[Marxism-Thaxis] Pivotal moments in American health care history capped by President Barack Obama's health care law:
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/03/23/1127733/a-historic-look-at-health-care.html Pivotal moments in American health care history capped by President Barack Obama's health care law: -1798: The Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen in 1798 marks the beginning of federal involvement in health care. -1854: President Franklin Pierce vetoes a national mental health bill on the basis that it would be unconstitutional to regard health as anything but a private matter in which government should not become involved. -1912: Former President Theodore Roosevelt campaigns as the Progressive Party candidate on a platform calling for a single national health service. -1920: The Snyder Act of 1920 is the first federal legislation to deal with health care for Native Americans, setting up the beginnings of what became the Indian Health Service. -1921: The Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921 (Sheppard-Towner Act) provides grants to states to plan maternal and child health services. The legislation serves as a prototype for federal grants-in-aid to the states in the area of health. -1924: The Veterans Act of 1924 codifies and extends federal responsibilities for health care services to veterans, who receive aid if they are injured in the line of service. -1932: The Committee on the Costs of Medical Care report is published and raises concerns about the costs of health care and the number of people lacking medical services. -1935: The Social Security Act, providing pensions and other benefits to the elderly, is signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. National health insurance is left out of the final Social Security bill because of the opposition of organized medicine and its allies. -1937: The Technical Committee on Medical Care, a group of federal agency representatives, is convened to advance health care reform. -1938: A national health Conference proposes federal aid to the states to expand public health, maternal and children's services and hospital facilities. -1939: The Wagner National Health Act of 1939, FDR's second push for national health insurance, fails as Southern Democrats align with Republicans to oppose government expansion. -1943: The National War Labor Board declares employer contributions for health insurance to be tax free, which encourages companies to offer health-insurance packages to attract workers. -1943: The Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill is introduced, calling for broad additions to the Social Security Act, including health insurance measures. The bill never came to a vote in Congress. A revised version was introduced in May 1945 but was never acted upon. -1945: President Harry Truman recommends a national health insurance program during a special address to Congress. The McCarran-Fergurson Act of 1945 exempts the insurance industry from federal antitrust legislation -1946: The National Health Policy Hospital Survey and Construction Act of 1946 provides grants to states to inventory and survey existing hospital and public health care facilities in each state and to plan for new ones. -1948: Truman's National Health Insurance Initiative fails after the American Medical Association criticizes it, and some Republicans compare it to communism. -1951: Truman creates, by executive order, the President's Commission on the Health Needs of the Nation. The commission was to determine the nation's health requirements, both immediate and long-term, and to recommend courses of action to meet those needs. -1952: Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower campaigns against national health insurance. -1954: President Dwight Eisenhower, with the objective of enabling private insurance companies to broaden their coverage, proposes a plan of federal reinsurance for any private company as protection against heavy losses resulting from health insurance. After the first five years, the program would become self-financing with money derived from premiums paid by the insurance companies. The House soundly rejects the plan. Eisenhower calls a conference to try to salvage it and is told the Senate can't fit the plan into its agenda. -1959: A bill is introduced by Rep. Aime J. Forand, D-R.I., to provide hospital, surgical and nursing home benefits for old-age and survivors insurance beneficiaries using the Social Security administrative mechanism. The program is to be financed by an increase in the Social Security tax. The bill fails. -1960: Legislation is enacted establishing limited medical assistance for the aged through the Social Security program. The act also provides aid to the states to help medically indigent people 65 or older. Participation by states is optional; 25 take part. -1962: President John F. Kennedy renews his 1961 request that the old-age, survivors and disability provisions of the Social Security Act be amended to provide health insurance protection for the aged. -1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law the landmark federal health
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko
On 3/26/10, Jim Farmelant farmela...@juno.com wrote: The Roy Rappaport mentioned here is the professor who got me into anthropology. I had anthro 101 with him. (It was during the 1970 BAM strike at University of Michigan, which we are commemorating in a couple of weeks. Rappaport held classes off campus to support the strike. He did an ethnography _Pigs for the Ancestors_ within the cultural adaptation/ecological paradigm, Papua New Guinea. What was his relationship with Marvin Harris? His views seem quite similar to Harris's. Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant ^ CB: Yes, they are in the same anthropological school of thought, cultural materialism/evolutionism Rappaport was in the ecological subschool of that. I don't recall Harris being associated as specifically with ecological school, but his theoretical discussion in _The Rise and Fall of Anthropological Theory_ or whatever he name, cultural materialism, includes ecological anthro. Rappaport got his Ph.d at Columbia where Harris was. Conrad Kottak, got his Ph.d there too. Kottak is another Univ of Mich. cultural materalist. Kottak is married to Harris' daughter , I think ( we note these kinship connections in anthro ; smile). In the 50's and 60's there was a big Michigan -Columbia connect in the cultural materialist school. Sahlins got his Ph.d at Columbia , too. Mervyn Meggitt. Michigan's Leslie White started the cultural evolution/materialist school, overall, in the 1920's at University of Michigan, Neo-Morganism. Lewis Henry Morgan was of course the major foundation for Engels' _The Origin_. Julian Steward was early associated with the ecological branch. In _The Rise_, Harris explicitly says he's not a dialectician. His _The Nature of Cultural Things_ is very posivitistic. CB Roy Rappaport Roy A. Rappaport (1926–1997) was a distinguished anthropologist known for his contributions to the anthropological study of ritual and to ecological anthropology. Hotel Hotel pics, info and virtual tours. Click here to book a hotel online. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=6Y2Q4ZTzabTkq117h98GjgAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAYAAADNAAATRAA= ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko
