| Story of Evolution / Evolution of Stories Forum |
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The first thing to keep in mind is that this isn't a place for "formal writing" or "finished thoughts". Its a place for thoughts-in-progress, for what you're thinking (whether you know it or not) on your way to what you think next. Maybe simpler, imagine that you're not worrying about "writing" but instead that you're just talking to some people you've met. This is a "conversation" place, a place to find out what you're thinking yourself, and what other people are thinking, so you can help them think and they can help you think. The idea is that your "thoughts in progress" can contribute to the thinking of others , and theirs can contribute to yours.
So who are you writing for? For yourself, and for others in our class primarily. But also for the world. This is a "public" forum, so people anywhere on the web might look in (and might even add their own thoughts in progress, though that doesn't in fact often happen).
That's the second thing to keep in mind here. You're writing for yourself, for others in the class, AND for others you might or might not know. So, your thoughtsin progress can contribute to the thoughts in progress of LOTS of people, particularly if you do the best you can to be clear to lots of different people. The web is giving increasing reality to the idea that there can actually evolve a world community, and you're part of helping to bring that about. Glad to have you along,and hope you value/enjoy sharing the activity.
Getting started ...
Name: Serendip (click here)
Date: 01/15/2004 10:39
Link to this Comment: 7606
Welcome to the course forum area for The Story of Evolution / The Evolution of Stories. This is an interestingly different kind of place for writing, and may take some getting used to, but we hope you'll come to value it as much as students in other courses have.
| Welcome Name: Anne Dalke, Paul Grobstein (adalke@brynmawr.edu, pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/15/2004 10:45 Link to this Comment: 7607 |
| Of Men and Mars Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/15/2004 17:59 Link to this Comment: 7609 |
"What do you think of this new chapter so far?"
Well, I think it's not so new...Mars has long been interesting as the most likely other place where life might have existed, and it might have existed in a carbon-based form that might be linked to Earth life. About 8 years ago, Bill Clinton 'fessed up to such research when someone leaked NASA findings about a Mars meteorite that landed on Earth. Reportedly, years of exploration had preceded the leak. The scientists involved found carbonate patterns, but carbon is present in materials that have never been alive; they found hydrocarbons created by bacteria, but these could have been earth-based contaminants; they found "magnetite" globules in a shape that seemed to indicate they were created by bacteria, but not everyone is convinced; they found what looked like fossils but could just as easily have been mineral formations. So the research has continued and there has long been the need for more samples. So, the newest chapter, including Bush's latest proclamation of a Man on Mars program, brings a bunch of fascinating questions to the front bunner once again.
Say we do verify that carbon-based life form(s) did exist on Mars... does that lead to a revision in the evolution story that embraces the possibility of Earthlings and Martians as related? Is the rest of the evolutionary food chain then seen as separate from us? Does this then conveniently allow religion and science to call a truce and co-exist, i.e., evolution for all life-forms but not for man? Or does it mean that life is no big deal...that life can occur most anywhere, given the right (and relatively easy to implement) conditions plus time. That would really throw cold water on the notion of one or more supreme beings as our creators.
If Mars life existed, how did it die? Was it intelligent, advanced? Did they burn off their atmosphere and disintegrate any evidence of a civilization? Say man convinces himself that Mars life did itself in...do we take any lessons to heart from that new belief? Do these lessons help us save ourselves from ourselves or do we become fatalistic? It's not even necessary for Mars life to have been intelligent. It could have inadvertently "traveled" to Earth as a simple life form and found a friendly climate and conditions in which to evolve. YIKES, things could even have gone the other way!
How do I think it will come out? Gosh. I think that we will eventually learn the facts regarding life or no life on Mars. I think that we will continue to hold hope about and maybe try to make Mars a second home for Earthlings in a bind—down the road. I don't think that the religion versus evolution (or versus science) debates will be resolved. They will evolve, but not complete. I do believe that Mars as an alternative eco-system would give us unimaginable clues and insights about our own. How we would use them is a anyone's guess.
I have two wishes of my own for this space venture. I wish that humans would mature beyond their need to be physically territorial (and aggressive), beyond their need to set physical foot on new ground in the process of answering the Mars questions. I have a strong hunch that much of the venture's work could be done by unmanned exploration, with technology acting as a virtual extention of man, by man. We would save so much money that's needed elsewhere—rather than have to pay for porting heavy stations through space. Seems the lion's share of cost is in how to deal with moving weight through space. More importantly, we might grow up a bit in the process.
My other wish is that the program's promoters would talk about the goals of this program as trying to find out whether there is/was life on Mars or not, with the understanding that it's just as interesting and important to know that Mars never had life as it is to find evidence of living organisms. I think we're denying the potential for valuable knowledge and fascinating implications (scientific and religious) if we don't acknowledge that it's equally OK to not find evidence of life there.
See you all next week!
| starlit destiny Name: orah minder (ominder@bmc) Date: 01/16/2004 00:18 Link to this Comment: 7610 |
but, i'm not sure if that's completely accurate: that we are 'giving up hope.' i don't think that's what it is...i think it's that we're scared shitless ... and when we hear that the ozone is being depleated because of the SUVs that we're driving, when we hear that people are starving while we are padding our soft cusioned sofas with couchpotato crums, when we hear that in fifty years a HUGE number of species on our planet will be extinct because the way WE live ... What do you do when you hear that you are slowly, but most definatly, killing yourself? we freeze up and we don't know how to process this information. and instead of givig up our present lifestyles we say that we would rather move to Mars. But i don't think we know what we're talking about.
last semester i read a wonderful book called "the salt eaters"
in this book a woman has just tried to kill herself, her life is painful, and the way she deals with it is she leaves herself, she leaves her body, and floats over her own life ...
and i think that is what we're doing. things hurt down here and so we drink ourselves into a gadamn stuppor, we fill our glasses with our paychecks and our high falutent education and fancy degrees and long long resumes and we leave our world, our body, behind. and each one of us needs to be smacked in the face and told, 'get back down here, get the godamn hell out of the stars, get off of mars and look at yourself, look here!' we have enough problems right here and we don't need to be looking stary-eyes out into space. fix the here and now and if we fail i don't think we want to be living anywhere else anyways.
but again i am not accurate... it's not that we drink ourselves stupid, it's that we think that if we don't FEEL our own death then we aren't expereincing it. if we can float above ourselves and not feel our own death then it doesn't matter. we don't cherish life enough to realize that pain is such a minor part of life no matter how great. when it really gets down to it, when we are dying to most painful, ugly death we cling onto life so tightly. even in the greatest pain, the pain that is exclusive, WE STILL CHOSE LIFE.
but, silly me, i digress.
one more thing: i just saw the movie 'minority report' with tom cruise. in this movie there is an institution called 'precrime' that is able to see into the future and faultlessly predict a murder before it is about to happen. so, the precrime police go to the scene of the murder seconds before it happens and arrest the perspective (but sure) murderer. and the question is: can we change our desitny? is it moral to arrest someone who has not yet commited the crime, but whose destiny dictates what he is to do? do we have the choice in those last seconds NOT to kill? do we, NOW, have the choice NOT to destroy this world?
and i think our destiny is destruction, but can we change that????????? the only thing stopping us is that we already beleive that are destruction is imminent. we beleive that we have already died. and we are hopelessly bleeding to death. BUT WE AREN'T. This beleif is what's going to cut us. BUT WE AREN'T CUT YET.
| Which way forward? Name: su-lyn (spoon@hc) Date: 01/16/2004 01:41 Link to this Comment: 7611 |
| Mars, fiction and understanding Name: Elizabeth Catanese (ecatanes@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/17/2004 19:15 Link to this Comment: 7612 |
I think it is very important to explore WHY we are doing this just as much as what we are doing. It seems to me that "looking to the stars" is often what humans do to make sense of their own existence when things get particularly difficult on earth. The world situation right now seems somewhat similar to the situation that existed when we landed on the moon. It all boils down to a humans trying to create understanding- because I'm not quite sure if understanding is something the can quite exist organically. That's why writing and art are particularly valuable- they give structure and help to create an illusion of understanding- Maybe that's why we are doing this exploration- to create understanding. "How do you think this will come out?" I think it will inevitably make us think that we have succeeded in creating a "better" understanding. And better because the expedition is based in "reality" and confirmed by "technology". This is one of the reasons why this course seems interesting to me. I want to obtain a more expansive understanding of a relationship between science and literature- rather than seeing them as two distinct entities- one heavily based in reality and truth and the other rooted in the imaginative world. I can see already that it's much more expansive than that.
I think an interesting piece of fiction- something we "make up completely" could provide similar discoveries (just like the discovery of whether or not life can be sustained on mars, was there life etc...)if people had mindsets which were "inversely creative". I just made up that term- it's not the best :) By this I mean that people are creative enough to make up any story, to dream anything- but not "inversely creative" that is, creative enough to believe all stories to be valid and to believe stories as much as truth. We could just say that there was life on mars. We could say anything. Does there need to be proof? I think that 99 percent of people would say ABSOLUTELY! But I also know that the value of fiction is greater than people want to admit or perhaps want to explore- At any rate, the value of truth in the creation of and continuance of the story of evolution is something that deserves to be explored further.
However, there is a certain kind of excitement at the prospect of it all. I find the new discoveries and our relative success on Mars to be comforting. What we are doing there vaguely resembles an escape, like one of the undeniable functions that writing and reading can serve. I do think that there is a connection between the arts, the mind and space exploration which I'll think about more. I don't know why this in particular keeps coming into my mind. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with turning elsewhere- inventing an alternate future for ourselves, looking for an alternate reality. If nothing else it is an interesting mental exercise- the exploration itself and the technology that must be created in order to explore. The fact that we can do this does call to the forefront the power of the human mind. Just as one of the articles indicated that understanding mars would help us to better understand earth, I think that exercising the human mind in this vein could indeed help us learn to figure out various problems here. But that statement does frustrate me slightly because I'm not exactly sure how this would work.
The article about the clocks and Mars time being different from earth time was particularly fascinating to me because time is a human construct to begin with. Or at least I think it is. Is it? The fact that it would be important for us to measure Mars time seems to transcend technological significance. It makes me wonder what time is to begin with. And why humans made time. And why it is so important. Is it another instance of needing structure and understanding?
