Who said what? As usual, I won't try to figure that out (but
rather address myself to "the conversation we are", which
Husserl called: "transcendental intersubjectivity")....
David Burman wrote:
>
> As a dentist, I can't resist this one! Tooth decay is a product of
> capitalist "civilization." While the results of tooth decay could be severe
> (abscesses could lead to death), before there were refined carbohydrates
> (like white flour and sugar) tooth decay was relatively rare. In fact,
> before mass production, tooth decay was the "priviledge" of the rich, who
> could afford such luxuries as white flour and sugar. Honey, raw sugar and
> maple syrup were used in some cultures, and but not being produced
> commercially, these were not readily available to most people.
OK: Is *malocclusion* a product of capitalist civilization? Why
aren't all those peasants in Brueghel paintings Brad Pitts and
Madonnas?
>
> I'm sure there are better examples of anti-evolutionism!
> David
>
> At 10:19 AM 3/1/98 GMT, Durant wrote:
> >....
> >> So Brad, I disagree, it is not the perks of the office meeting or a
> >> businessman's lunch that keeps capitalism going, it is the perverting of
> >> life to a language that defines reality as a competition which of course is
> >> reinforced with sciences current love affair with evolution. Let me ask you
> >> a question? Why do humans have bad teeth? If evolution was all it is
> >> cracked up to be, surely we could have evolved out of tooth decay. If you
> >> have no teeth, it is pretty hard to chew grain or a hunk of meat.
I think the dentist is probably right about tooth decay, as an
epidemic, being pretty much a phenomenon of refined sugar "culture"
(every mouth a petri dish!).
This is off the topic (but not far, as should become apparent
shortly...):
Heinz Kohut argued that frequency or even ubiquity of occurrence of
some phenomenon does not make it even normal, much less normative (the
example he used was, for better or worse, tooth decay in recent
pre-fluoridation times).
> >>
> >
> >I had only time to glance through, but this caught my eye,
> >as I cannot understand the gist of it.
> >What's your problem with evolution?
I didn't recently express any "problem with evolution"
on this list, but I do indeed have a *big* problem
with it (actually, several). One is something Stephen
J. Gould observed: That nature (AKA evolution) is in love
with the *idea* of the individual, not with particular
individuals qua individuals (evolution is not a
carrier of Kant's categorical imperative!).
In this
way, evolution *is* a lot like capitalist competition:
it doesn't care about me (you), but only about what it can
use me (you) for [this is, of course, in both cases, an
anthropomirphizing metaphor, since nature, like the invisible
hand of the marketplace, is not stupid but altogether
mindless -- at least I must believe this until either
of the two approaches me in mutually respectful dialog).
A second point (probably also from Gould:) about evolution:
Evolution optimizes not for any long-term ideal, but rather
for adaptation to local circumstances, which, if the
latter are perverse, will result in the evolution
of creatures unable to live anywhere except in their
cosmological side-show of origin. Again, this seems to me very
reminiscent of free market enterprise, especially the
kind where persons "take advantage of" local conditions,
be they global stock market wheeler-dealers, or clever
zeks and stalag inmates bootlegging cigarettes etc.
> >Before you knock it, read up on it, you seem to
> >have the time... The few thousand of years
> >since human lifespan started to be longer is
> >bagatelle in evolutionary timescales.
Apart from evolutionary biologists in the past 150 or
so years, there never were any evolutionary
timescales (the earth was created 5734BC or sometime
around then, and, for much of the
interim, it was flat and rested on the back of a big
turtle, as everybody also knew --> and the near
universal applicability
of this somewhat flippant remark, when extended to
all the peoples who are the objects of anthropological
and sociological investigation, is, to my
understanding, one, if not *the*, central message
of such disciplines as "science studies", when they are
seriously undertaken rather than Paris (New York, etc.)
fashions....
[snip]
> >Science has no "love affair" with anything;
Why should it? The Catholic Church revealed to Galileo the
most important "discovery" of his career, far more
consequential than anything he thought he saw through
that strange tube with a couple pieces of ground
glass in it... --> namely,: "shut
your mouth and behave!"
[snip]
As I believe George Herriman's Krazy Kat said:
"There is a heppy land, far, far away."
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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