Jim Farmelant : If you are going to bring up the Manhattan Project, then I think it ought to be compared with the German A-bomb project, which failed to produce a bomb. Why did it fail? Well, primarily because it was never funded, anywhere, close to the level that the Manhattan Project was funded. The Germans simply didn't have the money and they were in far more desparate straights than the Americans were at the time. However, that's not the only reason for its failure. Another reason is that its head, Werner Heisenberg made some serious errors in his cailculations. A lot of people when commenting on the failure of the German A-bomb project seem to stop there. But the question in my mind is why didn't anyone working on the project step forward and correct Heisenberg's errors. And that, I think, speaks to what was then a major difference between the way American science operated (even under the relatively authoritarian and militaristic conditions of the Manhattan Project) and the way German science operated. In Germany universites of that time, senior professors were like little gods. They reigned supreme in their own departments and no mere underling would have dreamed of criticizing them or correcting them. Even if a scientist working in the German A-bomb project had become aware that Heisenberg was making mistakes in his calculations, he would, most likely, not dared to step forward to correct the great man, since that was simply not the done thing in German science at that time. In the Manhattan Project, despite the efforts of General Groves to impose military discipline on the scientists, things were still relatively loose and freewheeling among them, and that, I would submit, contributed to the success of the project. If a senior scientist, even an Oppenheimer or a Fermi, had made an error in his calculations, there would have been other, perhaps more junior, scientists who would have been willing to step forward to make the necessary corrections. Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant CB: This seems to be authoritarianism at the university level. On the other hand, this university authoritarian atmosphere did successfully produce the Heisenberg uncertainty discoveries , evidently (smile). I'm glad Heisenberg got his uncertainty stuff correct and his atom bomb calculations incorrect. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The X-Woman's Fingerbone
The X-Woman's Fingerbone Carl Zimmer Discover Magazine Blogs / The Loom March 24, 2010 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/03/24/the-x-womans-fingerbone/ In a cave in Siberia, scientists have found a 40,000- year old pinky bone that could belong to an entirely new species of hominid. Or it may be yet another example of how hard it is to figure where one species stops and another begins-even when one of those species is our own. Big news, perhaps, or ambiguous news. In Nature today, Svante Paabo and his colleagues published a paper describing their work in a place known as the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. There are lots of hominid bones and tools indicating people lived in the cave, off and on, for 125,000 years. There's good evidence of Homo sapiens in the region for at least 40,000 years, and Paabo and his colleagues have also isolated 30,000-year old DNA from Siberian sites that is similar to the DNA from Neanderthals in Europe. The scientists succeeded in fishing out human-like DNA from a pinky bone found in Denisova, and so far they've sequenced its mitochondrial DNA-that is, the DNA that is housed in mitochondria, sausage-shaped, fuel-producing structures in our cells. The majority of our DNA, which sits in the nucleus of cells, comes from both our mother and father. But mitochondrial DNA all comes from Mom. When the scientists compared the pinky DNA to DNA of humans and Neanderthals, they got something of a shock. If you line up the mitochondrial DNA from any given living human to any other living human, you might expect to find a few dozen points at which they are different. Compare human mtDNA to Neanderthal DNA, and you'll find about 200 differences. But when the scientists compared the Denisova DNA to a group of human mitochondrial genomes, they found nearly 400 differences. In other words, their DNA was about twice as different from ours than Neanderthal DNA. The scientists then used the DNA to draw a family tree. Here's the figure from the paper, which you can also see here for full-size viewing. The Denisova mitochondrial DNA has been passed down, mother to child, on a lineage of hominids that's separate from the one that produced mitochondria in Neanderthals and in living humans. Paabo and his colleagues estimated the age of common ancestor from which all the mitochondria evolved, based on the mutations in each branch. They concluded that common ancestor lived 1 million years ago. Below is a simple tree that shows the timing more clearly, from an accompanying commentary in Nature. No matter how you slice it, this is very exciting. All the mitochondrial DNA from living humans is believed to date back just 150,ooo years. That doesn't mean that we all descend from a single Eve. There were other woman around at the time, and they passed down their own mitochondria. But those lineages eventually hit dead ends. In some cases, women only had sons. In others, they never had children. Eventually, all the mitochondrial DNA in the human population could be traced to only one of the women alive at the time. All the Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA also shares a relatively recent common ancestor of its own-probably thanks to the same process. And now, for the first time, scientists have found hominid mitochondrial DNA that comes from a far more ancient split. So-how to explain this? A couple possibilities present themselves. 1. The DNA belongs to a species of hominid that's neither human nor Neanderthal. This is the most interesting, most science-fictionish possibility. Our hominid ancestors evolved into upright apes in Africa some six million years ago. By about 1.9 million years ago, some of those hominids had made their way out of Africa and strolled all the way to Indonesia. They go by the name of Homo erectus, and they stuck around Asia for quite a long time-some would argue they were still around 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals appear to have evolved from another wave out of Africa, which spread to Europe and Siberia several hundred thousand years ago. Meanwhile, our own ancestors appear to have stayed put in Africa. The oldest fossils of anatomically modern humans come from Africa 200,000 years ago, for example, and studies on human DNA find that African lineages are the oldest. The Denisova DNA split too recently from our own to have been carried by H. erectus, the first globe-trotting hominids. But paleoanthropologists have found a fair number of other hominid fossils in Europe and Asia that might belong to more recent waves out of Africa. (Here, for example, is a report on hominids in Europe 1.2 million years ago.) So perhaps there was at least one other wave aside from H. erectus, the expansion of Neanderthals, and the spread of modern humans. If that's true, this new discovery also means that this wave produced a long lineage of hominids that survived long enough to live alongside humans. We coexisted with yet another species of hominid-along with
[Marxism-Thaxis] _The Riddle of the Self_
Felix Mikhailov' book considers the philosophical problems of the human consciousness, its relation to the surrounding world and the means by which self-knowledge can be theoretically investigated. It poses and offers solutions to many questions raised by the nature of human thought, the intellect and the possibility of creating an artificial intellect. By means of a wide survey the book shows that the Self is a product of historically developing cultures in which infinite nature cognises and transforms itself. Jacket note on _The Riddle of the Self_ by F.T. Mikhailov http://www.marxists.org/archive/mikhailov/works/riddle/index.htm Feliks Mikhailov 1976 The Riddle of the Self Written: 1976; Source: The Riddle of the Self; Publisher: Published in English by Progress Publishers in 1980; Transcribed: Andy Blunden; HTML Markup: Andy Blunden; Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006. Table of Contents Foreword Introduction Where Is the Self? “I” See and “I” Understand Chapter One: Clear Approaches and Dead-Ends What Is Knowledge Something About Something When Is Kant Right? Towards a Solution Chapter Two: Social Individual Consciousness Bertrand Russell's Mistake Individual and Social (Hegel versus Russell) The End of the Mind-Body Problem Dreams of the Kurshskaya Sand Bar The Substance of History Chapter Three: Man and His Thought Life Source of the Self The Language of Real Life When Consciousness Is Conscious of Itself The Real Life of Language Language and Consciousness The Riddle Answered? Glossary References: Matter | Consciousness | Materialism | Vygotsky Further reading: Awakening to Life, Alexander Meshcheryakov Thinking Speaking, Lev Vygotsky The Thing-in-Itself and Dialectical Materialism, Lenin Subject Object Cognition, V A Lektorsky Mikhailov Internet Archive ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] _The Riddle of the Self_