I think that the pictures of Mars are quite beautiful- because it seems so empty. I would love to do an art project with some of that imagery joined with the concepts of time and loss. It all seems like a very rich source for creative writing or artwork-
I loved reading the forum entries! Very interesting ideas- See you all soon!
| thoughts Name: Lauren Friedman (lfriedma@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/18/2004 12:43 Link to this Comment: 7614 |
| Reality on Mars Name: Daniela Miteva (dmiteva@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/18/2004 14:52 Link to this Comment: 7615 |
| Whales and Mars Name: Aia Hussein (ahussein@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/18/2004 16:18 Link to this Comment: 7616 |
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/18/2004 20:01 Link to this Comment: 7617 |
Name: Reeve Basom (rbasom@haverford.edu) Date: 01/18/2004 21:50 Link to this Comment: 7618 |
| shortcomings Name: emily (emadsen@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/19/2004 16:55 Link to this Comment: 7620 |
Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/19/2004 18:09 Link to this Comment: 7621 |
your post made me think that, when I wrote about Mars as a possible alternative for "Earthlings in a bind down the road," (can one quote one's self?) I was actually thinking about that bind being caused by something out of our control, like the demise of our sun......but something that we might be clever enough to literally side-step, having started with "one giant step for mankind." It's interesting that those who've commented about the (good or bad) idea of Mars as a refuge have done so from the standpoint of man having ruined Earth and needing a fresh planet. What if it's just the next necessary step in the survival of our species? What if we were to clean up our act, take care of our planet, but still ultimately need to explore and develop Mars as a contingency plan?
Ro
| World without end. Amen. Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/19/2004 18:59 Link to this Comment: 7622 |
But I wasn't thinking when I wrote the last post... if our sun becomes a brown dwarf or dies out, then Mars will be toast, as will the rest of this solar system. What we need to find--if we're serious about the notion of a "world without end" (in either a religious or secular sense) is another solar system with accommodations and the means to get to it. In the meantime, we are all bound by the same fate. It's a matter of when, not if. Even if we take really good care of Earth, we still need to get out of Dodge, not just to the next way station. So, going to Mars could buy us time, teach how to better take care of this planet, maybe prepare Mars as a spare, but it's really got to be about learning soooo much more in time to make a much bigger move. Or should we go for quality of life and focus on the immediate stuff around us...for as long as we have?
What's really beginning to tug at me is the notion of a virtual world...a definition of "world" as "where we are."
| purpose of our mission Name: Katherine Pioli (kpioli@brynmawr) Date: 01/19/2004 23:55 Link to this Comment: 7626 |
I also enjoyed comparing the European web site to the United States site. I thought that it showed the European scientists to be far more objective and scientific and less hopefull(?)...fictional. They presented the facts, on the geography of the planet, the environment, the purpose for the mars exploration mission. The United States web site, however, constantly wanted to make Mars a fun little game. There was a disappointing small amount of solid factual information on the planet. Instead all energy seemed to be turned to making Mars appealing to children. And what a good job they did in their Mars related storytelling: "The danger of Mars still lurks in our conscience, for Mars today is a hostile world, blanketed in toxic soil and zapped with radiation... We begin to brave the hardships because Mars is the only planet on which humans could one day settle, making it a place of hope as well as trepidation."
| Mars Name: Fritz Dubuisson (fdubuiss@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/20/2004 01:00 Link to this Comment: 7628 |
Name: Emily Senerth (esenerth@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/20/2004 01:22 Link to this Comment: 7629 |
Name: Heather Davis (Anonymous) Date: 01/20/2004 01:55 Link to this Comment: 7630 |
To end my rambling, and on another note.....In answer to Ro's question on whether we should put efforts into finding a habitat for a future when Earth's sun dies...I think not. I think we should concentrate on what we have, both on changing what we can and enjoying the Earth as we know it. Who knows if, even after much time and energy and resources, if there will be another place we can live in. This agian relates to religion, in a weird way.
| The Mars Story Name: Mary Ferrell (mferrell@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/20/2004 09:00 Link to this Comment: 7632 |
| Can I send my Hummer to Mars too? Name: Nancy Evans (nevans@bmc) Date: 01/20/2004 10:16 Link to this Comment: 7634 |
Su Lyn's idea of an Arab state on Mars channels my own idealism. If, in fact, Mars is to become a habitable environment, what a wonderful chance for the world to redeem itself... For Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Kurds in Germany, decades or centuries of conflict over land rights may finally see a means to an end. Yet in the same breath, SuLyn deflates the peace bubble. We ARE the 'ones' with the power, the money and the need for trappings to prove ourselves to one another. Mars life will become the new status symbol, in the way that the cell phone was once rarely seen and oft envied. Which begs the question, at least in my mind, of how great a discovery this will be if it is only a means to take the disparity between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' to interplanetary status.
It confuses me, this human quest for tangible conquests. This is probably because I spend my time in college in search of some sort of momentary truth that is the least tangible and most fleeting, but what I consider the most desirable. Mars is not the solution for our overcrowding problems, our resource gluttony, our pollution creation. The red planet may risk becoming the next stage for the ongoing tragedy of the human nature of excess.
Name: Patricia Palermo (ppalermo@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/20/2004 13:15 Link to this Comment: 7638 |
Unfortunately, I don't see any reason to believe that we will treat territory any differently because of its distance from the earth. All of the aforementioned groups of people have important things in common; they believe that their form of government is best and (crucially) that their God is THE God. These religious beliefs often require the belief that "the other guy's beliefs" are somehow satanic or in great disrespect or dishonor to their God. Not all nations are governed so strictly by their religion, but there are many that are. The cohabitation of these nations under one government may be so hard that we may either be forced to socially and emotionally catch up with technology, or technology may just have to wait for us. Inhabiting Mars may be an ability that we may technologically sense as quite close, but I don't know if each separate nation would want their nuclear weapons protected by the "other guy'" government. We're just not there yet. Mars will have to wait. Until then, we could put the money into schools, international education, and other types of international relations efforts in order to make this "exploration of the stars" worth considering as a venture for new habitation
Name: Patricia Palermo (ppalermo@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/20/2004 13:25 Link to this Comment: 7639 |
Name: Lindsay Updegrove (lupdegro@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/20/2004 13:45 Link to this Comment: 7640 |
On a different note, I'm really curious about how people in the non-Western world feel about the whole thing. I mean, do all "Earthlings" have a stake in the Mars exploration or is it just the people of America and the EU? If my government wasn't a huge proponent of the mission, I doubt that I would feel I was part of this story at all.
| Is it all that bad? Name: bethany keffala (Anonymous) Date: 01/20/2004 14:36 Link to this Comment: 7642 |
| avoiding the not-so-wonderful side of evolution? Name: Susan Willis (swillis@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/20/2004 18:38 Link to this Comment: 7646 |
| science and story Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/20/2004 19:53 Link to this Comment: 7649 |
Lots to talk more about (and looking forward to a semester of doing it) but one issue from this afternoon sticks in my mind particularly: the idea that "science" is different from "story", and is in fact something that one can appeal to to test the "validity" or "correctness" of a story.
I think that's lots of peoples' story of the relation between science and story, but its not what I was trying to convey in my story this afternoon. What I wanted to convey is the idea that science IS story, in the sense that it is nothing more (and nothing less) than something one makes up to make sense of observations. And then tests/revises (inevitably) by making additional observations.
Am I SERIOUS about this? As a scientist? Yep. Moreover, I think the story that science is a story is itself a GOOD story ("good" in terms we need to talk more about; perhaps, for the moment, "has a long lifetime"?). If you're intrigued by that story, here are a few other places/ways I've tried to tell it ...
Looking forward to talking more about this, among other things.
| saving lives: telling stories Name: orah minder (ominder@bmc) Date: 01/20/2004 22:25 Link to this Comment: 7654 |
| gfhdf Name: orah minder (ominder@bmc) Date: 01/20/2004 22:32 Link to this Comment: 7658 |
| gfhdf Name: orah minder (ominder@bmc) Date: 01/20/2004 22:50 Link to this Comment: 7660 |
| Story forms Name: su-lyn (spoon@hc) Date: 01/20/2004 23:13 Link to this Comment: 7668 |
| saving lives: telling stories Name: orah minder (ominder@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/20/2004 23:34 Link to this Comment: 7673 |
Name: orah minder (ominder@bmc) Date: 01/21/2004 00:12 Link to this Comment: 7679 |
| story forms Name: su-lyn (spoon@hc) Date: 01/21/2004 08:05 Link to this Comment: 7688 |
| Science as Story Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/21/2004 08:56 Link to this Comment: 7689 |
My grandfather (and primary mentor) was a scientist (chemist and metallurgist) who, before that, bailed out of theological studies in his final year of preparations to become a minister, having decided that agnosticism was a whole lot more comfortable. He talked about his scientific exploration as if it were always entwined with his agnosticism, and maybe it was even vice versa. His hobby was the history of science--some of which he helped make as a researcher at the newly formed General Electric Company in the early days of the last century. After listening to you yesterday and reading your post, I'm remembering his and my conversations and beginning to think that he was always coming at his questions (and mine) by testing and tinkering in the context of his long views of religion and science--in order to "get it less wrong." I'm remembering that, for him, nothing was ever cast in concrete. Whatever his latest findings were, they just set up the next iteration of questions and 'tests.'
Thanks for some new thoughts about science and religion as maybe creating and maintaining a necessary tension--even as they seem to asymtotically converge.
Name: orah minder (ominder@bmc) Date: 01/21/2004 09:07 Link to this Comment: 7690 |
| soothing voice of the storyteller Name: Elizabeth Catanese (ecatanes@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/21/2004 15:19 Link to this Comment: 7697 |
I think that Orah's sentence is wonderful.(beyond the sentence's implications, I really like the way the second half of the sentence flows) As for what the sentence made me think about...the idea that what really matters is the extent to which a story teller's voice can soothe people is fascinating to me. The only thing that I'd like to add to this is the idea that the PROCESS of finding a "less wrong" story through observation, imagination and story telling has been a process of tremendous anxiety and to a certain extent upheval. (causing in various "chapters of the story of evolution" the death of some scientists (story tellers), the creation of new technology, the re-thinking of the values of society etc.) As each new story is created, people must expand their minds to fit the new information which (as many people have indicated in the forum thus far) often does not conform to a person's "world view comfort zone." (religious or otherwise) In order to be ultimatley soothed by story (I wonder if this is possible- I think so because sometimes reading fiction gives me this sense) people need to be OPEN to the ongoing process of story telling in all of it's complexity. I do think that today people are more open to the implications of discovery and more willing to embrace a story which evolves rather than remains static. I guess the question is whether it is ever completely possible to find comfort in a story whose very basis is change... Evolution...to evolve...to change...the story of evolution is a story about change.
