[Fis] _ response to Pedro, response to Salthe

[Maxine Sheets-Johnstone]

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