Within American philosophy, the pragmatists, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead advanced rather similar perspectives. Of course, they, like the Soviet philosophers, were influenced by Hegel. Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant -- Original Message -- From: c b cb31...@gmail.com To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu, a-l...@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] _The Riddle of the Self_ Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:57:46 -0400 Felix Mikhailov' book considers the philosophical problems of the human consciousness, its relation to the surrounding world and the means by which self-knowledge can be theoretically investigated. It poses and offers solutions to many questions raised by the nature of human thought, the intellect and the possibility of creating an artificial intellect. By means of a wide survey the book shows that the Self is a product of historically developing cultures in which infinite nature cognises and transforms itself. Jacket note on _The Riddle of the Self_ by F.T. Mikhailov http://www.marxists.org/archive/mikhailov/works/riddle/index.htm Feliks Mikhailov 1976 The Riddle of the Self Written: 1976; Source: The Riddle of the Self; Publisher: Published in English by Progress Publishers in 1980; Transcribed: Andy Blunden; HTML Markup: Andy Blunden; Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006. Table of Contents Foreword Introduction Where Is the Self? I See and I Understand Chapter One: Clear Approaches and Dead-Ends What Is Knowledge Something About Something When Is Kant Right? Towards a Solution Chapter Two: Social Individual Consciousness Bertrand Russell's Mistake Individual and Social (Hegel versus Russell) The End of the Mind-Body Problem Dreams of the Kurshskaya Sand Bar The Substance of History Chapter Three: Man and His Thought Life Source of the Self The Language of Real Life When Consciousness Is Conscious of Itself The Real Life of Language Language and Consciousness The Riddle Answered? Glossary References: Matter | Consciousness | Materialism | Vygotsky Further reading: Awakening to Life, Alexander Meshcheryakov Thinking Speaking, Lev Vygotsky The Thing-in-Itself and Dialectical Materialism, Lenin Subject Object Cognition, V A Lektorsky Mikhailov Internet Archive ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis Refinance Now 4.0% FIXED! $160,000 Mortgage for $633/mo. Free. No Obligation. Get 4 Quotes! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4bb0e0efec24fbb2st01vuc ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Cultural materialism (anthropology)
Cultural materialism (anthropology) Cultural Materialism is an anthropological research orientation. It is based on the simple premise that human social life is a response to the practical problems of earthly existence (Marvin Harris).[1] It was influenced by the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, yet is a materialism distinct from Marxist dialectical materialism, as well as from philosophical materialism. Thomas Malthus' work encouraged Harris to consider reproduction of equal importance to production. The research strategy was also influenced by the work of earlier anthropologists including Herbert Spencer, Edward Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan who, in the 19th century, first proposed that cultures evolved from the less complex to the more complex over time. Leslie White and Julian Steward and their theories of cultural evolution and cultural ecology were instrumental in the reemergence of evolutionist theories of culture in the 20th century and Harris took inspiration from them in formulating cultural materialism. It was in 1968 with Harris' The Rise of Anthropological Theory, a wide-ranging critique of Western thinking about culture, that he first proposed the name. Contents [hide] 1 Epistemological principles 2 Theoretical principles 2.1 Disagreement with Marxism 3 Research 4 See also 5 References 6 External links [edit] Epistemological principles Cultural materialism is a scientific research strategy and as such utilizes the scientific method. Other important principles include operational definitions, Karl Popper's falsifiability, Thomas Kuhn's paradigms, and the positivism first proposed by Auguste Comte and popularized by the Vienna Circle. The primary question that arises in applying the techniques of science to understand the differences and similarities between cultures is how the research strategy treats the relationship between what people say and think as subjects and what they say and think and do as objects of scientific inquiry (Harris 1979:29). In response to this cultural materialism makes a distinction between behavioral events and ideas, values, and other mental events. It also makes the distinction between emic and etic operations. Emic operations, within cultural materialism, are ones in which the descriptions and analyses are acceptable by the native as real, meaningful, and appropriate. Etic operations are ones in which the categories and concepts used are those of the observer and are able to generate scientific theories. The research strategy prioritizes etic behavior phenomena. [edit] Theoretical principles Etic and behavioral Infrastructure, comprising a society's relations to the environment, which includes their etic and behavioral modes of production and reproduction (material relations). Etic and behavioral Structure, the etic and behavioral domestic and political economies of a society (social relations). Etic and behavioral Superstructure, the etic and behavioral symbolic and ideational aspects of a society, e.g. the arts, rituals, sports and games, and science (symbolic and ideational relations). Emic and mental Superstructure, including conscious and unconscious cognitive goals, categories, rules, plans, values, philosophies, and beliefs (Harris 1979:54) (meaningful or ideological relations). Within this division of culture, cultural materialism argues for what is referred to as the principle of probabilistic infrastructural determinism. The essence of its materialist approach is that the infrastructure is in almost all circumstances the most significant force behind the evolution of a culture. Structure and superstructure are not considered insignificant, epiphenomenal reflexes of infrastructural forces (Harris 1979:72). The structure and symbolic/ideational aspects act as regulating mechanisms within the system as a whole. The research strategy predicts that it is more likely that in the long term infrastructure probabilistically determines structure, which probabilistically determines the superstructures, than otherwise. Thus, much as in earlier Marxist thought, material changes (such as in technology or environment) are seen as largely determining patterns of social organization and ideology in turn. [edit] Disagreement with Marxism In spite of the debt owed to the economic theories of Marx and Engels, cultural materialism rejects the Marxist dialectic which in turn was based on the theories of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. [edit] Research During the 1980s, Marvin Harris had a productive interchange with behavioral psychologists, most notably Sigrid Glenn, regarding interdisciplinary work. Very recently, behavioral psychologists have produced a set of basic exploratory experiments in an effort toward this end ([2]). [edit] See also Maxine Margolis Jerald T. Milanich [edit] References ^ Harris (1979, xv). ^ Ward, Eastman, Ninness (2009) Harris, Marvin. 2001 [1968]. The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Evolution of Culture
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0858699.html Encyclopedia—human evolution The Evolution of Culture Among hominids, a parallel evolutionary process involving increased intelligence and cultural complexity is apparent in the material record. Evidence of greater behavioral flexibility and adaptability presumably reflects the decreased influence of genetically encoded behaviors and the increased importance of learning and social interaction in transmitting and maintaining behavioral adaptations (see culture). Because the organization of neural circuitry is more significant than overall cranial capacity in establishing mental capabilities, direct inferences from the fossil record are likely to be misleading. Contemporary humans, for example, exhibit considerable variability in cranial capacity (1150 cc to 1600 cc), none of which is related to intelligence. Tool use was once thought to be the hallmark of members of the genus Homo, beginning with H. habilis, but is now known to be common among chimpanzees. The earliest stone tools of the lower Paleolithic, known as Oldowan tools and dating to about 2 to 2.5 million years ago, were once thought to have been manufactured by H. habilis. Recent finds suggest that Oldowan tools may also have been made by robust australopithecines. The simultaneous emergence of H. erectus and the more complex