Name: orah minder (ominder@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/21/2004 16:48 Link to this Comment: 7700 |
Name: becky (rrich@bmc) Date: 01/21/2004 18:26 Link to this Comment: 7701 |
Is creationism, for instance, going to be around indefinitely because (drawing from Orah's comment) it satisfies the need for a story that works for us and is comfortable well? Or (drawing off of Elizabeth) will it die away because "in order to be ultimately soothed by story...people need to be open to the ongoing process of story telling in all of its complexity"? It sounds like Plato&Aristotle vs. Democritus&I-forget-the-rest again! (surprise?)
Here comes my cop out though; I think that the religion story- the story that God, or Gods, is/are behind the backdrop of the universe and running the show, not the story that God made the universe in seven days or any other given example of creationism, serves a different purpose than the science story. For this reason I do not believe that the two stories are mutually exclusive or that they are necessarily in competition with each other.
Name: Perrin Braun (Pbraun@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/21/2004 20:41 Link to this Comment: 7702 |
Back to a somewhat more relevant topic...I think that it's both a blessing and a curse for mankind to be inherently expansionist and curious in nature. We can never just be content with what we have, which forces us to search (however futilely or fruitfully) for better prospects while simultaneously rejecting at least a portion of our obligations for the Here and Now. For the time being, I am personally more concerned about the future of our species than that of some other extraterrestrial life form. Say we do stick either the Israelis or the Palestinians on Mars. Does that really solve anything or does it just add to more animosity and resentment? I guess that what I'm trying to say is that Mars is most definitely not our Messiah, although it is certainly awe-inspiring to know that the potential for the space program is endless, as are the possibilities for the discovery of extraterrestrial life.
| strange bedfellows Name: emily (emadsen@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/21/2004 20:46 Link to this Comment: 7703 |
| Storytelling IS Science Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/21/2004 20:59 Link to this Comment: 7704 |
Yes, science IS story and (this will sound predictable, but I'll say it anyway): storytelling (well done) IS science. That is to say: if we acknowledge that every account is temporary (as we are temporary), that every account is unfinished (as we are unfinished), then all storytelling (like all living) is an endless predicting and testing and revising, as we ask ourselves repeatedly how useful our current accounts are for making sense of what we (and others) are observing and experiencing. I'm convinced that this process--Quakers call it "continuing revelation"--can happen in religion as well as in science.
And yes, one measure of a "good story" is that it has "a long lifetime"; but a better story does something else: it generates further stories. I got this idea from Michael Tratner: that the better stories are those with enough familiarity to be understandable, enough novelty to be surprising, and enough of both to provide a pattern for repeated variants.
I'd spoken publically about these ideas before this course began--but am already ready (you guys are GOOD!) to revise what I said there/then. Following Su-Lyn: the best stories are those which enable us to ACT. In preparation for a graduate seminar later this week on Explorations of Teaching, I'm reading Paulo Friere's Pedagogy of Freedom. Freire, the great Brazilian educator, talks about science and storytelling in just the ways we've been using the terms: as a permanent process of searching that involves what he calls "critical consciousness." Freire recognizes that the risk of establishing a genuine public sphere (like this one?) is that the outcomes of our storytelling are NOT guaranteed--AND that the point of the whole process is that it facilitates both individual and social CHANGE—i.e.: that it enables us to MOVE.
Here's the rub, I think, to Lindsay's observation that she could be more supportive of the mission to Mars if there were something to gain by it. Problem is, we CAN'T know, ahead of time, where the gains will lie. (See tomorrow's reading--Schwartz's NYTimes article--on this: we can't get there except by going there.)
And, know what? I feel well on our way, and most excellently accompanied en route. Thanks to all, and looking forward to more....
| on having a stake Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/21/2004 21:08 Link to this Comment: 7705 |
Oops--not quite done. One more query, stepping off again from Lindsay's question about whether "all Earthlings have a stake in the Mars exploration." What would be required--do you think it desirable?--to make this a "collective human story from which no one feels estranged?"
| more on truth & authenticity Name: Lauren Friedman (Anonymous) Date: 01/21/2004 22:46 Link to this Comment: 7706 |
| Action Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/22/2004 08:37 Link to this Comment: 7708 |
I wonder if the notion that the best stories (the only good stories?) are those that provoke movement or action...change something in ourselves that causes us to change something outside of ourselves...and turn the story wheel in the process... I wonder if this notion feels good because our culture is pro-action. Reminds me of a twist on an old saying: "Don't just do something, stand there!" Stand there and think, be. This is not enough? Maybe we already suffer from a form of universal inferiority complex , keying off Lauren's post from yesterday. What does it mean to evolve? Can we actually get our own evolution more or less wrong? Does that depend upon the stories we make that move us along?
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Name: meg (mfolcare@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/22/2004 12:30 Link to this Comment: 7712 |
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/22/2004 13:58 Link to this Comment: 7713 |
| Mars and the capitalism of storytelling Name: nancy (nevans@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/22/2004 14:30 Link to this Comment: 7714 |
According to Gregg Easterbrook, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, "Present systems for getting from Earth's surface to low-Earth orbit are so fantastically expensive that... it could only be accomplished by cutting heatlh care benefits, educations spending, or some other important programs. Or by raising taxes."
He continues "The drive to explore is part of what makes us human. Dreams must be tempered by realism, however. For the moment, going to Mars is hopelessly unrealistic."
The idea that the individuals desiring a manned exploration of Mars would attempt to make that dream a reality at the expense of large numbers of the less priveleged just re-enforces my fear that space exploration is the newest conquest for the elite.
This transfers into the discussion that has been going on about the purpose of stories. The notion that stories provoke action, and that action requires time, resources, and capital bother me a bit. The essence of a story lies in its intangibility, its availability, the fact that it is so utterly a characteristic of humanity that ties together, through shared human experience, the prince and the pauper. It seems a slippery slope towards elitism to assert that purpose of stories hinge upon allocation of resource and especially 'capital'. I dont like the idea of storytelling to be in any way exclusive. I\
| Provoking action Name: su-lyn (spoon@hc) Date: 01/22/2004 19:45 Link to this Comment: 7716 |
Name: Anne (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/23/2004 18:22 Link to this Comment: 7720 |
Very few of those in our room wanted to be on the first "wo-manned" ship to Mars in 30 years: most of us (if not actively protesting the use of resources/damage to the eco-system involved in the flight) intended to be engaged in caring for or exploring things on this earth. A number of us will be interested in what such a landing might discover, but either fearful for our own safety or of what damage we might do on arrival to actually go on board ourselves. There was some discussion about whether the resource question was that a "red herring"; a review, from Bio 103, of the signs of life as we know it; and much speculation about whether we could even recognize life—more interestingly, intelligence—if it differed from what we know. We also talked about the disjunctions between our own experience (of the world, of the sky) and the stories that science tells (actually, the one that Paul told us) about the nature of the universe.
But for me, the most intriguing question had to do w/ whether (and why) the discovery of life elsewhere would challenge (rather than re-inforce) our sense of uniqueness--esp. if that life differed from what we know and recognize. We kept returning to the question of whether our religious stories would be brought into question by the discovery of extra-terrestrial life; whether the experience of our own specialness is necessarily incompatible w/ the discovery of life on another planet (we weren't all convinced that it was); and if, so, whether we could hold in our minds, simultaneously, two incompatible stories.
We ended w/ a query about the limits of the analogy between the "story of evolution" (in which, Mayr will soon show us, many more species became extinct than survived) and the "evolution of stories" (in which, we speculated, all sorts of contradictory stories might occupy adjacent spaces, serving different purposes, w/ very little trouble at'all).
But that's just MY story of what was interesting Thursday afternoon.
What's yours?
| comforting stories Name: Mary (mferrell@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/23/2004 19:25 Link to this Comment: 7721 |
| Thursday Thoughts- 1/22 Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/24/2004 05:22 Link to this Comment: 7722 |
Picking up on the invitation to post our Thursday Thoughts...
It also seemed that many/most of us who met in Paul's section would rather not take the Mars shuttle seat--for reasons ranging from fear of flying, the unknown, the time it would take away from higher priority concerns and interests, missing spring break...you name it. Sarah was enterprising enough to want the seat in order to sell it--a cool idea that was dampened somewhat by Paul's proclamation that he wouldn't take it because, by then, most of what's to be known about Mars would be known by then (therefore, of less saleable value :-). Su-lyn and I would have gone on the ride (as anthropologist and writer) in order to experience the dynamics among the humans going with us--not so much for the Mars stuff. The story is still people--of, by, and for the people.
That segued into speculation about why we explore--why go to Mars or anywhere for that matter? We talked about a "need" to seek, to move "outward" and agreed that outward movement could be accomplished inside/inward, i.e., in our minds...as any movement away from the last mental or physical point of thinking or being or acting...which led to paramecia and coffee...and magnetospirillum who supposedly made the magnetite found in the Martian meteorite that landed in Antarctica thousands of years ago. I think you had to be there--in our session, I mean--to make cloth from this thread. The paramecia spread out when dropped in water. The coffee spreads out when dropped in water...aimlessly, so it seemed to me. Unlike the bacteria that create their own internal magnets...these little fellows engineer their movement for a purpose: survival. They create their magnets in order to be able to follow the perpendicular magnetic fields of the earth through the water to get at stratified layers of oxygen--for survival. Which has me wondering if we, too, spread out with our seemingly highly complex (and complicated) reasons for doing do in order to fulfill a basic instinct--survival.
One thought came up towards the end of our session--the notion that the phenomena of "expansion and contraction" seems to be a pattern in many aspects of our social and physical lives and also in our surroundings. For example, while the coffee expanded, it also fragmented/dispersed...as Earthlings have done by expanding,then creating tribes, then nations and religions--all "inside/outside" entities...as stories (including literature) expand and contract...and the universe itself expands and contracts...all birth and death with movement in between.
| Cheating death and those sorts of things Name: spoon (spoon@hc) Date: 01/24/2004 07:59 Link to this Comment: 7723 |
| Part Deux Name: spoon (spoon@hc) Date: 01/24/2004 08:58 Link to this Comment: 7724 |
| so its going to be like that, huh? Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/24/2004 11:17 Link to this Comment: 7726 |
As per Ro, what I came away with from our Thursday conversation with was the apparent and intriguing generality of an "expansion and contraction" pattern. The issue was, as I heard it, whether human exploration (movement out of Africa, relatively recent human movement to North and South America, Columbus (and lots of earlier episodes of conquest), moon, Mars) was economically motivated or whether there were instead or in addition other explanations.
