from chaos. Any order will also disappear in the longer run.
Why would one wish to make such assumptions? Meta-physical? Best, Loet ________________________________________ Loet Leydesdorff Professor, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ Honorary Professor, SPRU, University of Sussex; Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC, Beijing; Visiting Professor, Birkbeck, University of London; http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Pedro C. Marijuan Sent: Friday, February 19, 2016 2:13 PM To: 'fis' Subject: [Fis] _ Re: Maxine’s presentation 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Phenomenology and Evolutionary Biology (1): Phenomenology As written in the Preface to the 2nd 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 related to 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/ ------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
