Evolutionary Epistemology in James' Pragmatism J
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Foucault's Darwinian Genealogy
genealogy Article Foucault’s Darwinian Genealogy Marco Solinas Political Philosophy, University of Florence and Deutsches Institut Florenz, Via dei Pecori 1, 50123 Florence, Italy; [email protected] Academic Editor: Philip Kretsedemas Received: 10 March 2017; Accepted: 16 May 2017; Published: 23 May 2017 Abstract: This paper outlines Darwin’s theory of descent with modification in order to show that it is genealogical in a narrow sense, and that from this point of view, it can be understood as one of the basic models and sources—also indirectly via Nietzsche—of Foucault’s conception of genealogy. Therefore, this essay aims to overcome the impression of a strong opposition to Darwin that arises from Foucault’s critique of the “evolutionistic” research of “origin”—understood as Ursprung and not as Entstehung. By highlighting Darwin’s interpretation of the principles of extinction, divergence of character, and of the many complex contingencies and slight modifications in the becoming of species, this essay shows how his genealogical framework demonstrates an affinity, even if only partially, with Foucault’s genealogy. Keywords: Darwin; Foucault; genealogy; natural genealogies; teleology; evolution; extinction; origin; Entstehung; rudimentary organs “Our classifications will come to be, as far as they can be so made, genealogies; and will then truly give what may be called the plan of creation. The rules for classifying will no doubt become simpler when we have a definite object in view. We possess no pedigrees or armorial bearings; and we have to discover and trace the many diverging lines of descent in our natural genealogies, by characters of any kind which have long been inherited. -
Our Knowledge of the External World As a Field for Scientific Method In
Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy By Bertrand Russell 1 PREFACE The following lectures[1] are an attempt to show, by means of examples, the nature, capacity, and limitations of the logical-analytic method in philosophy. This method, of which the first complete example is to be found in the writings of Frege, has gradually, in the course of actual research, increasingly forced itself upon me as something perfectly definite, capable of embodiment in maxims, and adequate, in all branches of philosophy, to yield whatever objective scientific knowledge it is possible to obtain. Most of the methods hitherto practised have professed to lead to more ambitious results than any that logical analysis can claim to reach, but unfortunately these results have always been such as many competent philosophers considered inadmissible. Regarded merely as hypotheses and as aids to imagination, the great systems of the past serve a very useful purpose, and are abundantly worthy of study. But something different is required if philosophy is to become a science, and to aim at results independent of the tastes and temperament of the philosopher who advocates them. In what follows, I have endeavoured to show, however imperfectly, the way by which I believe that this desideratum is to be found. [1] Delivered as Lowell Lectures in Boston, in March and April 1914. The central problem by which I have sought to illustrate method is the problem of the relation between the crude data of sense and the space, 2 time, and matter of mathematical physics. -
Evolutionism and Holism: Two Different Paradigms for the Phenomenon of Biological Evolution
R. Fondi, International Journal of Ecodynamics. Vol. 1, No. 3 (2006) 284–297 EVOLUTIONISM AND HOLISM: TWO DIFFERENT PARADIGMS FOR THE PHENOMENON OF BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION R. FONDI Department of Earth Sciences, University of Siena, Italy. ABSTRACT The evolutionistic paradigm – the assumption that biological evolution consists in a mere process of ‘descendance with modification from common ancestors’, canonically represented by means of the phylogenetic tree model – can be seen as strictly connected to the classical or deterministic vision of the world, which dominated the 18th and 19th centuries. Research findings in palaeontology, however, have never fully supported the above- mentioned model. Besides, during the 20th century, the conceptual transformations produced by restricted and general relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology, information theory, research into consciousness, chaos– complexity theory, evolutionary thermodynamics and biosemiotics have radically changed the scientific picture of reality. It is therefore necessary to adopt a more suitable and up-to-date paradigm, according to which nature is not seen anymore as a mere assembly of independent things, subject to the Lamarckian-Darwinian dialectics of ‘chance and necessity’, but as: (1) an extremely complex system with all its parts dynamically coordinated; (2) the evolution of which does not obey the logic of a deterministic linear continuity but that of an indeterministic global discontinuity; and (3) in which the mind or psychic dimension, particularly evident in semiotic aspects of the biological world, is an essential and indissoluble part. On the basis of its characteristics, the new paradigm can be generically named holistic, organicistic or systemic. Keywords: biological evolution, biostratigraphy, evolutionism, holism, palaeontology, systema naturae, taxa. -