Paramecia dropped into a lake will spread out, presumably with no "economic" or other cultural motivation. That in turn raised the issue of whether there was a "purpose" to the expansion, and led to the observation that cream spreads out in coffee, suggesting that expansion might not only occur without an economic/cultural explanation but perhaps even without any explanation in terms of a "purpose". The "contraction" part was that humans, while expanding, also exhibit a phenomenon of forming aggregates, ie tribes, clubs, ethnic groups, nations etc. So perhaps there is also something that opposes expansion, perhaps also without complete explanation in terms of culture, intent, or purpose? (a new Serendip exhibit may be relevant in this context)
What made all this particularly intriguing was the suggestion that the same expansion/contraction pattern seemed to be present in science, and in religion, and in biological evolution, and in ... literature? Which would imply ... ? Wonder if this has anything to do with the distinction between stories that motivate action and those that comfort?
Hmmm ... there ARE some advantages to being reactive rather than proactive. For the sake of the record, Paul didn't not want the seat to Mars because there wouldn't be anything "saleable" there but rather because there wouldn't be anything NEW there (for him). And, yep, there were some other things going on in the conversation as well, including a really interesting question of whether and how one might notice and alter that which one takes so much for granted that one doesn't normally think about it at all.
So, proactive or reactive, as Anne said
Name: orah (ominder) Date: 01/24/2004 14:38 Link to this Comment: 7727 |
| Expansion/Contraction Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/24/2004 15:35 Link to this Comment: 7728 |
Having just finished the reading of Mayr for next week and still musing about the expansion/contraction thing, I started to jot down some of the "sets" that I think I see aligning with the notion of expanding and contracting. For example, "an evolving world" of cycles and flux; recapitulation as expansion vs. structures that become vestigial as contraction; a single cell expanding into multiple cells that then specialize in a sort of "division of labor," etc.
A pattern?...but what does it mean? The gradual, directional change of a population does not require this phenomenon, does it? Or is expansion and contraction the cyclical process of evolution...of populations, stories, stars and planets, literature?
Name: reeve basom (rbasom@haverford.edu) Date: 01/24/2004 15:36 Link to this Comment: 7729 |
| Game of Life Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/24/2004 15:52 Link to this Comment: 7730 |
...and this is very weird (the new exhibit contains a link to the Game of Life), because I was working in a compiler group writing an APL compiler in the early 70's when Conway's Game of Life was published. For fun and as a good exercise of the software, we programmed one of the first viable versions of the game and distributed it for free (not imagining the computerized game market of today)...but the weird thing is that I erased a paragraph about being reminded of this simulation game at the end of my last post and before I went to this new Serendip exhibit. I agree--it's relevant.
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/24/2004 20:25 Link to this Comment: 7731 |
| open/closed systems/evolution of planets Name: Elizabeth Catanese (ecatanes@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/24/2004 20:26 Link to this Comment: 7732 |
Thanks for reading this....I feel like so many things in my post are not quite accurate but I wanted to just get them out of my head to see what would happen. I'm very open to changing my mind about everything :-)I can tell that with everyone's ideas this is going to happen a lot for me. Looking forward to the next class!
| revisions Name: emily (emadsen@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/25/2004 10:19 Link to this Comment: 7733 |
| entropy and biology Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/25/2004 11:27 Link to this Comment: 7734 |
If I remember correctly (guys, please keep me honest here...)
1- According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, energy moves from a concentrated state (to, from, or within some system of atoms and molecules plus the environment of that system) to a spread out state, as long as nothing impedes its movement, and
2- Entropy (change) is the measure of the tendency of energy to spread out—as a function of a difference in temperature—from the cooler to the warmer entity...for example, from cool cream to hot coffee.
I don't think of entropy as disorder or even measuring a degree of disorder. And I don't see how the 2nd law of thermodynamics is violated by or irrelevant to the on-going creation/evolution of more and more complex substances from simpler ones. If complex compounds have less energy than the simpler elements that comprise them, then doesn't the 2nd law of thermodynamics align with the theory of evolution? Perhaps I'm totally confused. Since one of the arguments used by "creationists" is that evolution volates this all-important law, I'd like to understand Mayr's reference to/dismissal of entropy.
Checking the dictionary definition of "entropy," you get these choices:
"1. Symbol S For a closed thermodynamic system, a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work.
2. A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.
3. A measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message.
4. A hypothetical tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.
5. Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society."
I think that most of these definitions are surprising, given the word's simple root: "Greek tropT, a turning, change." Makes me wonder what stories are at work in the spins on this word's meanings. Elizabeth's notion that "stories promote open systems" is uplifting—although I can't say why I find it uplifting just yet...and not in light of a few of these definitions. Right now, I have only questions.
| entropy--correcting what I wrote Name: Ro Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/25/2004 12:09 Link to this Comment: 7736 |
| Hmmm... Name: Daniela Miteva (dmiteva@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/25/2004 14:46 Link to this Comment: 7739 |
All of the stories, I think, were inextricably connected with the identity of the storyteller: they reflected the different way of thinking of the speakers and their unique experiences. As soon as we change, our stories (and consequently, our perception of the world) will follow suit.
The fact that no one of us seemed to budge from her original position seems to me in proof that we (as weel as many other people) need to impose order on the surrounding environment: that is to say that we need to explain clearly what is going on. It might be a scientific explanation, a religious one etc. Adopting 2 contrasting views at the same time does not, at all, contribute to such an aim. So, internally we resolve any conflicts that might have arisen at the promulgation of a new piece of information and try to incorporate it into our extant system of views.
Name: Perrin Braun (pbraun@bmc) Date: 01/25/2004 21:17 Link to this Comment: 7745 |
In the case of the Mars exploration, I don't know if the ends will eventually justify the means, but I'm wavering in my choice in rejecting the opportunity to explore new horizons. Might it possibly enrich our lives in the end?
| scrambled thoughts for midnight breakfast Name: orah minder (ominder@bmc) Date: 01/26/2004 00:44 Link to this Comment: 7746 |
in life both fail. the universe is too big. eventually we lose gravity and footing. lose ourselves in the blank darkness. and the writer can never lose herself enough to write in the universal voice. and ahab ventures too far. but is death a failure? or is it what we have been spending our whole lives tring to acheive and just don't know it. is it the exquisite STILLNESS of the ultimate expansion? do we keep pushing away our ultimate goal?
man, i don't know if that makes anyanyANY sense...hopefully, morning light will make it clearer.
Name: (ominder) Date: 01/26/2004 01:05 Link to this Comment: 7747 |
| the Graham technique Name: katherine (kpioli@brynmawr) Date: 01/26/2004 10:01 Link to this Comment: 7749 |
I am really happy to draw on a few points from the earlier postings and perhaps make them very personal. I would like to comment on the ideas of expansion versus contraction- which really makes me think about Martha Graham and modern dance- and the comment that Daniela made, that none ofus changed our stories. I have to challenge that and say that we may have stuck to our stories and opinion in class, but notice how many people started waivering on their dissision once they thought for a while longer.
Now that I have just brought our attention to how many people are changing their stories I would like to say that mine has remained pretty much the same. I don't want to go to Mars, I do want to stay on earth. I feel that I am in a moment of contraction. I want to focus my life and bring the cream back to the center of the coffee. Maybe I am inhuman, but I am honestly- at this moment in time- not curious about Mars in the slightest.
This contraction and expansion idea is really beautiful. They go hand in hand. I see it as a math class, where you learn all of these complicated functions and feel frustrated becuase you are clueless to its application. Then someone explains where in life you would use these functions to solve a problem, or in some other way you are able to step back and see the big picture and then the usefulness of the math really makes sense. This is my image of a contraction and expansion. contraction being the focus, the detail, and structural support, the emotions and the expansion being the wider picture, the big story, the functionality. anyway, my life is sliding down the path of detail and emotion and since I don't see Mars exploration going that way, it doesn't interest me.
Name: reeve basom (rbasom@haverford.edu) Date: 01/26/2004 15:09 Link to this Comment: 7753 |
Name: meg (mfolcare@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/26/2004 15:24 Link to this Comment: 7754 |
| i agree Name: orah minder (ominder@bmc) Date: 01/26/2004 15:35 Link to this Comment: 7755 |
| Evolution of Man Name: Aia Hussein (ahussein@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/26/2004 20:16 Link to this Comment: 7757 |
| point of contention Name: kat (kmccormi@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/26/2004 21:43 Link to this Comment: 7759 |
As for class on thursday, the idea that most stuck with me throughout the weekend was Lauren's suggestion that many people did not want to go to Mars because they were afraid of being affected by or adversly effecting whatever we found there. This fear of interaction and affectedness strikes me as particularly strange considering that almost all interactions, whether terrestrial or extraterrestrial, have at least some small effects on each of the involved parties. Why start being afraid of this now?
| change and the unknown Name: bethany keffala (Anonymous) Date: 01/26/2004 23:51 Link to this Comment: 7765 |
Name: Julia (jeddy@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/27/2004 00:19 Link to this Comment: 7771 |
The first example was a drop of Paramecium released in a lake, spreads out, as is also the case with simple life spreading into more complex life via evolution. The exemplified life and paramecium are obviously examples of living creatures, but the interesting element that Prof. Grob. brought up was that the nonliving drop of coffee also spreads when dropped into water. If the metaphor is valid then it implies that perhaps there is a consistent and omnipotent force (of which the source is unknown, of course) to spread out or expand beyond boundaries, and this force is not only impossible to control but also applicable to absolutely all elements of the world (perhaps the universe).
I don't know if I buy into this thought that eveything (living and nonliving) respond to the same forces; after all the examples of evolution as a whole and the drop of paramecium both represent elements with the power to "think" and/or respond to their environments and I don't know how plausible it would be to assume that the element of thinking and responding didn't have something to do with the expanding action in question. I'm not sure that living and nonliving entities can be directed in exactlye the same way when one has a distinctive power that the other does not ("thinking").
