Hi Matt, I fell off the wagon. > > Matt: > That's really interesting about the references to evolution, > though one shouldn't discount talking "evolutionarily," if > you will, like the mythos-over-logos section in ZMM, when > the focus was cultural evolution. For me that makes the problem even more difficult. Biological evolution by natural selection at least has a well defined theory with dedicated scientists/philosophers working on it. Evolution, unfolding, at the physical, social, and intellectual levels really don't have any evolutionary theories per se let alone people exploring them from that POV. > > I think the main problems with "definitive agreements" in > how us humans evolved out of the muck have been > primarily problems for philosophers, and scientists talking > philosophy (like Wilson, Dawkins, Pinker, Chomsky). The > trouble has been the isolation of "what" we are talking > about to then be able to isolate the when, where, why, > and how. For instance, if you say "the mind" is what > differentiates us from the monkeys, then you have a lot > of trouble spelling out the rest. However, if you say > "language," your job is a lot easier (just so long as you > don't also reinstitute "mind"-problems, like Chomsky). I > think current discord is around because we're still > hammering out what this paradigm-shift to Darwin > means, and some people are suggesting that the job of > the scientist would be easier if we stopped throwing > him mysteries, but rather problems. Right. In addition the ongoing specialization in all fields makes it difficult for anybody outside a field to understand the inside let alone how it might it effect the whole of science. Let alone our lives. Someone, Mark I think, in another thread commented that Dawkins is not much of a scientist because he has not "discovered" much of anything. But his role as an integrator in the broad fields of zoology, genetics, and evolution I find valuable.
Dave Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
