Because I am unclear about just what was received by FIS members
and what was not, I am copying my response to Salthe and my response
to Pedro below. Kindly excuse the repeat performance if it is one--
it won't happen again!
Cheers,
Maxine
Response to Pedro:
With respect to nonhuman animal dances, in The Descent of Man and
Selection
in Relation to Sex, Darwin describes the "Love-Antics and Dances" of
male
birds, and later, more generally, describes male "love-dances"—-all in
the
context of male-male competition, or what Darwin describes in upward of
460 pages,starting with mollusks and crustaceans and beetles and working
his
way through fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds (four chapters), mammals
(two chapters), then finally and specifically human mammals (two
chapters),
as “the law of battle.”
Jane Goodall describes a movement sequence that is part of a male
chimpanzee's kinetic repertoire, a sequence that a male performs in
conjunction
with his "sexual signalling behavior" or "courtship display." “The
bipedal swagger,”
as she identifies the behavior or display, is typically an upright male
sequence
of movements and occurs only rarely in females.
Primatologist C. R. Rogers amplifies Goodall’s description of a male’s
bipedal
swagger in describing what he identifies as a male chimpanzee’s “short
dance.”
Female choice in relation to male-male competition is described by
Darwin, particularly
in relation to birds, but also in suggestive ways with respect to
mammals. More
recently, the topic of female choice was taken up by William Eberhard.
His hypothesis:
“sexual selection by female choice, proposes that male genitalia
function as ‘internal
courtship’ devices” (Eberhard 1985).
Simply as an event of possible evolutionary interest and one that is
both innovative and
provocative, I attach a write up of “A Human Enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo”
Cultural differences exist not only in dance but in everyday life—-for
example,
in everyday interpersonal spatial relationships. Cultural distinctions
in these
relationships are commonly made in terms of whether one is in front of
or behind
another, whether one is above or below another; whether one is small or
large in
relation to another, and so on. Anthropologist Raymond Firth, who
studied Tikopia
culture, wrote of the postural and gestural practices of Tikopians and
then compared
their practices to those of his own experience in British culture.
In the process of doing so, Firth made interesting observations with
respect to the
different practices. In The Roots of Power: Animate Form and Gendered
Bodies, I
discussed Firth’s research and the research of others and gave an
evolutionary genealogy
of diverse intercorporeal relationships.
As for Tango: I do not know what the “informational implications” of
Tango might be,
but I might well ask Adriana Pegorer who teaches Tango-Argentino-style,
a style that
she says is different from ballroom Tango that requires swift head
turning. She has
taught Tango to visually impaired people for years and has also combined
Tango with
Contact Improvisation, an internationally practiced form of dance that
commonly involves
non-dancers as well as dancers. (Her work is mentioned in an extended
endnote on cultural
differences in an article titled “On Movement and Mirror Neurons: A
Challenging and
Choice Conversation” that was published in Phenomenology and the
Cognitive Sciences.)
And thanks for your reminder regarding food, where it goes, and what it
does, all of
which recalled Richard Wrangham and Rachel Carmody’s thesis in Catching
Fire.
Cheers,
Maxine
Response to Salthe:
Theories are based on first-person observations. Observations are
first-person real-life, real-time experiences and are duly recorded in
support of theory. Descent with modification was a theory that Darwin
put forth on the basis of his observations that had to do with
morphology, but not only with morphology. See, for example, his last
book on worms and the intelligence of worms; see also his third book
devoted to emotions.
I am unaware of Darwin’s denying a concern with origins and would
appreciate knowing more about his denial by way of a reference. I know
that what he did not deny was “[t]hat many and grave objections may be
advanced against the theory of descent with modification through natural
selection” (Origin of Species, p. 435). Clearly, “descent with
modification” has to do not just with morphology but with history.
History has to do with timelines, and in this instance with origins and
extinctions. I would add that because “descent with modification”
involves a history and not just a morphological comparison as in your
human hand and chicken foot example, the phrase is actually pertinent to
the current discussion in evolutionary biology as to how single-celled
organisms gave rise to multi-celled organisms. If, as is currently
suggested, the way a protein wiggles can result in a mutation so that
its function in turn changes, then “modifications” can determine
origins, in this instance, the origin of multi-celled over single-celled
organisms.
Again, I don’t know where Darwin discredited his “origin” of species and
I would greatly appreciate knowing where, but his use of the term in
biology doesn’t necessarily mean a big bang moment. Descent with
modification means, as you say, a “change of existing forms,” and such
changes via natural selection equal in the passage of time the origin of
new species.
As to your question of how a phenomenologist could view movement in
relation to living forms that do not move, I would answer first that
there is a new science focused on plant neurobiology in which not just
plant growth but plant movement is recognized. I would also add with
respect to your mentioning that “Plants move slowly by growth” that I
would definitely align Aristotle’s thinking with phenomenology, namely,
his recognition of three primary kinetic modes: change, movement, and
growth, and his highly relevant estimation of Nature: ““Nature is a
principle of motion and change. . . . We must therefore see that we
understand what motion is; for if it were unknown, nature too would be
unknown.” (It might be of interest to note that in a letter to William
Ogle, who had translated Aristotle’s Parts of Animals and sent Darwin a
copy, Darwin wrote, “Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though
in very different ways, but they were mere school-boys to old
Aristotle.”) Finally, it is relevant to point out that responsivity is
a well-recognized biological characteristic of life forms. Even plants
respond, and not some not just to light, but to plants in their
immediate surrounds. Husserl’s identification and description of the
perceptual-cognitional disposition of animate organisms in terms of
“receptivity” and “turning toward” is complementary to the biological
character of responsivity.
Maxine
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