Perhaps this is not entirely what Prof. Grob. was really getting to with the coffe metaphor, however, it is where the thought took me and it raises some interesting questions to consider.
| Affecting/being affected by our discoveries Name: Jen Sheehan (jsheehan@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/27/2004 00:40 Link to this Comment: 7775 |
Expansion beyond one's world (usually one's culture and society; in this case, an actual world!) has always been a source of fear for people. There's the old adage that people fear what they don't know, and Prof. Dalke brought up in Thursday's class an interesting example from a play about Galileo (and I apologize if I get the details off) in which a monk looks through the telescope and can see the Jovian moons...but refuses to tell anyone and risk destroying their entire conception of themselves as unique beings who are uniquely loved by their God. The monk feared how such knowledge would affect other people's worldview and self-perception, and I imagine that the possibility of discovering life on other planets -- which would be considerably more extraordinary than most average human interaction! -- holds a lot of fear for those who feel that such a discovery would damage their sense of self -- that they would stand to lose from any encounter or interaction with alien life.
As for adversely affecting anything we might find out there, I'd say that we are only now concerned with this because people rarely cared in the past; the conquistadores, for example, most likely didn't lose any sleep over how their presence would affect the natives. I DO think that it's very worthwhile to consider how human exploration into space might affect/alter what we encounter, and while I don't expect that any signs of life will be discovered on Mars, I do wish humanity could come to some sort of consensus as to how we would deal with the discovery of another sentient species should it ever occur. Such a consensus, however, would probably be impossible.
| Thinking about stories Name: Mary (mferrell@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/27/2004 08:07 Link to this Comment: 7781 |
This explanation of scientific stories sounds like biological evolution to me. Stories gradually changing and staying the same is like variation within species. A paradigm shift (a new worldview needing acceptance from a population in order to have the shift) emerges from the synthesis of the gradually transforming scientific ideas (genetic variation) like a new species evolves from the genetic variation that survives within a population. Biological evolution involves creation of new species that can't reproduce anymore with the ancestral species. Thomas Kuhn calls it lost science when old concepts can't reproduce anymore with the new paradigms.
Now, I'm wondering about literary stories? Do they transform/shift (evolve?) similar to scientific stories? Our stories definitely transform slowly but at the same time have inertia. Claryssa Pinkes Este's book Women Who Run with Wolves is an example of the transformation and simultaneous inertia of stories
She presents the history of certain long-lived myths over time and talks about how they change a little according to the culture that is telling them. Does literature ever have a paradigm shift?
Why do we replace stories? Biological evolution goes from simple to complex. Is that what stories do? Science, today's popular story is more complex than yesterday's popular story, religion.
One of my motivations for taking this class is to better understand the mechanism directing the evolution of social thought through stories? As in biological evolution, is it the same mechanism - natural selection? Does science help humanity to survive better? There's a chance, I suppose.
Marquis de Condorcet, one of les philosophes who led the French Enlightenment, writes, in his Sketch for an Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, of science advancing humanity firmly toward the truth and establishing a coming era of "reason, tolerance, and humanity". I think the stories of science can be a tool utilized for surviving on earth, be it for technology or as an example of freedom (towards the search for knowledge) that stimulates freedom in politics. But it must be coupled with ethics or else it could be a tool towards tyranny and devastation. Which brings me to my comment for class last Thursday. I think that the trip to Mars is unethical at this time when humanity needs food and resources to straighten out life here on earth before we go off for scientific research. I don't believe the open system as mentioned in class can accommodate both needs of aid to suffering people and Mars research at this time. There is immediate need. I don't think we can ever make everyone comfortable on earth but I do think its time to make an effort towards balancing the power to provide a more sustainable future for all. These days the way I see it, science does not have enough ethics. And it should because it is powerful. Will the evolution of scientific stories help humanity to survive better? There's a chance, I suppose. But it's only a tool. It needs to be coupled with ethics.
Name: becky rich (rrich) Date: 01/27/2004 11:19 Link to this Comment: 7785 |
| you're messed up Name: Stefanie (sfedak@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/27/2004 12:58 Link to this Comment: 7787 |
| meant to be Name: Meg (mfolcare@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/27/2004 13:18 Link to this Comment: 7788 |
| from melancholy to biology....? Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/27/2004 21:23 Link to this Comment: 7792 |
Feeling somewhat melancholy and retrospective, I opened this afternoon's class with the story of Lot's Wife, as told first in Genesis and then (giving somewhat more weight to the power of grief) as re-told by the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. But now I find myself wondering (this is a serious question) how that story might be re-told by a biologist. How would/could a human body "turn into" salt? What would be involved in that process of "concentration" and crystallization?
| such an interesting talk today...thank you. Name: orah minder (ominder@bmc) Date: 01/28/2004 02:02 Link to this Comment: 7794 |
| Woman of Salt Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/28/2004 10:19 Link to this Comment: 7797 |
Gen 19:26 "But [Lot's] wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt."
Anne, I have no idea how to transform a body into salt, nor does this next thought diminish your question...but it seems to me that this biblical passage--and the definition of 'salt' in it and other places in the Bible- maybe should be interpreted figuratively, not literally. Consider this: "the Phoenicians used the phrase "pillar of salt" to mean "paralyzed" as from a stroke (thrombosis or aneurysm)." Could it be that Lot's wife became paralyzed (from the grief of losing her home?) instead of becoming salt?
More stories of stories...
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/28/2004 13:05 Link to this Comment: 7800 |
| salt and stories Name: Elizabeth Catanese (ecatanes@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/28/2004 15:30 Link to this Comment: 7801 |
Name: Heather Davis (Anonymous) Date: 01/29/2004 03:15 Link to this Comment: 7812 |
Name: Susan W. (swillis@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/29/2004 07:24 Link to this Comment: 7813 |
| Blame it on the puppy Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/29/2004 07:51 Link to this Comment: 7814 |
I"m still stuck in Mayr's muddy last full paragraph on page 8 of his book...I hope this is more amusing than annoying to you guys...
I tried to dissect that paragraph and come up with a succinct set of questions and bothers. Here goes:
Mayr wrote, "It is sometimes claimed that evolution, by producing order, is in conflict with the "law of entropy" of physics, according to which evolutionary change should produce an increase of disorder."
But in Paul's material (Chapter 1, on the link to "The Essential Link Between Life and the Second Law of Thermodynamics") it states, "The overall direction of change in the universe is from less probable (more organized) states to more probable (less organized) states."
My read: Evolution produces order? Evolution is the process by which the next higher, more complex, but not necessarily closer to perfect version of a population comes into being. Evolutionists have applied a scheme for ordering/categorizing that which they observe evolving. But does evolution move according to a predictable scheme? There seems to be a fair bit of chance (right conditions coming together) involved. Has science been able to predict the next turn of the evolutionary wheel on any population?
Mayr continues, "Actually, there is no conflict, because the law of entropy is valid only for closed systems,"
But I need to ask how it is that entropy applies only in a closed system when we know that it can be slowed down, i.e., altered? And how are we (Mayr) defining a closed versus open sytstem anyhow?
Mayr persists;" whereas evolution of a species of organisms takes place in an open system in which organism can reduce entropy at the expense of the environment..."
My issue: Entropy (physical) measures the tendency for change/movement in energy as a function of temperature. It is not disorder, nor is it disorderly, nor does it measure disorder...just the likeliness of a movement of energy...any kind (kinetic, thermal, etc).
Mayr finishes that paragraph with:"and the sun supplies a continuing input of energy."
Me again: Does "continuing" mean "endless"? If not, then isn't the solar system closed? Evolution would then be occuring in a CLOSED system. And entropy would then apply.
So why has Mayr deliberately gone out of his way to dismiss entropy (and therefore, the 2nd law of thermodynamics) as being applicable to evolution. What am I missing?
| Cycles Name: (Anonymous) Date: 01/29/2004 13:55 Link to this Comment: 7818 |
Independence, on this planet at least, does not exist- nothing can be regarded as isolated from its environment. Species need other species for food, light, protection etc. All species need to extract/imbibe nutients/ oxygen etc from the inorganic world. Therefore, I think, there are no supreme creatures, only such that are well suited to a certain way of life better than others. Thus, living under certain conditions that are not as favourable to the other organisms, they avoid copmpetition, and consequently increase their chances for survival and reproduction.If it is the environment and subsequent adaptations that ensure a species' well-being, then is our re-shaping the environment an attempt to adapt to it? Is such adaptation justified?
Lot's wife was turned into salt. From my point of view, this can be seen as the transformation of living, moving cells, sometimes loose and not quite organized into something with regular structure where all molecules are located at approximately the same distance forming a highly orderly pattern. Preventing molecules from moving freely (contraction ) here means death.
Lot's wife was wistful of the past. She wasn't ready to "wipe off the slate" and start a new life at another place. Does this mean that she was not adapted to live elsewhere? That movement is one of the attributes of life is bolstered by adaptation. "Looking back" in biological terms means to revert to a former, usually not that advanced state, thus decraesing chances for survival. So, Lot's wife had to die...
Name: Daniela (dmiteva@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/29/2004 13:57 Link to this Comment: 7819 |
| Re: Cycles Name: Natasha (nseth@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/29/2004 14:23 Link to this Comment: 7820 |
Name: Perrin Braun (pbraun@bmc) Date: 01/29/2004 17:15 Link to this Comment: 7824 |
Sorry if that was too confusing!
| A bit long... sorry Name: Patricia Palermo (ppalermo@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/29/2004 19:14 Link to this Comment: 7829 |
Religion: I am almost certain, but if you are a Christian, Muslim, Jew, you have to accept one thing, even though lots of other things are up for interpretation: The word of the "good book," (whichever good book you like), is THE STORY not A STORY. This is crucial. I agree with and respect the ideas introduced in class, but I believe that we are trying desperately not to address the greater complications of this particular story. The open nature of this story infinitely closes many others. If one of us has a "story" that there indeed can be many stories, and another one of us has a story that there can only be one story... don't we both have to fess up (especially those who believe in many stories) that we at least find that opposing view less true. I have struggled a great deal with this because I feel the topic demands that you give of yourself a great deal. I don't want to be the philosopher whose philosophy on life is not to philosophies.
I just want to make it clear that I am criticizing this approach so much because the better part of me violently wants to accept it. I think it's enlightened and the best "story" I have ever heard. And yet, the gut of me will not. And I want to end this controversy.
The best I can do for myself is this:
The story that was posted in class this Thursday about the girl (a woman in our class) who felt the desire to convince the man on the plane that his story was wrong was very moving to me. I have done that. A million times. I have a very close friend who is a devote Christian. I feel that... well I feel a million things in controversy with the bible. So we read the bible together, and argue. I EVEN went to church with her! And I did this solely to argue. And we did this in part to strengthen our own stories, to challenge wits, and to fight for our beliefs about our purpose here and what happens after we die. So this class has brought me to some conclusions that I was at the cusp of making during these debates but am now fully able to make. I will divulge this.
