[Fis] _ Re: Maxine’s presentation

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear Maxine and Colleagues,

Concerning your presentation I have a couple of questions. About dance, 
first, let me inquire about another important aspect it may have, 
perhaps a "vital" one . In a number of species, dance is related to the 
mutual pre-exploration between potential reproductive partners. The 
individual fitness of the candidate(s) are evaluated quite strategically 
along the movements of dance, at least in the essential adaptive traits. 
Cultural layers of human societies may have created further "meanings" 
to dance (artistic, gimnastic, educative, therapeutic, etc.) but at the 
very roots of this human phenomenon the exploration between genders 
continues to be of the essence, I think. Those qualities you mention of 
tensional, linear, aerial, and projectional are in themselves excellent 
ways to observe the whole person: not only in the motoric dimension, but 
also concerning some related intellectual-emotional capabilities. The 
"gestalts" Alex mentions are colored very differently depending on the 
social/cultural contexts in which the same dance may take place. It is 
quite interesting that the folk inter-gender dance is performed in 
"safe" public spaces, and that it often conveys a feminine advantage 
(better synchronization of movements, more interest for fashionable 
pieces), etc. etc. Although perhaps it does not apply to most of present 
day "disco dance". Along your points, I was reminded that many years 
ago, someone in fis list wrote about the informational implications of 
"Tango" (originally a dance between castaway males in Argentina's 
immigrant squalors) ... it is a pity I can remember very little about that.

And the second comment concerns the paleoanthropological tools. The 
analogy between the two major forms of tools and the two major tooth 
forms is very well developed.I quite agree, and also would like to ad a 
relationship with human gut-microbiome. We needed "artificial" teeth 
because with our terrific brain growth, the overall metabolic needs 
escalated almost 20%. However, at the same time the gut size (& 
contained microbiome) was reduced 50% in comparison with any 
Anthropoidea of our size. This is an impossible budget to maintain, 
unless the development of collective intelligence applied to our feeding 
and created completely original ways. These new ways were made possible 
by language, group identities, tools and artifact creation... but it was 
the new feeding style what pushed along this adaptive loop. We have 
called the new ways as "cooking", but actually it was a pre- or external 
digestion, achieved with those artifactual "molars and incisives", plus 
boiling, roasting, etc. And also by incorporating "external 
microbiomes"--fermentation-- for our service: bread, wine, beer, cheese, 
etc. The essential new foods of civilization. Cooking made us humans... 
how a "social brain" was created, and how our phenomenology became 
captive of group collective thinking might be a topic deserving further 
analysis.

Thanking in advance for the tolerance!

