[Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 23, Issue 35
Alex Hankey
alexhankey at gmail.com
Thu Feb 25 04:13:16 CET 2016
Regarding Stanley Salthe's Point
So evolutionary extinction is also not a phenomenon.
In the current case of human environmental destruction in might be the case
that a person could observe the last of a kind of bird flying by, but (s)he
would not actually SEE its death.
I give you two counter examples - though they are clearly special cases.
1. The extinction of a species of flightless wren that inhabited a single
island free of predators some miles off the coast of Scotland. When a
lighthouse was built on the island in the 18th century, the entire species
was wiped out by the lighthouse keeper's cat which would bring the prey to
its owner.
2. The Dodo was wiped out by being shot by European visitors to Mauritius,
the island on which it lived.
Both these extinctions were 'observed' by the humans concerned.
Does this make them phenomena?
The killing of tigers and rhinos by poachers in India fall in the same
category no doubt.
On 25 February 2016 at 01:16, <fis-request at listas.unizar.es> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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> 1. _ Fwd: Response to Salthe (Stanley N Salthe)
> 2. Re: Response to Salthe (Steven Ericsson-Zenith)
> 3. Re: Response to Salthe (Steven Ericsson-Zenith)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2016 10:04:02 -0500
> From: Stanley N Salthe <ssalthe at binghamton.edu>
> To: fis <fis at listas.unizar.es>
> Subject: [Fis] _ Fwd: Response to Salthe
> Message-ID:
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> CAEoH_fSbtnYV58EvBStzJ6m7e5-eLovqF3DnBgppbduFq_cc1A at mail.gmail.com>
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> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Stanley N Salthe <ssalthe at binghamton.edu>
> Date: Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 9:55 AM
> Subject: Re: [Fis] Response to Salthe
> To: Maxine Sheets-Johnstone <msj at uoregon.edu>
>
>
> Here I respond to Maxine:
>
> M: 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.
>
> S: Yes, nice examples. But my point here is that there can be no First
> Person observation of an evolutionary origin. Such was denied hotly in the
> ?80?s by phylogenetic systematicists (taxonomists) regarding observations
> of fossils. Such origins (maybe ALL origins?) are designations, not
> phenomena.
>
>
> M: I am unaware of Darwin?s denying a concern with origins and would
> appreciate knowing more about his denial by way of a reference.
>
> S: In the Origin of Species, Darwin says in a couple of place?usually
> by-the-by?that he is not concerned with the origin of life.
>
> 1. ?How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more
> than how life itself fir originated? (p. 187 of first edition).
>
> 2. ?I must premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the
> primary mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself? (p.
> 207).
>
> There is a comparable passage to the one on 207 in the manuscript that
> Darwin was working on, before he condensed it into the Origin. So in the
> Stauffer edition (Darwin?s Natural Selection): ?I hope that it is hardly
> necessary for me to premise that here we are no more concerned with the
> first origin of the senses & the various faculties of the mind, than we are
> with the first origin of life.? (p. 467)
>
>
>
> M: 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.
>
> S: Extinctions are conceptually clean cuts, like origins. in actuality
> the most recent positive find of a kind in the fossil record is held to
> mark its extinction. So evolutionary extinction is also not a phenomenon.
> In the current case of human environmental destruction in might be the case
> that a person could observe the last of a kind of bird flying by, but (s)he
> would not actually SEE its death.
>
>
>
> M: 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.
>
> S: In the stream of changes, we pick out certain ones to mark as
> ?origins?. Origin is a determination of sufficient difference to mark with
> a category. In evolutionary biology a new species is held to arise when
> successful inter-reproduction fails even if no observational evidence can
> be adduced as to what is manifestly different between the two. In taxonomy
> this would not be able to mark different species. As well, there are
> intermediates between single- and multi-cellulars, as in kinds of bacterial
> biofilms.
>
>
> M: Again, I don?t know where Darwin discredited his ?origin? of species
>
> S: I did not mean to suggest such an outrageous thing! See above.
>
>
>
> M: 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.
>
> S: So we can assert, even without ever being able to say exactly
> where/when that was because it is technically unobservable, therefore
> non-phenomenal. But it doesn?t matter as long as we can point to
> sufficient differences.
>
>
> M: 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.
>
> S: Yes. My question remains, inasmuch as discussions of phenomenology
> seem always (? OK frequently) to refer to manifest motion in human time
> scale. If we start looking as slower or more minute motions (both as in
> plants) I would understand that we are now doing science inasmuch as we now
> need the support of machinery to go beyond what can be manifest to us at
> the scale of our passing moments.
>
> Then, I can?t resist citing my favorite phenomenological declaration, by
> Sartre, ?Snow IS white, wet and cold.?
>
> STAN
>
> Maxine
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:36 PM, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone <msj at uoregon.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Response to Salthe and Marijuan
> > _______________________________________________
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> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2016 11:31:24 -0800
> From: Steven Ericsson-Zenith <steven at iase.us>
> To: Maxine Sheets-Johnstone <msj at uoregon.edu>, Foundations of
> Information Science of Information Science Information Information
> Science <fis at listas.unizar.es>
> Subject: Re: [Fis] Response to Salthe
> Message-ID:
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>
> Darwin's observations were challenged by the American geologist Clarence
> King in his "Catastrophe and Evolution" (King 1877), an argument much
> admired and supported by Charles Peirce. He argues that it is not natural
> selection by incremental mutation, while indubitable in some minor cases,
> but the catastrophic evolutionary pressure that produces the significant
> diversity of species.
>
> Steven
>
> ?
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> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2016 11:46:23 -0800
> From: Steven Ericsson-Zenith <steven at iase.us>
> To: Foundations of Information Science of Information Science
> Information Information Science <fis at listas.unizar.es>
> Cc: Maxine Sheets-Johnstone <msj at uoregon.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Fis] Response to Salthe
> Message-ID:
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> CAAyxA7spfcOgYt5TAfpjPhxu3rS-rbiAac7oXpdxMqaXTQZxMg at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> For reference you can find a copy of Clarence King's "Catastrophe And
> Evolution" in the folder "King" here:
>
>
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-c2CVg9ZQsAY2NZcU1mNGVrbFU/view?usp=sharing
>
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 11:31 AM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith <steven at iase.us>
> wrote:
>
> > Darwin's observations were challenged by the American geologist Clarence
> > King in his "Catastrophe and Evolution" (King 1877), an argument much
> > admired and supported by Charles Peirce. He argues that it is not natural
> > selection by incremental mutation, while indubitable in some minor cases,
> > but the catastrophic evolutionary pressure that produces the significant
> > diversity of species.
> >
> > Steven
> >
> > ?
> >
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> End of Fis Digest, Vol 23, Issue 35
> ***********************************
>
--
Alex Hankey M.A. (Cantab.) PhD (M.I.T.)
Distinguished Professor of Yoga and Physical Science,
SVYASA, Eknath Bhavan, 19 Gavipuram Circle
Bangalore 560019, Karnataka, India
Mobile (Intn'l): +44 7710 534195
Mobile (India) +91 900 800 8789
____________________________________________________________
2015 JPBMB Special Issue on Integral Biomathics: Life Sciences, Mathematics
and Phenomenological Philosophy
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00796107/119/3>
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