I think that we do have two different stories. I think that BOTH STORIES have a purpose, and they EACH serve us individually. But many times we cannot accept one person's story because it violates another. It invalidates another story. Even as Grobstien and Dalke infer that they may not have to, they do! And this is of ultimate concern. My friend is afraid that if her religion is wrong than her family is foolish and her purpose is lost. I am afraid that if I am wrong there is a hell for those who have certain stories. We may just be afraid. I'm not sure, it may sound cheesy, but it may be just that.
Historically we kill each other over this! Literally. This just blows my mind. How can I ever overcome this need to find one story if generations of people have died just for their story. And then we always look back, and for many of those situations, we think of how silly that was. To die for one story.
As many in this class have wisely said, this is so frustrating as it makes us look at our lives as not right or wrong but as another story.
| bible, comfort, settling, religion, love affairs, Name: orah minder (ominder@bmc) Date: 01/29/2004 20:18 Link to this Comment: 7830 |
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/29/2004 20:36 Link to this Comment: 7831 |
| Happiness is... Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 01/30/2004 07:43 Link to this Comment: 7834 |
But Paul, I gave you a bad answer. I am not happy yet. It was not the explanation of the science that had me hog-tied. My problem was that I counld not come up with the reason why such a knowledgeable and well-respected scientist chose to skirt this central issue for his topic. For me, whenever someone who is well-respected in his field does or says something so incongruous, my first thought is not, "What a jerk" or "He's just being a bit sloppy." My first thought is, "What am I missing?" Regarding Mayr, let's declare this a rhetorical question. But it's driving me slightly nutty in a new way now. Now that I'm into the second batch of Mayr chapters, it's taking me an inordinate amount of time to get through them, but not because they are more complex than the first batch (I have an adequate understanding of genetics, having bred animals). It's that I'm now second-guessing Mayr thought by thought. I'm no longer assuming that his writing is credible and unbiased. Bummer.
But that has led to a whole new set of thinking about stories...about stories that evolve/survive by adhering to some minimum set of criteria, just as science progresses (or not) according to a set of disciplines that help to make the progressions believable. I'm now beginning to think about a story as a member of a family of stories—a strain. I think that the minimum criteria for the evolution of a story-strain needs to include connecting backward with its history, "now-ward" with the sense and sensitivities that its readers will bring that will lead to their either accepting or rejecting the story (see Elizabeth Catanese's post re: believing in stories), and also connecting forward, i.e., that quality of good writing that triggers imagination in others, triggers others to host the story, incubate it and give it off-spring. If a story loads itself with ego, personal agendas, biases, sloppy reasoning, whatever—let's call these "mutations"—they might be lethal; they might lead to the quick demise of the strain.
I'm also thinking about the 2nd law—the water wheel transmogrified into being the sun—and how that law applies to the creation and evolution of stories...a spending of energy (thought-energy) in order to make order from disorder...
| The Zebra Storyteller Name: emily (emadsen@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/30/2004 14:05 Link to this Comment: 7835 |
Once upon a time there was a Siamese car who pretended to be a lion and spoke inappropriate Zebraic.
That language is whinnied by the race of striped horses in Africa.
Here now: An innocent zebra is walking in a jungle and approaching from another direction is the little cat; they meet.
"Hello there!" says the Siamese cat in perfectly pronounced Zebraic. "It certainly is a pleasant day, isn't it? The sun is shining, the birds are singing, isn't the world a lovely place to live today!"
The zebra is so astonished at hearing a Siamese cat speaking like a zebra, why-- he's just fit to be tied.
So the little cat quickly ties him up, kills him, and drags the better parts of the carcass back to his den.
The cat successfully hunted zebras many months in this manner, dining on filet mignon of zebra every night, and from the better hides he made bow neckties and wide belts after the fashion of the decadent princes of the Old Siamese court.
He began boasting to his friends he was a lion, and he gave them as proof the fact that he hunted zebras.
The delicate noses of the zebras told them there was really no lion in the neighborhood. The zebra deaths caused many to avoid the region. Superstitious, they decided the woods were haunted by the ghost of a lion.
One day the storyteller of the zebras was ambling, and through his mind ran plots for stories to amuse the other zebras, when suddenly his eyes brightened, and he said, "That's it! I'll tell a story about a Siamese cat who learns to speak our language! What an idea! That'll make 'em laugh!"
Just then the Siamese cat appeared before him, and said, "Hello there! Pleasant day today, isn't it!"
The zebra storyteller wasn't fit to be tied at hearing a cat speaking his language, because he'd been thinking about that very thing.
He took a good look at the cat, and he didn't know why, but there was something about his looks he didn't like, so he kicked him with a hoof and killed him.
That is the function of the storyteller.
| after two weeks ... Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 01/30/2004 16:47 Link to this Comment: 7840 |
Thanks for listening/reacting to my stories Tuesday and Thursday. Both Anne and I are looking for to hearing more of yours.
| Adding to the Dalke group hot discussion of TRUTH and a bit of the waterwheel syndrome Name: Mary (mferrell@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/01/2004 00:31 Link to this Comment: 7858 |
Maybe we will dwell for milleniums, on whether we can know or not know and reach such a state of futility, that we will find it useful not to care about what we know, and what will come. Maybe our useful story will be silent, and teach us to focus on experiencing, and our curious nature will be put to pasture.
Why do we care what we know? Why do we want the truth? Some of us more than others? Me, I don't think I care, if I can attain truth, just living is awesome enough. But then why do I explore philsophy and the discoveries of science with a passion? Because the stories are awesome and useful.
Evolution is such a beautiful summary of observations, simply beautiful intricacies. We know so many details that fit together so well, that it makes me feel that we are getting some true knowledge, some part of the big TRUTH. Although the attainment of the "WHOLE TRUTH" seems dubious, not enough time. And then there is the question of whether we are getting any true knowledge at all, since our observation methods and our subjectivity, are intersecting with the observed and are part of the created story, --- creating it partially.
| good storytelling Name: katherine (kpioli@bmc) Date: 02/01/2004 14:15 Link to this Comment: 7865 |
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/01/2004 19:34 Link to this Comment: 7875 |
This quote would have been more pertinent while we were still discussing Mars, but I thought it was very beautiful and hope that you can all still benefit from it.
On a similar note, Nin also explains that we write/tell stories so that we could "taste life twice." I think this is a terribly nobel idea. It seems like an idea the entire class could probably assimilate into their own ideas about why we tell stories. I like it because it is so far reaching.
Thanx for listening. Cheers!
Name: meg (mfolcare@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/02/2004 15:52 Link to this Comment: 7899 |
| another story. Name: orah (ominder@bmc) Date: 02/02/2004 16:56 Link to this Comment: 7900 |
smart guy.
| The story of no truths Name: Aia Hussein (ahussein@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/02/2004 19:34 Link to this Comment: 7907 |
| reality Name: Elizabeth Deacon (edeacon@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/02/2004 19:51 Link to this Comment: 7908 |
However when we had the discussion about whether anything could be real on Thursday with Prof. Dalke, I didn't get much of that anxiety that cut off my childhood philosophizing. I think that's because I found something I can have real faith in. As a child, "religion" was chocolate Easter bunnies and some medieval Christmas music around the time of year we put up a tree. I was taught that the nature of reality was shown by science, and that religion's opinion on the universe was a bit silly. Unfortunately, science and religion are not exact opposites, and one of the places science cannot replace religion is in giving you faith in, well, anything.
A good scientist doubts everything, up to and including the information her senses and instruments give her. In which case there's no reason to believe in any of what I think is real. Everything I think is red could really be green, but maybe since we all call red delicious apples red it doesn't matter if they're green or not. Or maybe the aboriginal Australians are right and this world is a dream. Or maybe it's someone else's dream, like the Red King in _Through the Looking Glass_ and when he wakes up we'll all disappear. Science can't disprove any of this, and as a child I found it terribly distressing.
So what's the difference now? What have I developed faith in? Well, the possiblility of nothing being real panics me. Instead, I've decided to believe in everything. I'm not quite sure where I encountered the multiverse theory, but it's always struck me as sensible. Basically it says that there are an infinite number of multiple dimensions. Therefore, with true infinity, everything must have happened somewhere. There must be a finite number of stars in this universe, there could only have been so much matter in the Big Bang, but there is an infinite number of stars in the multiverse, with an infinite number of planets around them and an infinite number of people on them. Somewhere in the multiverse is a universe that has already collapsed under entropy, and somewhere is a universe that doesn't have it at all. And somewhere there is a universe where I wore a purple shirt today instead of a blue one. I wonder how different that universe will be from this one, if at all?
The question here may seem to be, why believe in a multiverse, but my question is, why not? How can there not be infinity? Besides, I sometimes think that the mere telling of a story creates a universe, or at least proves it's existence. Even if the story only exists in our heads, it exists there, doesn't it? Why should that existence be worth less than another? How do we know we aren't a story, being told around someone's campfire, or drawn on a page, or filmed for 24/7 television like in the Truman Show.
I find this all incredibly comforting. Everything's somewhere. Whether or not my perception of the universe I live in is correct, it's certainly correct for somewhere. Somewhere we're all someone's dream and somewhere we're all dreaming someone else. Somewhere God created all the animals and somewhere they evolved unaided. So with the question of who's story is true out of the way, the question becomes what happened here in particular, which isn't too different, but it's different enough to comfort me.
Name: (Anonymous) Date: 02/02/2004 20:56 Link to this Comment: 7910 |
i agree...that is so so comforting.