PRAGMATISM AS a PHILOSOPHY of ACTION (Paper Presented at the First Nordic Pragmatism Conference, Helsinki, Finland, June 2008)
1 PRAGMATISM AS A PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION (Paper presented at the First Nordic Pragmatism Conference, Helsinki, Finland, June 2008) Erkki Kilpinen University of Helsinki When I gave the doctrine of pragmatism the name it bears, – and a doctrine of vital significance it is, – I derived the name by which I christened it from pragma, – behaviour – in order that it should be understood that the doctrine is that the only real significance of a general term lies in the general behaviour which it implies. Charles S. Peirce, May 1912 cited by Eisele (1987:95).1 Introduction: Action ahead of knowledge on pragmatism’s philosophical agenda Although the very founder of the pragmatic movement is adamant that this philosophy is inherently related to action – or behaviour as Peirce laconically says here – philosophers have been curiously reluctant to recognize this. Of course one finds in the literature comments about how pragmatists often talk about action, and some commentators feel that they talk about it too often, at the expense of traditional philosophical problems. To see this is not yet, however, to see the essential pragmatist point; in what sense they talk about action. Their usage of this term and the underlying idea differ from what is customary in other philosophical approaches. Pragmatism namely approaches all theoretical and philosophical problems as problems that in final analysis are related to action. In mainstream philosophy, both in its positivist-analytic and phenomenological versions, action is a contingent empirical phenomenon demanding an explanation. In pragmatism, action is a universal phenomenon which in itself begs no explanation but rather makes the starting point for explanations. -
Neither Logical Empiricism Nor Vitalism, but Organicism: What the Philosophy of Biology Was
Neither Logical Empiricism nor Vitalism, but Organicism: What the Philosophy of Biology Was By: Daniel Nicholson & Richard Gawne Like a slow-burning story of triumph, the canonical narrative of the history of contemporary philosophy of biology tells the tale of a subfield emerging out of the smoldering ashes of logical empiricist philosophy of science, and the wreckage of an equally futile vitalistic program that preceded it. Most logical empiricists scoffed at the life sciences, and those who did deem it worthwhile to explore the biological realm produced nothing of value. The logical empiricists failed because their project was a prescriptive enterprise whose primary mandate was to bring increased rigour to biology by importing methodological protocols from the physical sciences. Vitalists of the early twentieth century were not stricken with physics-envy, but the animating forces and other metaphysical phantasms they conjured into existence to ward off the threat of reductionism were at least as ill-conceived as anything produced by the logical empiricists. Practitioners associated with the aforementioned schools failed to seriously engage with the science that allegedly inspired their musings, and as a consequence, the philosophy of biology languished in a state of futility for much of the twentieth century. Things began to change sometime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the textbooks by Michael Ruse (1973) and David Hull (1974), together with a series of articles by Ken Schaffner (1967; 1969a; 1969b) and Bill Wimsatt (1970; 1972a; 1972b), found their way into print. These efforts are regularly identified as the first significant contributions to modern philosophy of biology. -
The Philosophy of Biology Edited by David L
Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-85128-2 - The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology Edited by David L. Hull and Michael Ruse Frontmatter More information the cambridge companion to THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY The philosophy of biology is one of the most exciting new areas in the field of philosophy and one that is attracting much attention from working scientists. This Companion, edited by two of the founders of the field, includes newly commissioned essays by senior scholars and by up-and- coming younger scholars who collectively examine the main areas of the subject – the nature of evolutionary theory, classification, teleology and function, ecology, and the prob- lematic relationship between biology and religion, among other topics. Up-to-date and comprehensive in its coverage, this unique volume will be of interest not only to professional philosophers but also to students in the humanities and researchers in the life sciences and related areas of inquiry. David L. Hull is an emeritus professor of philosophy at Northwestern University. The author of numerous books and articles on topics in systematics, evolutionary theory, philosophy of biology, and naturalized epistemology, he is a recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Michael Ruse is professor of philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of many books on evolutionary biology, including Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? and Darwinism and Its Discontents, both published by Cam- bridge University Press. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he has appeared on television and radio, and he contributes regularly to popular media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Playboy magazine. -