Achuelian tool tradition may indicate shifting adaptations as much as increased intelligence. While it is clear that H. erectus was much more versatile than any of its predecessors, adapting its technologies and behaviors to diverse environmental conditions, the extent and limitations of its intellectual endowment remain a subject of heated debate. This is also the case for both archaic H. sapiens and Neanderthals, the latter associated with the more sophisticated technologies of the middle Paleolithic. However impressive the achievements of H. erectus and early H. sapiens, most material remains predating 40,000 years ago reflect utilitarian concerns. Nonetheless, there is now scattered African archaeological evidence from before that time (in one case as early as 90,000 years ago) of the production by H. sapiens of beads and other decorative work, perhaps indicating a gradual development of the aesthetic concerns and other symbolic thinking characteristic of later human societies. Whether the emergence of modern H. sapiens corresponds to the explosion of technological innovations and artistic activities associated with Cro-Magnon culture or was a more prolonged process of development is a subject of archaeological debate. Sections in this article: Introduction The Evolutionary Tree Hominid Evolution The Evolution of Culture Bibliography The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. CitePrintEmailHotWordsBookmark Add bookmark Add to del.icio.us Digg It! Add to Reddit Premium Partner Content Related content from HighBeam Research on: human evolution: The Evolution of Culture Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution.(Book review) (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute) The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion. (Theological Studies) The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture (New Formations) The human predicament and how we got there.(The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment)(Book review) (Ecos) Does man make himself? And what have we done?(The Complete World of Human Evolution)(Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution)(Book Review) (Antiquity) Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (Northeastern Naturalist) The Origin and Evolution of Cultures (The Australian Journal of Anthropology) Contagious ideas: on evolution, culture, archaeology, and Cultural Virus Theory.(Review) (book review) (Antiquity) The evolution of culture: an interdisciplinary view.(Review) (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute) That complex whole: culture and the evolution of human behavior.(Review) (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Kottak on ecological anthro
http://www.ksa.zcu.cz/studium/podklady-kfs/kul/Literatura/Kottak%201999.pdf ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko
http://iopscience.iop.org/0038-5670/27/7/R03;jsessionid=BA548348AC9FC50922E2EC91B65F8304.c1 Soviet Physics Uspekhi All Fields Title/Abstract Author Affiliation Fulltext PACS/MSC Codes Last Week Last Month This Year Last Year 3 Years 5 Years 10 Years All Dates All journals This journal only Home Search Collections Journals About Contact us My IOPscience Authors Referees Librarians The essence of biological evolution Author M V Vol'kenshteĭn Journal Soviet Physics Uspekhi Create an alert RSS this journal Issue Volume 27, Number 7 Citation M V Vol'kenshteĭn 1984 Sov. Phys. Usp. 27 515 doi: 10.1070/PU1984v027n07ABEH004028 Article References Cited By REVIEWS OF TOPICAL PROBLEMS Tag this article Full text PDF (988 KB) Abstract The current state of the theory of biological evolution is reviewed. Evolution is compared with the cosmological processes of structure formation. Both occur in dissipative systems and are governed by export of entropy. The objections to Darwin's theory are discussed and rejected. A sufficient material for evolution is indicated, as determined by the vast supply of variability of organisms. The reasons for this variability are described. The problems of speciation are discussed and its similarity to phase transitions is demonstrated. The phenomena of punctuated equilibrium and phyletic gradualism are described and examples of both are given. Special attention is paid to directional evolution. The views of L.S. Berg are examined in detail. Directionality is governed by natural selection, and also by the type of organism that has evolved and its possible variations. The link between individual and evolutionary development is studied. Wolpert's theory of positional information is presented and the concept of the model theory of morphogenesis is outlined. It is shown that a number of traits of organisms may have no adaptive value. The evolution of the visual organ is described. The molecular foundations of evolution and the neutralist theory, according to which the evolution of proteins and nucleic acids occurs to a considerable extent independently of natural selection, are studied in detail. Arguments in favor of this theory are presented and its physical meaning disclosed, which reduces to degeneracy in the correspondence between the primary structure of a protein and its biologic function. The results are presented of current studies that indicate the inconstancy of genomes, with various pathways of altering their structure and regulation. Various aspects of applications of information theory to problems of evolution are examined in detail. The evolutionary significance of the value of information, as defined as its nonredundancy, or irreplaceability, is stressed. The connection between the value of information and its complexity is studied. The value of information increases in the course of evolution. In conclusion, the sufficiency of material and time for evolution and the correctness of Darwin's theory are noted. Current problems of evolutionary theory are pointed out. PACS 87.14.E- Proteins 87.14.G- Nucleic acids 87.23.-n Ecology and evolution 87.15.B- Structure of biomolecules Subjects Biological physics Environmental and Earth science Dates Issue 7 ( 31 July 1984) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko
[Marxism-Thaxis] hull_sociobiology Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org Wed Jan 25 15:11:26 MST 2006 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Domains of knowledge, particular spheres; levels of organization of reality; materialist dialectic Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] hull_sociobiology Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] More specifically, Segerstråle attempts to discover exactly what the views of the biologists she studied were and why they held them. On what basis do the sociobiologists as well as their opponents evaluate sociobiology? For example, the versions of evolutionary theory that sociobiologists extended to behaviour and social structure tended to be very individualistic and competitive. Sociobiologists tend to think that selection occurs only at the lowest levels of organization, a position their critics attribute to their economic leanings: the individual is paramount in free-enterprise economic systems. The Marxist opponents of sociobiology tend to think that selection can occur at higher levels of organization, including groups. Is this an accurate way of putting the distinction? ^ CB; I don't think so. It is still individual members of species that either survive long enough to produce offspring or die before they do. The group that is thereby selected for or against is the multiple offspring ( or lack of offspring) and offspring of offspring...and who bare the trait that causes survival to reproduce or failure to survive long enough to reproduce. There is the slight sense that this is true in that , especially with humans, it is the high level and qualitatively unique sociality or socialness as compared with other species, culture, that gives humans high relative fitness. In this sense it is groupness not the group that was selected for in the first human individuals. In Marxism, groups are more important than individuals. Capitalists view nature as competitive, whereas these Marxist critics tend to view it as being much more cooperative. This is false through and through. CB: I think you might be rejecting the stereotype of Marxism as anti-individual. You are correct. I'd say there might be some vague sense in this in that I think we can say that it was advances in the quantity and quality of cooperation ( socialness, and culture, tradition, which is social connection to dead members of the species that other animals don't have, cooperation