Name: reeve basom (rbasom@haverford.edu) Date: 02/02/2004 21:51 Link to this Comment: 7912 |
Another unrelated comment. We were talking about the idea that evolution produces directional change, the idea being that there must be some type of perfection or ultimate complexity in that direction. But if you think about the fact that there is a certain level of biological simplicity at which organisms cannot evolve to be any LESS complex, than all evolution necessarily exists as movement away from this original simplicity, directional simply because any change from this point requires additional complexity.
| Stories and Genetics Name: Elizabeth Catanese (ecatanes@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/02/2004 22:56 Link to this Comment: 7914 |
I was thinking about Mayr and the description about genetics. I was trying to think about how genetics might relate explicitly/metaphorically to stories. What are the genes of a story? Is the story a product of nature or nurture? I think that words are the genes of a story. I think that a story IS a product of nature (these words) and nurture (the culture into which the story is born and in which it is read.) Mutations are experiments in style or content, sometimes radical which are either viable enough to be transferred into the style of other stories or not. Professor Schwartz (my fiction class Prof.) was saying the other day that that using the present tense has become a convention for short stories. She said that she wondered how it got to be that way... There is probably an answer to that- a cultural need perhaps? Something that matches a human desire for immediacy... all sorts of explanations- Story conventions change, adapt, evolve as we've said. And like the whole process of evolution- stories are heavily dependent on the way things have evolved in the past. Every past story is in some sense both still alive AND a "story fossil" Variation in stories is indeed, most often, a recombination of certain story elements. Is a story's creation closer to sexual or asexual reproduction? I would say something closer to sexual reproduction- the union of thought from many places... but there is something that also feels slightly self-generative about stories.
| yeah what she said... Name: Julia (jeddy@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/03/2004 00:42 Link to this Comment: 7916 |
And what a fine story evolution makes as well. I particularly like when Mayr (while not being very objective) tells the story that "evolution is not deterministic" on page 121. I like the case that evolution is a constant story of change without a greater direction, just chance interactions which can lead to more change. While some changes seem to occur because they express a state of being better suited to continue in the story, it is actually just random happenstance that the right combination of trait and environment should arise. I find such complex randomness just mind boggling.
| the genetics of stories Name: Lindsay Updegrove (lupdegro@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/03/2004 00:42 Link to this Comment: 7917 |
A long time ago, I read something that claimed that there are really only seven basic story plots in the world, and that those stories just keep getting built on, or varied. I think Margaret Atwood has something in her collection, "True Stories", that starts with the "boy-meets-girl" plot and complicates it to demonstrate the nature of stories to go anywhere—up, down, inward, outward, every which way. Anyway, I find myself both loving and hating the idea that there are only a few basic components woven through every story. I hate it because I would like to think that there are infinite possibilities for a story, just as there are an infinite number of stars in the universe. But I also love it because the organization of the concept relates to evolution so well. Elizabeth was wondering what "genes" made up a story. I love thinking about how stories give way to one another, for example the Pyramus and Thisbe myth to Romeo and Juliet, to West Side story and so forth. It seems to me that stories have parents just as we do. At least, there seems to be some essence, "salt" if you will, running through each one, just as we are all made up of the same basic components. We are all so LIKE our parents and yet, we're all little variations...
Last class we talked about clumpy diversity, which I think relates really well to the generation of stories. Maybe whatever it was I read about there only being a few stories really meant that there are a few clumps that plots, if simplified, could be grouped into. I guess that would still make it possible for infinite stories to abound, while sharing certain "traits" as living things do.
| Function of the storyteller Name: Jen Sheehan (jsheehan@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/03/2004 00:44 Link to this Comment: 7918 |
I'm not sure I agree with his linkage of "story" with "truth," if indeed he is making that link. I can't remember who it was and I'm too lazy to check back in the archives, but someone wrote about comforting stories -- stories that are there not to educate or enlighten, but are simply a source of bonding with family and friends and a means of enjoying oneself. How is that role of a storyteller any less valid than the one Holst speaks of? I'm taking The Historical Imagination this semester and one text we just finished reading (History: A Very Short Introduction) took pains to demonstrate over and over that the notion that historians were to uncover "the true story of the past" may be romantic, but is simply not practical; there IS no one story of the past, and there are always different points of view. Can the storyteller ever really find THE truth?
Reading the story over again, it occurs to me that the zebra storyteller only seems to stumble upon the truth. He wasn't out there looking for it in the first place; he'd been looking for stories to amuse the other zebras, and his story just happened to be true. But even that -- the idea that stories intended for amusement can possess some truth -- brings us back to the question of what truth is. When you're speaking of "larger truths," it's not as straightforward as 2+2=4...
| the genetics of stories Name: Lindsay Updegrove (lupdegro@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/03/2004 00:44 Link to this Comment: 7919 |
A long time ago, I read something that claimed that there are really only seven basic story plots in the world, and that those stories just keep getting built on, or varied. I think Margaret Atwood has something in her collection, "True Stories", that starts with the "boy-meets-girl" plot and complicates it to demonstrate the nature of stories to go anywhere—up, down, inward, outward, every which way. Anyway, I find myself both loving and hating the idea that there are only a few basic components woven through every story. I hate it because I would like to think that there are infinite possibilities for a story, just as there are an infinite number of stars in the universe. But I also love it because the organization of the concept relates to evolution so well. Elizabeth was wondering what "genes" made up a story. I love thinking about how stories give way to one another, for example the Pyramus and Thisbe myth to Romeo and Juliet, to West Side story and so forth. It seems to me that stories have parents just as we do. At least, there seems to be some essence, "salt" if you will, running through each one, just as we are all made up of the same basic components. We are all so LIKE our parents and yet, we're all little variations...
Last class we talked about clumpy diversity, which I think relates really well to the generation of stories. Maybe whatever it was I read about there only being a few stories really meant that there are a few clumps that plots, if simplified, could be grouped into. I guess that would still make it possible for infinite stories to abound, while sharing certain "traits" as living things do.
| "Cogito, ergo sum" Name: Daniela (dmiteva@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/03/2004 01:00 Link to this Comment: 7921 |
Listening to the class discussions about the evolution of people's perceptions of the outer world, I gradually came to the definition of a story as a batch of statements with certain logic entwined around them to form a coherent unit. Fear of the unknown that urged people at first to come up with an explanation of the processes in the outer world no longer dominates people's consciousness. Instead it is supplanted by a desire to have power. On an individual level, creating a story helps one express what s/he holds to be correct and use it as a guiding principle in life. So that a story empowers one to get hold of his/her life and not be governed by other people's stories. On a "population" level, presenting a credible story give the author much respect, and, hence, authority in society. Not surprising is it then that the best storytellers still maintain ascendancy over the majority of people (think of Darwin, Homer etc). Because people do not tend to adopt a story without first subjecting it to rational analysis, a sort of "natural selection" acts upon stories, treasuring those substantiated with the soundest logic.
"By searching out origins, one becomes a crab... eventually he also believes backward," says Nietzsche. So, should we seek the origin of stories or focus on their impact on the present moment?
If the plausibility of a story is determined by human logic, how can we determine that something is true? Can anything be proven to be true?
What is the aim of the stories we tell? How can we explain the presence of stories with no sound logic behind them?
These are the questions, for which, I hope, I will be able to provide a plausible answer before the end of the semester.
| thursday continued Name: Nancy (nevans@bmc) Date: 02/03/2004 02:06 Link to this Comment: 7927 |
Also, here's something about evolution that bothers me. Maybe I just don't know enough yet, but wouldnt the fact that everything started out as the same type of organism throw off everything we have observed about evolved creatures? By 'everything' I mean things like food chains or resource competition. And if evolution occurs partially as a means to make sure that every existing organism isnt wiped out by some disaster, does this mean that if (when everything was the same organism) that the chance existed that something might have come along and wiped out everything (including the possibility for life) ??? If this is a valid question, it makes me less likely to buy into the theory of evolution. It just seems to shaky a basis to start EVERYTHING on.
In response to Thursdays class: I was in Anne's section, and towards the end of the hour, we all became involved in a wonderful conversation about the meaning of and the search for truth. Here's another question though: just because we know what we believe to be the truth (or a "good story") about something, what bearing does that have on anything? Just because we decide we believe in evolution do anything to alter its occurence. And even if we collectively decide to start a worldwide 'evolution lies' club, nothing would change. This really bothers me. In the humanities and the social sciences, I am conforted by the fact that my words, my explanantions, and my emotions could possibly change something or someone. But with science, even the most earnest show of emotion does nothing to stop the processes of life and nature. Why do we need to decide to believe or not believe in something that we have no control over? I have no answer what-so-ever, and so I am going to bed.
| Truth? Name: Fritz (fdubuiss@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/03/2004 08:53 Link to this Comment: 7934 |
| thinking more Name: Lauren Friedman (lfriedma@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/03/2004 11:46 Link to this Comment: 7938 |
Two things stuck with me most from Thursday's class.
The first is the idea that if there is order being created somewhere, there is messiness being created elsewhere. Professor's Grobstein's illuminating example of this was pollution. While we see human society becoming increasingly advanced, we're ruining our environment and building urban systems at the expense of ecosystems that can often never be recovered. To me, this idea also ties into the idea that Nancy brought up of de-evolution. She explored it as a cyclical idea (we'll evolve to some peak, then begin de-evolving back to where we came from), but is it also possible that these processes are occurring simultaneously? As we evolve more and become more orderly, is there a parallel process somewhere becoming less evolved and messier? Our environment is not an organism, but it is certainly an entity of sorts, and one that is descending into chaos as we fine-tune the inconveniences out of society to try to perfect an ever-broken machine.
The second idea that I kept coming back to was the thought that there are three answers to the question "Why is there such a diversity of living things?" People cite at least three different reasons: God (religion), "it's always been this way," or evolution. People talk about religion versus evolution, but people who believe "it's always been this way" (if people do in fact believe this) rarely enter this debate. History and science aside (those are two big things to throw aside, but oh well), that idea somehow makes sense to me. I can understand how it would be natural to believe that this is the ways things are, and this is the way they always have been. In fact, the simplest ideas are often the most popular, if only because everyone can understand them. Some might say that religion is an "easier" explanation than evolution, but try telling that to a Darwinist, who might find understanding Creationism the most difficult thing s/he's ever tried to do. Or... maybe not.
In an article about the current proposal in Georgia (to strike the word "evolution" from the curriculum and replace it with "biological changes over time" -- supposedly a move that would allow teachers to teach evolution without head-butting Creationists [CNN article]), the writer questions the now painfully familiar conflict between Creationists and "scientists." He says he sees a compromise:
Biblical passages state that man and life came from "the ground" or "dust of the ground" (Genesis 2:6-7). Evolutionary theory teaches that life may have originally come from the ground, and that after millions of years, single cells evolved into multicellular organisms, which evolved into -- among many, many other things -- primitive primates, which evolved into humans... Evolution leaves room for God, but extreme creationism does not leave room for evolution.I completely agree with this idea. I think people who believe opposite things about the creation of life and diversity should try to compromise, to see the "truth" in each other's stories.