Best--Pedro

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> *Phenomenology and Evolutionary Biology*
>
>
> ***(1): Phenomenology
> *As written in the Preface to the 2^nd edition (1979) of The 
> Phenomenology of Dance, “Certainly words carry no patented meanings, 
> but the term ‘phenomenology’ does seem stretched beyond its limits 
> when it is used to denote either mere reportorial renderings of 
> perceptive behaviors or actions, or /any/ descriptive rendering at all 
> of perceptible behaviors or actions. At the least, ‘phenomenology’ 
> should be recognized as a very specific mode of epistemological 
> inquiry, a method of eidetic analysis invariably associated with the 
> name Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology; and at the most 
> ‘phenomenology’ should be recognized as a philosophically-spawned 
> terms, that is, a term having a rich philosophical history and 
> significance.”
>
> A phenomenological analysis of movement given in The Phenomenology of 
> Dance follows the rigorous methodology set forth by Husserl. The 
> methodology is integral to understandings of phenomenology as well as 
> to its practice. Husserl distinguished two modes of the methodology. 
> One mode is termed “static,” the other is termed “genetic.” The aim in 
> static phenomenology is to uncover the essential character of the 
> phenomenon in question or under investigation. The aim in genetic 
> phenomenology is to uncover the source and development of meanings and 
> values we hold.
>
> The abbreviated phenomenological analysis of movement set forth below 
> follows a static phenomenology. The abbreviated phenomenological 
> analysis of the origin of tool-making follows a genetic phenomenology. 
> The first analysis elucidates the inherently dynamic character of 
> movement, and in ways quite contrary to the idea that movement is a 
> force in time and in space and quite contrary as well to the 
> dictionary definition of movement as a “change of position.” The 
> second analysis answers questions that paleoanthropologists, 
> archaeologists, and anthropologists leave unanswered. The analyses 
> present basic aspects of animation that anchor the relationship 
> between phenomenology and the life sciences. In particular, the point 
> of departure for both phenomenology and the life sciences is /animate/ 
> being not just in the sense of /living/ creatures, but in the sense of 
> /moving/ creatures, creatures who, in and through movement, are 
> sustaining their lives, mating and reproducing, and so on. In short, 
> movement is fundamental to animation, a decidedly significant entrée 
> to understanding basic aspects anchoring a relationship between 
> phenomenology and the life sciences. Following these analyses is a 
> final section on the descriptive foundations of both phenomenology and 
> evolutionary biology and on their common concern with origins...
>
> (cont., see attached file)
>
>
> *(****4) Descriptive Foundations*
> **While it is common to speak laudingly of the keenness and scope of 
> Darwin's observations, it is not commonly recognized, certainly not 
> explicitly, that his observations, as written, describe his 
> experiences. His written observations are in fact equivalent to his 
> experiences in the sense that they detail what he saw, felt, heard, 
> smelled, and even tasted. Though focal attention is consistently--one 
> might even say, exclusively--riveted on his theory of natural 
> selection, Darwin's descriptive writings are of fundamental 
> significance, for it is these descriptive writings that ground his 
> theory, that are its foundation. More broadly, evolutionary 
> understandings and explanations of Nature are in the end tethered to 
> an experientially-derived descriptive literature. Reading this 
> literature, we learn a good deal about nonhuman animals. We learn that 
> they are perceptive, thoughtful, and affectively moved by creatures 
> and things in their environment, and we learn further that their 
> perceptive, affective, and thoughtful ways are intimately relatedto 
> our own. In short, Darwin's descriptive accounts of the natural living 
> world reveal something about the lives of others and in turn something 
> about our own lives.
>
> I highlight the descriptive foundations of evolutionary theory in part 
> because these descriptive foundations have fallen by the wayside, 
> particularly in the highly visible present-day writings on evolution 
> by neuroscientists and cognitive scientists. “Darwinian bodies” are 
> not automatons. Neither are they robots lumbering about on behalf of 
> selfish genes nor are they head-end neurological mechanisms, as per 
> cognitivists of all stripe who collapse bodies into brains. I 
> highlight the descriptive foundations of evolutionary theory equally 
> to call attention to experience, specifically to the fact that 
> descriptive foundations are grounded in experience. Descriptive 
> foundations do not come by way of reducing the living world to genes, 
> collapsing it into brains, or modeling it along the lines of a 
> computer. Descriptive foundations are laid by way of direct experience 
> of the living world. Only by hewing to experiences of that world have 
> we the possibility of arriving at veridical descriptive accounts of 
> nature and in turn, at explanations of nature.
>
> I follow up these aspects of Darwinian evolutionary biology to show 
> their confluence with phenomenology. Phenomenology, like Darwinian 
> evolutionary biology, is methodologically essential to understandings 
> of human nature; like Darwinian evolutionary biology, it too is 
> tethered to experience and is basically a descriptive project; and 
> again, like Darwinian evolutionary biology, it too is concerned with 
> origins. What we think of and separate academically as disparate 
> fields of knowledge are undergirded by descriptive foundations. The 
> descriptive challenge lies in languaging experience and being true to 
> the truths of experience, a challenge common to both fields of study.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>   
-- 
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20160219/cacff6e9/attachment.html>