by Ted Winslow This misinterprets Whitehead. Like Marx's, his ontology is alternative to and radically inconsistent with the "materialist" ontology that has dominated science since the 17th century. In elaborating it, he provides a systematic critique of this "scientific materialism" in all its forms (including the Darwinian form embraced by Lewontin, Levins and Gould). Scientific materialism is "anti-humanist and anti-subjective" where we mean by an ontology that is "humanist" and "subjective" one having logical space for the conception of human being as a being capable of the kind of self-determination expressible by Hegel's ideas of a "will proper" and a "universal will."
^^^^^ CB: Perhaps a scientific worldview enhances achievement of self-determinaton through greater mastery of necessity and thereby freedom. Radical acknowledgement of objective reality implies the existence of subjective reality. Darwin, Lewontin, Levin and Gould's work concern an area with a lot of non-human wills (improper wills ?), animal psychology. A dialectical materialist approach to biology is not identical with Hegel's. ^^^^^^ Specifically Whitehead is, as I've many times indicated, an adherent of the doctrine of relations as "internal." Among other things he points to the implications of this doctrine for "logic" and "language" mentioned in my previous e-mail. In all this his ontological beliefs contrast sharply with Russell's (as Russell himself indicates). Here are some passages from the two of them which include consideration of the implications of the doctrine for language, logic, arithmetic and counting. "So far, this lecture has proceeded in the form of dogmatic statement. What is the evidence to which it appeals? "The only answer is the reaction of our own nature to the general aspect of life in the Universe. "This answer involves complete disagreement with a widespread tradition of philosophic thought. This erroneous tradition presupposes independent existences; and this presupposition involves the possibility of an adequate description of finite fact. The result is the presupposition of adequate separate premises from which argument can proceed. "For example, much philosophic thought is based upon the faked adequacy of some account of various modes of human experience. Thence we reach some simple conclusion as to the essential character of human knowledge, and of its essential limitation. Namely, we know what we cannot know. "Understand that I am not denying the importance of the analysis of experience: far from it. The progress of human thought is derived from the progressive enlightenment produced thereby. What I am objecting to is the absurd trust in the adequacy of our knowledge. The self-confidence of learned people is the comic tragedy of civilization. "There is not a sentence which adequately states its own meaning. There is always a background of presupposition which defies analysis by reason of its infinitude. "Let us take the simplest case; for example, the sentence, 'One and one makes two.' "Obviously this sentence omits a necessary limitation. For one thing and itself make one thing. So we ought to say, 'One thing and another thing make two things.' This must mean the togetherness of one thing with another thing issues in a group of two things. "At this stage all sorts of difficulties arise. There must be the proper sort of things in the proper sort of togetherness. The togetherness of a spark and gunpowder produces an explosion, which is very unlike two things. Thus we should say, 'The proper sort of togetherness of one thing and another thing produces the sort of group which we call two things.' Common sense at once tells you what is meant. But unfortunately there is no adequate analysis of common sense, because it involves our relation to the infinity of the Universe. ^^^^ CB: This one plus one equal two story reminds of the undergraduates who had a math class in which Whitehead and Russell's _Principia Mathematica_ was mentioned and something about their really proving that one plus one equals two. "Yea" the joke went " we really weren't sure that one plus one equalled two. I'm glad they proved it." Fungibility, the individual, the specific and the general.