(Sorry for the super-long posting, I was having trouble synthesizing my thoughts.)
| Give Blood! :) Name: bethany keffala (Anonymous) Date: 02/03/2004 14:36 Link to this Comment: 7944 |
| story of a story teller: appreciation Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/03/2004 19:38 Link to this Comment: 7949 |
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/03/2004 20:07 Link to this Comment: 7951 |
| to keep the pot boiling... Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/03/2004 22:35 Link to this Comment: 7954 |
so, friends, @ least one of the questions you had today
(it was nancy's, i think: "what is the catalyst that MAKES prokaryotes evolve into eukaryotes, eukaryotes into multicellular organisms?" ) got an answer:
all this continuing change and exploration is for the sake of...
nothing.
--just want to be sure that, along w/ what's gotten recorded in
paul's green box, we have on the table for thursday's class the rest of the questions you asked
(or didn't ask, but were thinking inside) during today's storytelling session....
would you record them here, please?
and thanks for doing so--
a.
| expanding into what? Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/03/2004 23:21 Link to this Comment: 7956 |
| Believing Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/04/2004 07:59 Link to this Comment: 7959 |
Orah wrote, " for some reason i think people will be more "bummed" in a science class if the prof. said, 'just beleive me.'" In a way, I agree with you, Orah. I think that people convince themselves that they need to seek truth by following a set discipline that allows us to repeatedly convince others (prove?) that a scientific proclamation is or is not "TRUE" (at least in the mathematical sense of "true" or "false"). But think about the difference between science and engineering. Whereas scientists test their theories in artificially pure environments in order to be able to repeat their proofs, engineers deal with tolerances, pollutants, and other aspects of being organisms on earth or in this solar system, this universe. They test the efficacy of their products (not theories) where those products must function--under murky, inexact conditions. We learn firsthand when engineering products are "true" or "false", i.e., when they work or fail (the weak bridge, the wrong drug, the haywire spacecraft). Where am I going with this? For engineers, "SEEING IS BELIEVING." They are pragmatists who tinker and revise until they get to a story that works...and then they improve upon it for the next round of products. Scientists, on the other hand, are beginning to look a lot more like believers. Would they believe this? We're back to your question :-)
| wordplay Name: emily (emadsen@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/04/2004 17:19 Link to this Comment: 7964 |
Name: becky rich (rrich@bmc) Date: 02/04/2004 18:20 Link to this Comment: 7965 |
Name: becky rich (Anonymous) Date: 02/04/2004 18:36 Link to this Comment: 7968 |
~this is quite sermon-y i know, but i thought i'd throw a bone to anyone who shares my feelings/ideas/(upbringing).
Name: Aia Hussein (ahussein@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/04/2004 20:23 Link to this Comment: 7969 |
| Simply nothing... Name: Daniela (dmiteva@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/04/2004 21:02 Link to this Comment: 7970 |
The story of the inflationary theory claims that the universe originated "as a quantum fluctuation from absolutely nothing." If we came from nothing (our stories also originated from nothing), then are we nothing? If what fuels evolution (proding prokaryotic cells to merge creating a highly organized, complicated structure with numerous compartments, membranes, chromatin, histones etc) is nothing, why then we have exactly those patterns of life? Is it a playful impulse? A quirk of a superior force? If it is, then it is still something...How can we define nothing?
In conclusion, I want to quote a question raised O.B.Hardison: "We are such things dreams are made of (Shakespeare, The Tempest). But who is doing the dreaming?"
| none, really Name: Natasha (nseth@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/04/2004 23:44 Link to this Comment: 7976 |
| Art History/Evolution Name: Elizabeth Catanese (ecatanes@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/05/2004 00:49 Link to this Comment: 7978 |
Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/05/2004 07:31 Link to this Comment: 7984 |
I had similar thoughts at the end of Tuesday's session. The rate of change (at the level we discussed change) has not been linear. It has accelerated over time. (We haven't talked about a "molecular clock" that seems to have a constant rate of change for the evolution of a molecule, but even that has different rates for different types of molecules/proteins.) Seems to me that as the quantity of different phenotypes AND the complexity of phenotypes both increase, the opportunity (and probability) for RANDOM Something's to click increases.
What really got me thinking is how this might apply to/effect thought or the "parts" that effect thought in a thinking species. For example, coming from a corporate background I've spent a lot of time dealing with competitiveness among organizations that, in aggregate, could be considered a virtual population in the way we are using that word. "Co-opetition" has been the buzz for quite a while: the entities that compete with each other also cooperate with each other, even merge ("breed"?) to create a new entities in order to better survive in their environment. What others and I have noticed and applied is that, today in many businesses and certainly the entire high-tech industry, the absolute topmost differentiator effecting success is SPEED. The faster an organization (organism) can adapt to accelerate conceiving of, producing, and getting its product or service to its market, the more likely it will thrive. And there are definite organizational characteristics/dynamics that have "evolved" to enable more and more speed. Seems to me that this is germane...still thinking
Name: Heather (Anonymous) Date: 02/05/2004 12:44 Link to this Comment: 7989 |
| more relevant stuff Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/05/2004 13:53 Link to this Comment: 7990 |
what are the stories we tell in order to BE ourselves????????????????
and how by being ourselves do we disallow others from being themselves by telling our stories, by allowing ourselves to be?
Long writes, "the invisibility of indians and blacks is matched by a void or a deeper invisibility within the consciousness of white americans. the inordinate fear they have of minoriteis is the expression of the fear they have when they contemplate the possibility of seeing themselves as they really are." the white writers of history have constructed the stories we hear today because of this deep seeded, physical, emptyness within themselves. and they have told the story of american culture in a brutal attempt to comfort themselves. WEB du bois writes in a section of this book 'the souls of the black folk,' "from this must arise a painful self-sonsciousness, an almost morbid sense of personality and a moral hesitancy which is fatal to self-confidence."
i don't have any more time to talk this out because i have to go to class...but maybe people have responses. though it is not starkly science i think it is relevant. hope you agress.
| two hours later (continuing last post) Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/05/2004 16:15 Link to this Comment: 7991 |
my main point/question from two hours ago was, "what are the stories we tell in order to BE ourselves? and how by being ourselves do we disallow others from being themselves?"
i think, quite litterally and simply, that the stories of evolution and creationism are two of the stories that we tell in order to explain our existence/justify our existence. and by ingesting one of these two stories into our beings and saying that only one of the two stories is the TRUTH then we disallow others to be themselves/to justify their own existences. by constantly critisizing creationism, mayr is saying that the story of creationsm does not justify our existence. he's going into a creationist's life and saying, 'find something better because with YOUR story your very existence is NOT justified.' but what good does this do except to get mayr off on the idea that his story is better than my story? it is more practical, it is more pragmatic, to LET BOTH BE. the beatles say it, 'let it be.' shakepeare says it (hamlet), 'let be.' it's all about PRAGMATISM. let live. beleive what you want to beleive and let others beleive what they want to beleive. whatever is USEFUL is TRUTH.
so maybe the reason we tell stories is to justify our existence.
and (i'm so sorry for ALWAYS being so long winded...*cringe*) but one more idea from james:
he says that pragmatism is "a mediator and reconciler" and that it "unstiffens our theories." pragmatism gives the label of TRUTH to both religion and science and as a culmination of so so much of my thought processes james writes, "IN SHORT, SHE (pragmatism) WIDENS THE FIELD OF SEARCH FOR GOD."
wow. that blows me away. because james realizes that EVERYTHING is a search for this thing that we call GOD. that's why stories are told. we are all searching DESPERATLY, i mean our whole existence is this godamn desperate search for something. and i think that something is GOD. and please don't get all turned off by this word and yell and scream because i'm saying that everything is religion. I don't have a definition of what God is, but rather i think that our search is what defines God. God is that which aches within humanity, it is what EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US is searching for. and we obviously don't know what that is yet because we haven't and can't ever find it. but it is God.
:)
Name: Perrin (Pbraun@bmc) Date: 02/05/2004 18:42 Link to this Comment: 7997 |
But back to a more tangible subject...I don't really agree with what I'm about to write, but it's just something to think about: could the perfection that Mayer describes as the goal of evolution be defined by extreme self-sufficiency? In Prof Dalke's discussion section, the example of the mollusk was frequently invoked. Most people probably think of mollusks as "low" organisms, occupying the last rung of the evolutionary ladder, but humans are definitely more dependant and needy beings than the mollusk is. I'm not an expert on the subject, but mollusks definitely have less physical and emotional needs than we do. Does that make them "higher" or more perfect than we are? 'Perfection' is a pretty scary word and I've actually only heard that word seriously used in reference to god, not a mortal organism. So can perfection really exist on this earth?
| Out and Up and Uut and Uup... Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/05/2004 21:24 Link to this Comment: 7999 |
I've said several times that this class is only one of many sites on campus where stories are being written and revised. One PARTICULARLY relevant other site you are invited to visit/might want to watch on-line is the working group on emergent systems (which you are welcome to drop in on in person, too--though it DOES meet @ 8 a.m.!). In the first two sessions this semester, in which Paul led the discussion, we have sounded a number of the themes of this course. This morning, for instance, I heard in particular three keynotes of this week's class discussion:
In my class discussion section this afternoon, we explored (along with those self-sufficient mollusks Perrin mentioned!) one current example of this last idea: ways in which our understanding and then revising current stories can actually alter the shape/state of the universe--that is, the recent creation of two new chemical elements, which both fill a gap in the periodic table and hint @ other yet-to-be discovered elements.
| Evolution in the Classroom Name: Roz (rschorr@brynmawr.edy) Date: 02/06/2004 10:31 Link to this Comment: 8002 |
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/07/2004 12:47 Link to this Comment: 8008 |
| this week Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/07/2004 13:36 Link to this Comment: 8009 |
| Evolution of Stories Name: Aia Hussein (ahussein@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/07/2004 15:10 Link to this Comment: 8011 |
There are similarities in myth/truth between different cultures. For example, all three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) share similar prophets who are recorded to have told similar stories (there are few exceptions, of course. Changes needed to be made to satisfy the population, maybe?). But even before the birth of these religions, ancient cultural myths (such as Ancient Greek myths) told similar stories. If life is thought to have evolved from a common ancestor, does the same thought hold for our stories? Did they evolve from a common ancestor?
| evolution Name: meg (mfolcare@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/07/2004 18:48 Link to this Comment: 8016 |
| What if God was One of Us? Name: stefanie (sfedak@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/08/2004 00:57 Link to this Comment: 8023 |
God is a loose term that we have given to "truth". all people seek truth, but some people call it God. