Helmut,
"Morphogenetic field" is just a name, a term standing for a
theoretical concept. Naming is not explaining. - For explaining
anything, a theory is needed, with sound experimental evidence
backing it up.
Do you think the experimental evidence Sheldrake has been
presenting is not sound? Are there flaws and shortcomings in his
theory? - If so, where?
Or are his theories just surprising and odd?
In 1990's I got interested in Sheldrake. Took up some of his
experiments both in detail and as wholes. Found out that they were
exceptionally well designed and carried out.
I did (and do) find some shortcomings in his theory, but only of
the usual sort. They could be even better. (As any worthwhile theory
should!)
All criticism should be specified in these respects. I think.
Best,
Kirsti
Helmut Raulien kirjoitti 6.6.2017 02:52:
Supplement: Sorry, Mr. Laplace, please transform into Lamarck in
the
below text.
Lalala,
Helmut
Dear list members,
I suggest three steps of more or less innovative thinking: 1.:
Dogmaticness, 2.: Open-mindedness, 3.: Magical thinking. I think
that
the middle way is the best: Open minded thinking. Dogmaticness
blocks
the inquiry, and magical thinking reverses cause and effect and
leads
to false conclusions.
To tell, whether a theory is open-minded or magical, there are two
ways, I think. One of them is theoretical, the other experimental.
The
experimental way is easy: Can the experiment be reproduced by other
experimenters in other laboratories, and will the results be the
same?
If this is so, but there is no theoretical explanation available to
explain the results, then I guess that scientists will not stop
looking for explanations until they have found them. I do not
think,
that they are afraid of being accused of pseudo-scientificness. If
they were, they would not have become scientists, but clerks or
something like that. I think, that scientists are curious, and not
remote-controlled, as conspiration-theorists often claim.
I have read somewhere the proposal, that scientists should not only
publish their successes, but also their failures. Is this being
done
now to some extent?
On the other hand, for a long time Darwinism was the dogma,
Laplacism
was refuted, it was even correctly said, that in the Soviet Union
Laplacist-like attempts of crop adaption to colder climate has lead
to
famines. But today, Laplacism has a revival, due to the discovery
of
epigenetic mechanisms.
When Sheldrake was claiming, that rats in Australia can be easier
convinced to jump through a burning ring, if before rats in England
have been taught to do that, you might ask: What should be the
carrying mechanism for this effect? Maybe there is something we do
not
know now, just as we did not know about the epigenetic methyl
molecules.
But: "Morphogenetic field" is not an explanation. Neither is the
"Dormative principle" of opium, and neither is "Habit". This
Peircean
"Habit" sort of disturbs me, because it is not an explanation. It
is
merely an observation. I think it is necessary to inquire about the
ways how "habit" exactly is formed, stored (memorized),
transmitted,
and so on.
Best,
Helmut
02. Juni 2017 um 08:55 Uhr
"John Collier" <colli...@ukzn.ac.za> wrote:
I am not sure that these "dogmas" are not merely working hypotheses
that have served well.
But there is some reason to think scientists (if not science) can
be
dogmatic. A colleague and occasional co-author of mine is one of
the
world's experts on Douglas fir. He submitted a grant application
noting that he had found variation that could be explained neither
by
genetics nor by environment, and he wanted to explore
self-organization during development. This is a commonplace now,
but
thirty years ago he failed to get the grant because his referees
(not
Douglas fir experts) said that he just hadn't looked hard enough
for a
selectionist explanation.
John Collier
Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate
Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal
http://web.ncf.ca/collier [1] [2]
FROM: Gary Richmond [mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com]
SENT: Thursday, 01 June 2017 11:19 PM
TO: Peirce-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
SUBJECT: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:9235] Rupert Sheldrake
TED
Talk
John S, list,
John S wrote: "As Peirce emphasized and nearly all scientists
agree,
nothing is a dogma of science." Well, I would certainly agree that
nothing _ought _to be a dogma.
And yet Peirce railed against "the mechanical philosophy,"
materialism, necessitarianism (recall his response to Camus in
"Reply
to the Necessitarians"), reducing cosmology to the nothing-but-ism
of
actions/reactions of 2ns, etc.
Certainly not holding dogmatic views is an _ideal_ of scientific,
but
I do not agree you in that it seems to me that any number of
scientists in Peirce's day and in ours as well yet hold them,
whether
they would say they do, or think they do, or not.
Late in life, Peirce concluded the N.A. (not including the
Additaments) by writing that even "approximate acceptance of the
Pragmaticist principle" has helped those who do accept it:
". . . to a mightily clear discernment of some fundamental truths
that other philosophers have seen but through a mist, and most of
them not at all. Among such truths -- all of them old, of course,
yet acknowledged by few -- I reckon their denial of
necessitarianism; their rejection of any "consciousness" different
from a visceral or other external sensation; their acknowledgment
that there are, in a Pragmatistical sense, Real habits (which
Really
would produce effects, under circumstances that may not happen to
get actualized, and are thus Real generals); and their insistence
upon interpreting all hypostatic abstractions in terms of what they
would or might (not actually will) come to in the concrete. . . . "
(CP 6.485).
It seems to me that Peirce is clear--and while here he seems to be
addressing philosophers in particular, elsewhere and frequently he
argues this for science more generally--that many thinkers
(philosophers and scientists alike) do indeed hold such dogmas as
"necessitarianism" and "mechanism" (==Sheldrake's slide for dogma
#1
"EVERYTHING IS ESSENTIALLY MECHANICAL). That Peirce's views were
far
from dogmatic follows for me from his theory of inquiry including
his
pragmaticism.
Again, I don't necessarily agree with Sheldrake's list of putatie
dogmas, and I would certainly fully agree with you if by "nothing
is a
dogma of science" you mean that this should be an essential maxim
of
the ethics of science. But just as Peirce argued that every
scientist
has a metaphysics--even as certain scientists argue against
metaphysics altogether, that everyone of them ought take pains at
discovering what are her perhaps hidden metaphysical
presuppositions--I think that even those who claim that "nothing is
a
dogma of science" (but, I must quickly add, certainly not you,
John)
still many yet hold certain dogmatic views, and that these can
enter
into even whole 'schools' in certain fields of scientific endeavor.
Best,
Gary R
GARY RICHMOND
PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICAL THINKING
COMMUNICATION STUDIES
LAGUARDIA COLLEGE OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
C 745
718 482-5690 [2]
On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 2:34 AM, John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net>
wrote:
On 5/31/2017 10:48 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
I agree that #3 is not a dogma of science.
As Peirce emphasized and nearly all scientists agree,
nothing is a dogma of science.
John
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