with the dead through the culture they leave) that was the great advantage of _human_ nature at our origin. ^ As Segerstråle notes, one problem with posing the issue in the way she does is that sociobiology's opponents lived in exactly the same array of societies and subsocieties as their opponents. During their formative years, nearly all of the protagonists in this controversy were raised in competitive, sexist and racist societies. Why did some of them internalize these features of their societies whereas others did not? Was Wilson really a racist, or did his work just exhibit tacit racism? Segerstråle makes no mention of anyone calling Lewontin a racist. How did he avoid picking up this feature of his society? According to externalists, political leanings influence the scientific views that scientists hold. Lewontin, Levins and Gould are Marxists; hence, their views on evolution should be influenced by their Marxism. But John Maynard Smith was a more active Marxist than any of these people. Yet he held and still holds views on evolution that are at variance with those of other Marxists and in support of such capitalist running dogs as Wilson and Dawkins. If both internal and external factors affect the course of science, these influences are extremely complicated and at times they conflict. This whole line of argumentation under review seems pretty crude. CB:I have to agree with you. Anyway, the author himself is saying that there are Marxists on either side of the dispute, so evidently political ideology is not determining the scientific position. Segerstråle does not just relate what she has read or what her respondents have told her; she evaluates it and passes judgement on it.Looking back over the past quarter-century, she considers one of thegratifying developments to have been that we have a relative vindication of the sociobiologists unfairly accused at the beginning of the controversy. In what does this vindication consist? ^ CB: I don't know. I don't know of much that sociobiologists have been vindicated on with respect to humans, however, I am not familiar with a wide range of sociobiology. Sociobiologists have no basis for establishing a discipline with a name different from anthropology. ^^^ To complicate matters further, Segerstråle was engaged in the same sort of activity as her subjects. She was a scientist studying scientists, a meta-scientist
[Marxism-Thaxis] Lewontin letter on Lamarckian issue (was Re-evaluating Lysenko)
I finally found my letter exchange with Lewontin as reported to this list in December 2005. Will look for the articles discussed. Charles http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-December/019560.html Marxism-Thaxis] Response from Lewontin Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org Mon Dec 12 14:54:34 MST 2005 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Logical Empiricism (reformatted) Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Jean-Baptiste Lamarck Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] Back in October I sent a fax ( my email didn't get through to him) to Richard Lewontin with interjection comments on his article New York Review . He sent me a letter back. I called him and asked him if I could send his letter to the list. He said ok. I'll copy my original note to him below. Dear Mr. Brown: Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments on the recent article in The New York Review. I was particularly struck by your point that culture, if modeled on an evolutionary process, definitely has a Lamarckian inheritance. What is not always appreciated by scientists is that once one has a Lamarckian form of inheritance, the strictness of Mendel's Laws no longer applies, of course, and almost anything is possible. A very interesting book showing the implications of forms of passage from one individual to another without any particular fixed rule of inheritance is the book on cultural inheritance by Feldman and Cavalli. What they show is that the moment you get away form strict genetic segregation and allow an arbitrary probability of the passage of a trait from one individual to another, the whole question of selection fades. Let us say, a trait can spread not because it is selected but because the rule of transmission strongly favors it. If everybody who ever heard a particular word that had been invented now used it ,it would spread very rapidly through the population, even though it could not be said to have some particular selective advantage. In a sense, the distinction between the rules of inheritance and the rules of selection disappear once one allows a free possibility for transmission rate. I am delighted that you read the article so critically and that you saw one of the most important points about cultural inheritance. Thanks again for having written me. Yours sincerely, R.C. Lewontin ^ October 20, 2005: The Wars Over Evolution http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18363 Human culture is a LaMarckian-like mechanism; one more point at the end of your essay Professor Lewontin, Thank you for the article below which is elegantly clarifying of the fundamental issues therein. In my amateur opinion, you can add a section at the end of this discussion in the vein that I discuss in my interjected comments below. Culture gives humans a LaMarckian-like mechanism in adapting. I guess I should say potentially adaptive, since we have nuclear weapons which seem inherently maladaptive in just about all current , likely environments. At any rate, the main point is I think valid. Culture gives humans the ability to inherit acquired characteristics, extrasomatic characteristics in the main, though there may even have been some shaping of the body at some point, the latter is very speculative of course. Early humans could have bred themselves to some extent. Reminding of Darwin's selection in domestication, but with the subjects being humans themselves. In the main I am thinking of extrasomatic characteristics, like rituals and the whole panoply of cultural institutions. I am not an academic ,but I did study anthro at U of Michigan with Professor Sahlins after he left the cultural evolutionist school. So, I am familiar with the efforts and problems in this cross of biology and anthro. Peace in, Charles Brown Detroit Volume 52, Number 16 . October 20, 2005 Review The Wars Over Evolution By Richard C. Lewontin The The development of evolutionary biology has induced two opposite reactions, both of which threaten its legitimacy as a natural scientific explana-tion. ^^^ CB: Ain't it the truth. Two opposite reactions: idealism and biological reductionism. One, based on religious convictions, rejects the science of evolution in a fit of hostility, attempting to destroy it by challenging its sufficiency as the mechanism that explains the history of life in general and of the material nature of human beings in particular. One demand of those who hold such views is that their competing theories be taught in the schools. The other reaction, from academics in search of a universal theory of human society and history, embraces Darwinism in a fit of enthusiasm, threatening its status as a natural science by forcing its explanatory scheme to account not simply for the shape of brains but for the shape of ideas. The Evolution-Creation Struggle is concerned with the first
[Marxism-Thaxis] Lewontin reviews Steven Rose's latest book (was Re-evaluating Lysenko)
