Great to see you pulled back into the fray, Steve. I second your
suggestion re reading Lewontin's 'Biology as Ideology'. It is important to
mention that he is a very prominent biologist, not a mystic/ magic
hocus/pocus kind of guy like Newton.(and he doesn't babble). Hocus/pocus
has interesting roots by the way.
I clipped a bit of your note to add a brief comment:
"FOR EXAMPLE, I think that underneath the discussion, disagreement,
and (occassional) incomprehension between Jay, Eva, and Ray, what
is at issue is a view of human nature (gasp!) and what is possible
for humans. Jay's view seems to hinge importantly on biological
necessity -- our evolutionary legacy -- which he sees, I think, as
fundamentally unalterable. With some justification, Eva sees these
assumptions as essentially false (because too reductive) and
distressingly self-fulfilling -- if we BELIEVE that we have no
choice but to be agressively self-aggrandizing, then we have been
given permission, as it were, to BE that way."
Almost seems like a "tower of Babel" at times doesn't it? Might different
language games be at play here? Or in the case of Ray, different forms of
life?
A student of Wittgenstein, Maurice Drury, wrote a book _The Danger of
Words_. It explores much of what you comment on here.
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