By Jacques Loeb [1]
Published on The Embryo Project Encyclopedia (https://embryo.asu.edu) The Mechanistic Conception of Life (1912), by Jacques Loeb [1] By: Elliott, Steve Keywords: Mechanism [2] Jacques Loeb [3] published The Mechanistic Conception of Life in 1912. Loeb’s goal for the book was to further disseminate his explanations of organic processes—such as embryonic development and organisms’ orientations to their environments—which relied on physics and chemistry. Loeb also wanted to provide an alternative explanatory framework to vitalism [4] and what he called romantic evolutionism [5], then both widespread. Loeb mined his work on tropisms [6] and artificial parthenogenesis [7], both of which he considered central to biology, to show that physicochemical explanations accounted for some of the most perplexing organic phenomena. Thus, for those processes, anyone who appealed to vitalism [4] or romantic evolutionism [5] offered only impotent explanations. The Mechanistic Conception of Life established Loeb’s widespread reputation as a mechanist, both to the public and to generations of biologists. In The Mechanistic Conception of Life ten popular lectures were presented, each originally published elsewhere beginning in 1893. The University of Chicago Press [8] published the first edition in 1912. In 1964 Donald Fleming [9] edited a second edition through the Harvard University Press [10]. Fleming’s edition included his biography of Loeb as well as notes appended to each essay relating its contents to contemporary biology. In the opening and closing essays, Loeb discussed what biologists studied and the nature of their explanations. In the first essay, the book’s title piece, Loeb promulgated two principles that ground biology, make it a rigorous discipline, and by which biologists explain phenomena. -
AR Wallace's Approach
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Apollo Volume 5, No. 4 16 Evolutionism Combined with Spiritualism: A. R. Wallace’s Approach ∗ Li LIU Peking University Abstract: A. R. Wallace was the co-founder of the theory of natural selection and a solid supporter of Darwin, but he combined evolutionism with spiritualism, and tried to understand human evolution and evolutionary ethics with a spiritualistic teleology. This teleological version is a typical example of non-Darwinian evolutionism , which was rooted in the ideology of Victorian progressionism, and was used to avoid the materialism implicated in Darwinism. Through investigating Wallace's approach, we may realize how progressionism had worked as the bridge between science and religion in Victorian Age. Key Words: A. R. Wallace, evolutionism, spiritualism, Victorian progressionism ∗ Department of Philosophy, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China. E-mail: [email protected] Journal of Cambridge Studies 17 1. INTRODUCTION Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Robert Darwin independently discovered the principle of natural selection and their articles were announced to scientific community by a joint publication, on 1st July 1858. It’s the starting point of the Darwinian revolution or as Peter Bowler put in his book, “the non-Darwinian revolution”. Stimulated by Wallace, Darwin finally finished and then published his Origin of Species, and got “the whole credit for one of the most liberating advances in scientific thought”, as Wallace “agreed of his own free will to play moon to Darwin’s sun.”1 Considered as a Darwinist, Wallace positively defended Darwinism in his time, and published a book named Darwinism (1889). -
DANIEL DENNETT and the SCIENCE of RELIGION Richard F
DANIEL DENNETT AND THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION Richard F. Green Department of Mathematics and Statistics University of Minnesota-Duluth Duluth, MN 55812 ABSTRACT Daniel Dennett (2006) recently published a book, “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,” which advocates the scientific study of religion. Dennett is a philosopher with wide-ranging interests including evolution and cognitive psychology. This talk is basically a review of Dennett’s religion book, but it will include comments about other work about religion, some mentioned by Dennett and some not. I will begin by describing my personal interest in religion and philosophy, including some recent reading. Then I will comment about the study of religion, including the scientific study of religion. Then I will describe some of Dennett’s ideas about religion. I will conclude by trying outlining the ideas that should be considered in order to understand religion. This talk is mostly about ideas, particularly religious beliefs, but not so much churches, creeds or religious practices. These other aspects of religion are important, and are the subject of study by a number of disciplines. I will mention some of the ways that people have studied religion, mainly to provide context for the particular ideas that I want to emphasize. I share Dennett’s reticence about defining religion. I will offer several definitions of religion, but religion is probably better defined by example than by attempting to specify its essence. A particular example of a religion is Christianity, even more particularly, Roman Catholicism. MOTIVATION My interest in philosophy and religion I. Beginnings I read a few books about religion and philosophy when I was in high school and imagined that college would be full of people arguing about religion and philosophy. -
The Biological Sciences Can Act As a Ground for Ethics” in Ayala, Francisco and Arp, Robert, Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Biology
1 This chapter to be published as: Ruse, Michael (2009). “The Biological Sciences Can Act as a Ground for Ethics” in Ayala, Francisco and Arp, Robert, Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Biology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. The Biological Sciences Can Act as a Ground for Ethics Michael Ruse Ethics is an illusion put in place by natural selection to make us good cooperators. – Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson (1985) This paper is interested in the relationship between evolutionary thinking and moral behavior and commitments, ethics. There is a traditional way of forging or conceiving of the relationship. This is traditional evolutionary ethics, known as Social Darwinism. Many think that this position is morally pernicious, a re- description of the worst aspects of modern, laissez-faire capitalism in fancy biological language. It is argued that, in fact, there is much more to be said for Social Darwinism than many think. In respects, it could be and was an enlightened position to take; but it flounders on the matter of justification. Universally, the appeal is to progress—evolution is progressive and, hence, morally we should aid its success. I argue, however, that this progressive nature of evolution is far from obvious and, hence, traditional social Darwinism fails. There is another way to do things. This is to argue that the search for justification is mistaken. Ethics just is. It is an adaptation for humans living socially and has exactly the same status as other adaptations, like hands and teeth and genitalia. As such, ethics is something with no standing beyond what it is. -
Vestigial Arguments: Remnants of Evolution Shaun Doyle
Countering the Critics Vestigial arguments: remnants of evolution Shaun Doyle estigial’ organs have been used as an argument Supposed ‘vestigial’ structures in humans ‘Vagainst a designer for many years, and have been used as a major ‘proof’ of evolution. The ‘vestigial organs’ Vomeronasal organ argument is merely a modified form of the ‘bad design’ The vomeronasal organ (VNO), or Jacobson’s organ, is argument. While it may sound scientific, it is in fact a an organ present in the noses of many mammals that detects theological argument. The argument essentially runs like pheromones, which provide information about the gender this: God would not have originally created a degenerate and reproductive state of others, and can thus influence form of biological structure X in creature A (as evidenced by behaviour. There has been much debate over the influence more functional examples of structure A in other creatures), of pheromones on human behaviour, and much of this has therefore evolution did it. revolved around whether or not the VNO is functional in The vestigial structures argument has suffered repeated adult humans. Spinney takes this as evidence that the VNO blows over the last few decades, with functions being found is a useless remnant of our evolutionary heritage. for most, if not all, of the over 180 organs listed as either However, Spinney fails to mention studies that have vestigial or rudimentary by anatomist Robert Wiedersheim pointed to a function for the VNO.4 Therefore, one gets 1 in 1893. the impression that no functions have ever been proposed. 2 In a recent article in New Scientist, Laura Spinney The biblical model also allows for degeneration, and discusses the ‘vestigial organs’ notion, and claims that it is considering that it is unlikely that the VNO is essential to still a viable concept despite having taken such a battering at survival, it could have been subject to deleterious mutations the hands of modern medical science. -
Essay on Robert Brandom, Making It Explicit Daniel Dennett July 31, 2006
Essay on Robert Brandom, Making it Explicit Daniel Dennett July 31, 2006 The Evolution of AWhy?@ 1. The descent of content. Which way is up? I have recently completed the bracingBand long overdueBexperience of reading Making it Explicit, and trying to superimpose my own views on it to see where the disagreements stand out. Mainly, there is agreement. Claim after claim, page after page, I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Brandom, and this is not just on matters about which philosophers in general agree. Brandom and I are on the same page about many issues that divide the profession. Moreover, on a few points where Brandom explicitly objects to positions I have maintained, I think he is, in the main, right, and I will acknowledge this in more detail below. What then is left to argue about? There is a fundamental difference of direction in our work. But I will try to show that our residual disagreementsBwhich at first make us appear poles apart on some very central thesesBmight quite easily be nudged into consonance if Brandom can take on what I view as a few friendly amendments. We both learned a lesson from Wilfrid Sellars that still hasn=t sunk in with many of our colleagues. I quote, not for the first time, what I consider to be the pithiest expression of it in Sellars: My solution is that A>. .= means - - -@ is the core of a unique mode of discourse which is as distinct from the description and explanation of empirical fact, as is the language of prescription and justification.