Below Carrol mentions _Goedel, Escher and Bach_ which I just picked up again lately. CB ^ [Marxism-Thaxis] Lewontin reviews Steven Rose's latest book Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org Mon Mar 21 09:04:45 MST 2005 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Lewontin reviews Steven Rose's latest book Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Philosophers to cross picket line Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] Ralph: This is a useful reference, thanks. I'll add this to my emergence blog tonight. It's not clear to me what if necessary for consciousness if not brains. Perhpas he's still leaving open the possibility of artificial intelligence? CB: Yes, that word emergence rang a Thaxis bell. Yes, the thread discussion is on artificial intelligence. Searle is a leading figure arguing against the possibility of artificial intelligence. Turing is a leading figure arguing for artificial intelligence as a possibility. I'll post some of the rest of the thread below: Re: Lewontin reviews Steven Rose's latest book on the brain On Wednesday 16 March 2005 12:04 pm, Charles Brown wrote: is there a reason why a network of computers cannot exhibit similar characteristics? (and now we can link this thread to jimD's godel one! ;-)). --ravi ^ CB: So far, except in a Matrix fantasy, it takes extensive human mediation to plug computers into culture. It's like chimps can learn some language, but no chimps have learned sign language on their own initiative. There is lots of human intervention when chimps learn language. I can't state an abstract principle as to why a Matrix couldn't be realized in real life. i do not see it as the equivalent of matrix, where a virtual reality is created and maintained. but if you are a materialist, a human is no different from a computer. we may have been programmed by nature while computers may need programming by us. nonetheless, if a finite mass (the human population) can exhibit certain traits, why not some other finite mass? --ravi ^ CB: As I said, I can't think of an abstract principle excluding the possibility you pose. To me , the Matrix movie is kind of ambiguous on the issue of whether the _computers_ have attained society and social being, reproductive, regenerative self-perpetuative purposes. I suppose one of those characters could be a sort of Wizard of Oz human running all the computer stuff from behind the scenes. I really couldn't follow all that was supposed to be happening. But I just grabbed at it for its currency in this discussion. I guess the issue of biologicality , computers somehow duplicating biological evolution , enters in ^^ Carrol Cox writes: Charles, you haven't read Les Shaffer's post to the marxism list on this topic. Original Message Subject: Re: [Marxism] Re: [PEN-L] More Godel Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 12:41:57 -0500 From: Les Schaffer schaffer at optonline.net Carrol Cox wrote: For critiques of Hofstadter's computationalism, see http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/searle.html and the other links given there. It is a discussion of the work of John Searle. I am reading The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Margaret Boden (Oxord U Press). It has Turing's orginal ideas in non-technical form (Computing Machinery and Intelligence, A Turning, 1950) as well as Searle's rebuttal to strong AI (Minds, Brains, and Programs). here's a snippet from the latter, reminds me _of our friend D'Amasio: 'Could a machine think?' My own view is that *only* a machine could think, and indeed only very special kinds of machines, namely brains and machines that had the same causal powers as brains. And that is the main reason strong AI has had little to tell us about thinking, since it has nothing to tell us about machines. By its own definition, it is about programs, and programs are not machines. Whatever else intentionality is, it is a biological phenomenon, and it is as likely to be as causally dependent on the specific biochemistry of its origins as lactation, photosynthesis, or any other biological phenomena. No one would suppose that we could produce milk and sugar by running a computer simulation of the formal sequences in lactation and photosynthesis, but where the mind is concerned many people are willing to believe in such a miracle because of a deep and abiding dualism: the mind they suppose is a matter of formal processes and is independent of quite specific material causes in the way that milk and sugar are not. the compilation by Boden is good for people interested in the philosphical background of AI, and also has some interesting history. for example Making a mind versus modelling the brain: artifical intelligince back at a branch point, by Hubert and Stewart Dreyfus traces a splitting in the research community starting in the 50's between more
[Marxism-Thaxis] Revisting Lysenko
Marxism-Thaxis] J. B. S. Haldane Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com Thu Dec 8 08:20:08 MST 2005 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences by JBS Haldane Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 10:04:54 -0500 Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org writes: In dealing with the impact of materialist dialectics in science, Haldane is an important figure. He wrote and intro to _Dialectics of Nature_. Haldane is one of the major British theoretical biologists, co-founder of population genetics. I recall first hearing of Haldane in biological anthropology class, Haldane's Dilemma, and the mathematical solution Haldane developed. Can't remember the specifics and haven't be able to search engine. Could dialectical approach have helped Haldane in dealing with a dilemma ? As Charles says, Haldane was one of the fathers of population genetics. He was also one of the architects of what is known as the neo-Darwinian synthesis in evolutionary biology, by which Darwinism and Mendelian genetics were brought together in order to provide a mathematical understanding of how natural selection works. That was one of the great scientific achievements of the 20th century. He anticipated the kin selection hypothesis that was developed by William Hamilton in order to explain altruism between genetically related organisms. And John Maynard Smith, who along with Hamilton, George Williams, and Richard Dawkins, was a developer of the gene-centered view of evolution was a student of Haldane. JBS Haldane was in his day a leading critic of scientific racism and of theories that attempted to explain social class in terms of genetic factors. Haldane did claim to find dialectics useful in his scientific research. He was one of the world's leading Mendelian geneticists, which made his membership in the CPGB increasingly untenable after WW II, when Lysenkoism became official dogma in the Soviet Union and CPs outside the Soviet Union came under pressure to embrace it as dogma too. This is certainly one reason why he left the Party. Caudwell, Cornforth and Haldane are important in Marxism, science and materialist dialectics. CB ^^^ J. B. S. Haldane From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBS_Haldane#column-one , search http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBS_Haldane#searchInput J.B.S. Haldane with his second wife Helen Spurway John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (November 5 , who normally used J.B.S. as a first name, was a British geneticist and evolutionary biologist . He was one of the founders (along with Ronald Fisher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fisher and Sewall Wright http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewall_Wright ) of population genetics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_genetics . Contents [hide javascript:toggleToc() ] * 1 Biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBS_Haldane#Biography * 2 References http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBS_Haldane#References * 3 Publications http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBS_Haldane#Publications * 4 External links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBS_Haldane#External_links [edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J._B._S._Haldaneaction=edits ect ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Reevaluating Lysenko
Neoevolutionism Neoevolutionism is a social theory that tries to explain the evolution of societies by drawing on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and discarding some dogmas of the previous social evolutionism. Neoevolutionism is concerned with long-term, directional, evolutionary social change and with the regular patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures. Neoevolutionism emerged in the 1930s. It developed extensively in the period after the Second World War -- and was incorporated into anthropology as well as sociology in the 1960s. Its theories are based on empirical evidence from fields such as archeology, paleontology, and historiography. Proponents say neoevolutionism is objective and simply descriptive, eliminating any references to a moral or cultural system of values. While the 19th century evolutionism explained how culture develops by giving general principles of its evolutionary process, it was dismissed by Historical Particularism as unscientific in the early 20th century. It was the neoevolutionary thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary anthropology. The neoevolutionism discards many ideas of classical social evolutionism, namely that of social progress, so dominant in previous sociology evolution-related theories. Then neoevolutionism discards the determinism argument and introduces probability, arguing that