---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stanley N Salthe <ssal...@binghamton.edu>
Date: Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 9:55 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Response to Salthe
To: Maxine Sheets-Johnstone <m...@uoregon.edu>
Here I respond to Maxine:
M: Theories are based on first-person observations. Observations are
first-person real-life, real-time experiences and are duly recorded in
support of theory. Descent with modification was a theory that Darwin put
forth on the basis of his observations that had to do with morphology, but
not only with morphology. See, for example, his last book on worms and the
intelligence of worms; see also his third book devoted to emotions.
S: Yes, nice examples. But my point here is that there can be no First
Person observation of an evolutionary origin. Such was denied hotly in the
’80’s by phylogenetic systematicists (taxonomists) regarding observations
of fossils. Such origins (maybe ALL origins?) are designations, not
phenomena.
M: I am unaware of Darwin’s denying a concern with origins and would
appreciate knowing more about his denial by way of a reference.
S: In the Origin of Species, Darwin says in a couple of place—usually
by-the-by—that he is not concerned with the origin of life.
1. “How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more
than how life itself fir originated” (p. 187 of first edition).
2. “I must premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the
primary mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself” (p.
207).
There is a comparable passage to the one on 207 in the manuscript that
Darwin was working on, before he condensed it into the Origin. So in the
Stauffer edition (Darwin’s Natural Selection): “I hope that it is hardly
necessary for me to premise that here we are no more concerned with the
first origin of the senses & the various faculties of the mind, than we are
with the first origin of life.” (p. 467)
M: I know that what he did not deny was “[t]hat many and grave objections
may be advanced against the theory of descent with modification through
natural selection” (*Origin of Species, *p. 435). Clearly, “descent with
modification” has to do not just with morphology but with history. History
has to do with timelines, and in this instance with origins and extinctions.
S: Extinctions are conceptually clean cuts, like origins. in actuality
the most recent positive find of a kind in the fossil record is held to
mark its extinction. So evolutionary extinction is also not a phenomenon.
In the current case of human environmental destruction in might be the case
that a person could observe the last of a kind of bird flying by, but (s)he
would not actually SEE its death.
M: I would add that because “descent with modification” involves a history
and not just a morphological comparison as in your human hand and chicken
foot example, the phrase is actually pertinent to the current discussion in
evolutionary biology as to how single-celled organisms gave rise to
multi-celled organisms. If, as is currently suggested, the way a protein
wiggles can result in a mutation so that its function in turn changes, then
“modifications” can determine origins, in this instance, the origin of
multi-celled over single-celled organisms.
S: In the stream of changes, we pick out certain ones to mark as
‘origins’. Origin is a determination of sufficient difference to mark with
a category. In evolutionary biology a new species is held to arise when
successful inter-reproduction fails even if no observational evidence can
be adduced as to what is manifestly different between the two. In taxonomy
this would not be able to mark different species. As well, there are
intermediates between single- and multi-cellulars, as in kinds of bacterial
biofilms.
M: Again, I don’t know where Darwin discredited his “origin” of species
S: I did not mean to suggest such an outrageous thing! See above.
M: and I would greatly appreciate knowing where, but his use of the term in
biology doesn’t necessarily mean a big bang moment. Descent with
modification means, as you say, a “change of existing forms,” and such
changes via natural selection equal in the passage of time the origin of
new species.
S: So we can assert, even without ever being able to say exactly
where/when that was because it is technically unobservable, therefore
non-phenomenal. But it doesn’t matter as long as we can point to
sufficient differences.
M: As to your question of how a phenomenologist could view movement in
relation to living forms that do not move, I would answer first that there
is a new science focused on plant neurobiology in which not just plant
growth but plant movement is recognized. I would also add with respect to
your mentioning that “Plants move slowly by growth” that I would definitely
align Aristotle’s thinking with phenomenology, namely, his recognition of
three primary kinetic modes: change, movement, and growth, and his highly
relevant estimation of Nature: ““Nature is a principle of motion and
change. . . . We must therefore see that we understand what motion is; for
if it were unknown, nature too would be unknown.” (It might be of interest
to note that in a letter to William Ogle, who had translated Aristotle’s *Parts
of Animals* and sent Darwin a copy, Darwin wrote, “Linnaeus and Cuvier
have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere
school-boys to old Aristotle.”) Finally, it is relevant to point out that
responsivity is a well-recognized biological characteristic of life forms.
Even plants respond, and not some not just to light, but to plants in their
immediate surrounds. Husserl’s identification and description of the
perceptual-cognitional disposition of animate organisms in terms of
“receptivity” and “turning toward” is complementary to the biological
character of responsivity.
S: Yes. My question remains, inasmuch as discussions of phenomenology
seem always (? OK frequently) to refer to manifest motion in human time
scale. If we start looking as slower or more minute motions (both as in
plants) I would understand that we are now doing science inasmuch as we now
need the support of machinery to go beyond what can be manifest to us at
the scale of our passing moments.
Then, I can’t resist citing my favorite phenomenological declaration, by
Sartre, “Snow IS white, wet and cold.”
STAN
Maxine
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:36 PM, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone <m...@uoregon.edu>
wrote:
> Response to Salthe and Marijuan
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