accidents and free will have much impact on the process of social evolution. It also supports the counterfactual history - asking 'what if' and considering different possible paths that social evolution may (or might have) taken, and thus allows for the fact that various cultures may develop in different ways, some skipping entire stages others have passed through. The neoevolutionism stresses the importance of empirical evidence. While 19th century evolutionism used value judgment and assumptions for interpreting data, the neoevolutionism relied on measurable information for analyzing the process of cultural evolution. Neoevolutionism important thinkers include: Ferdinand Tönnies. While not strictly a neoevolutionist himself, Tönnies' work is often viewed as the foundation of neo-evolutionism. He was one of the first sociologists to claim that the evolution of society is not necessarily going in the right direction, that the social progress is not perfect, it can even be called a regress as the newer, more evolved societies are obtained only after paying a high costs, resulting in decreasing satisfaction of individuals making up that society. Leslie A. White (1900-1975), author of The Evolution of Culture: The Development of Civilization to the Fall of Rome (1959). Publication of this book rekindled interest in the evolutionism among sociologists and anthropologists. White attempted to create a theory explaining the entire history of humanity. The most important factor in his theory is technology: Social systems are determined by technological systems, wrote White in his book, echoing the earlier theory of Lewis Henry Morgan. As a measure of society advancement he proposed the measure energy consumption of given society (thus his theory is known as the energy theory of cultural evolution). He differentiates between five stages of human development. In the first, people use energy of their own muscles. In the second, they use energy of domesticated animals. In the third, they use the energy of plants (so White refers to agricultural revolution here). In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In the fifth, they harness the nuclear energy. White introduced a formula C=E*T, where E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of efficiency of technical factors utilising the energy. This theory is similar to the later theory of Kardashev scale of Russian astronom, Nikolai Kardashev. Julian Steward, author of Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution (1955, reprinted 1979), created the theory of multilinear evolution which examined the way in which societies adapted to their environment. This approach was more nuanced than White's theory of unilinear evolution. He questioned the possibility of creation of a social theory encompassing the entire evolution of humanity, however he argued that anthropologists are not limited to descriptions of specific, existing cultures. He believed it is possible to create theories analysing typical, common culture, representative of specific eras or regions. As the decisive factors determining the development of given culture he pointed to technology and economics, and noted there are secondary factors, like political systems, ideologies and religion. All those factors push the evolution of a given society in several directions at the same time, thus this is the multilinearity of his theory of evolution. Marshall Sahlins, author of Evolution and Culture (1960). He divided the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Lewontin letter on Lamarckian issue (was Re-evaluating Lysenko)
Aside: I recall _Goedel, Escher and Bach_ as a load of New Age crap. As for Lamarckism and cultural evolution, I'm wary of such metaphorical thinking. Lewontin's response is unclear. More on this later. Another aside: In 1975, I attended a guest lecture by Lewontic on heritability, as part of a course on scientific racism. At 02:51 PM 3/29/2010, c b wrote: I finally found my letter exchange with Lewontin as reported to this list in December 2005. Will look for the articles discussed. Charles http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-December/019560.html Marxism-Thaxis] Response from Lewontin Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org Mon Dec 12 14:54:34 MST 2005 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Logical Empiricism (reformatted) Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Jean-Baptiste Lamarck Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] Back in October I sent a fax ( my email didn't get through to him) to Richard Lewontin with interjection comments on his article New York Review . He sent me a letter back. I called him and asked him if I could send his letter to the list. He said ok. I'll copy my original note to him below. Dear Mr. Brown: Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments on the recent article in The New York Review. I was particularly struck by your point that culture, if modeled on an evolutionary process, definitely has a Lamarckian inheritance. What is not always appreciated by scientists is that once one has a Lamarckian form of inheritance, the strictness of Mendel's Laws no longer applies, of course, and almost anything is possible. A very interesting book showing the implications of forms of passage from one individual to another without any particular fixed rule of inheritance is the book on cultural inheritance by Feldman and Cavalli. What they show is that the moment you get away form strict genetic segregation and allow an arbitrary probability of the passage of a trait from one individual to another, the whole question of selection fades. Let us say, a trait can spread not because it is selected but because the rule of transmission strongly favors it. If everybody who ever heard a particular word that had been invented now used it ,it would spread very rapidly through the population, even though it could not be said to have some particular selective advantage. In a sense, the distinction between the rules of inheritance and the rules of selection disappear once one allows a free possibility for transmission rate. I am delighted that you read the article so critically and that you saw one of the most important points about cultural inheritance. Thanks again for having written me. Yours sincerely, R.C. Lewontin ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Lewontin letter on Lamarckian issue (was Re-evaluating Lysenko)
On 3/29/10, Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote: Aside: I recall _Goedel, Escher and Bach_ as a load of New Age crap. ^^^ CB: No religion in it. Gödel, Escher, Bach Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid Author Douglas Hofstadter Country USA Language English Subject(s) Consciousness, intelligence Publisher Basic Books Publication date 1979 Pages 777 pages ISBN ISBN 978-0465026562, ISBN 0140179976 OCLC Number 40724766 Dewey Decimal 510/.1 21 LC Classification QA9.8 .H63 1999 Followed by I Am a Strange Loop Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (commonly GEB) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter,[1] described by the author as a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll.[2] On its surface, GEB examines logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, discussing common themes in their work and lives. At a deeper level, the book is a detailed and subtle exposition of concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Through illustration and analysis, the book discusses how self-reference and formal rules allow systems to acquire meaning despite being made of meaningless elements. It also discusses what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of meaning itself. In response to confusion over the book's theme, Hofstadter has emphasized that GEB is not about mathematics, art, and music but rather about how cognition and thinking emerge from well-hidden neurological mechanisms. In the book, he presents an analogy about how the individual neurons of the brain coordinate to create a unified sense of a coherent mind by comparing it to the social organization displayed in a colony of ants.[3][4] Contents [hide] 1 Structure 2 Themes 3 Puzzles 4 Impact 5 Translation 6 People featured in Gödel, Escher, Bach 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 External links [edit] Structure GEB takes the form of an interweaving of various narratives. The main chapters alternate with dialogues between imaginary characters, inspired by Lewis Carroll's What the Tortoise Said to Achilles, in which Achilles and the Tortoise discuss a paradox related to modus ponens. Hofstadter bases the other dialogues on this one, introducing characters such as a Crab, a Genie, and others. These narratives frequently dip into self-reference and metafiction. Word play also features prominently in the work. Puns are occasionally used to connect ideas, such as the Magnificrab, Indeed with Bach's Magnificat in D; SHRDLU, Toy of Man's Designing with Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring; and Typographical Number Theory, or TNT, which inevitably reacts explosively when it attempts to make statements about itself. One Dialogue contains a story about a genie (from the Arabic Djinn) and various tonics (of both the liquid and musical varieties), which is titled Djinn and Tonic. One dialogue in the book is written in the form of a crab canon, in which every line before the midpoint corresponds to an identical line past the midpoint. The conversation still makes sense due to uses of common phrases that can be used as either greetings or farewells (Good day) and the positioning of lines which, upon close inspection, double as an answer to a question in the next line. [edit] Themes GEB contains many instances where objects and ideas speak about or refer back to themselves (cf. recursion and self-reference). For instance, TNT is an illustration of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. There is also a phonograph that destroys itself by playing a record titled I Cannot Be Played on Record Player X (this being an analogy to Gödel's incompleteness theorem), an examination of canon form in music, and a discussion of Escher's lithograph of two hands drawing each other. To describe such self-referencing objects, Hofstadter coins the term strange loop, a concept he examines in more depth in his follow-up book I Am a Strange Loop. To escape many of the logical contradictions brought about by these self-referencing objects, Hofstadter discusses Zen koans. He attempts to show the reader how to perceive reality outside the normal confines of their own experience and embrace such paradoxical questions by rejecting the premise — a strategy also called unasking. Call stacks are also discussed in GEB, as one dialogue describes the adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise as they make use of pushing and popping tonics. Entering a picture in a book would count as pushing, entering a picture in a book within a picture in a book would have caused a double pushing, and popping refers to an exit back to the previous layer of reality. The Tortoise humorously remarks that a friend of his (a weasel) performed a popping while in their current state of reality and has never been heard from since; the implied question is, Did the friend simply cease to exist,
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Lewontin letter on Lamarckian issue (was Re-evaluating Lysenko)
Ralph Dumain As for Lamarckism and cultural evolution, I'm wary of such metaphorical thinking. Lewontin's response is unclear. More on this later. CB: I don't think it's used as a metaphor. Culture is a major adaptive mechanism for the human species, it is extra-somatic, but it functions like somatic changes. It is not in our genes, but it can be adaptive the same way that a gene that is selected for is adaptive. A cultural invention in one generation or acquired by one generation can be inherited , culturally, by the next generation. Another aside: In 1975, I attended a guest lecture by Lewontic on heritability, as part of a course on scientific racism. At 02:51 PM 3/29/2010, c b wrote: I finally found my letter exchange with Lewontin as reported to this list in December 2005. Will look for the articles discussed. Charles http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-December/019560.html Marxism-Thaxis] Response from Lewontin Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org Mon Dec 12 14:54:34 MST 2005 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Logical Empiricism (reformatted) Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Jean-Baptiste Lamarck Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] Back in October I sent a fax ( my email didn't get through to him) to Richard Lewontin with interjection comments on his article New York Review . He sent me a letter back. I called him and asked him if I could send his letter to the list. He said ok. I'll copy my original note to him below. Dear Mr. Brown: Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments on the recent article in The New York Review. I was particularly struck by your point that culture, if modeled on an evolutionary process, definitely has a Lamarckian inheritance. What is not always appreciated by scientists is that once one has a Lamarckian form of inheritance, the strictness of Mendel's Laws no longer applies, of course, and almost anything is possible. A very interesting book showing the implications of forms of passage from one individual to another without any particular fixed rule of inheritance is the book on cultural inheritance by Feldman and Cavalli. What they show is that the moment you get away form strict genetic segregation and allow an arbitrary probability of the passage of a trait from one individual to another, the whole question of selection fades. Let us say, a trait can spread not because it is selected but because the rule of transmission strongly favors it. If everybody who ever heard a particular word that had been invented now used it ,it would spread very rapidly through the population, even though it could not be said to have some particular selective advantage. In a sense, the distinction between the rules of inheritance and the rules of selection disappear once one allows a free possibility for transmission rate. I am delighted that you read the article so critically and that you saw one of the most important points about cultural inheritance. Thanks again for having written me. Yours sincerely, R.C. Lewontin ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Arms Control Experts Applaud Announcement of New Nuclear Reductions Treaty with Russia
Arms Control Experts Applaud Announcement of New Nuclear Reductions Treaty with Russia Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation March 26, 2010 http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/audience/media/experts_applaud_us_russia_03262010/ Washington, D.C. Today, the Obama Administration announced that negotiations for the text of the most significant nuclear reductions treaty between the United States and Russia in decades are complete. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will sign the agreement on April 8 in Prague, Czech Republic. We welcome the announcement of the completion of a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons in United States and Russia, said the Center's Executive Director John Isaacs. This is a huge step forward in advancing the bipartisan nuclear security agenda that the President outlined in Prague in April 2009 to reduce the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. That agenda included three primary objectives: to reduce and eventually eliminate existing nuclear weapons stockpiles, prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to new states, and prevent nuclear weapons-usable materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. Reductions in the United States and Russia are they key to moving forward on the first goal. This agreement demonstrates the Administration's commitment to moving away from Cold War era stockpiles and reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the two countries that currently possess more than 95% of those remaining in the world, added Leonor Tomero, the Center's director of nuclear non-proliferation. It is a key element of the President's efforts to effectively address the most pressing threat to the United States: the danger that nuclear weapons might spread to other countries or to terrorists or that a nuclear weapon might be detonated by accident. This foreign policy victory builds on the domestic victory of the Administration this week on health care. A stronger President on health care is a stronger President to move forward this nuclear security agenda, Isaacs said. We look for a Senate vote on the treaty this year. The sooner the treaty enters into force, the sooner important verification procedures can be up and running again. The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation is one of the nation's oldest and largest organizations dedicated to reducing and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
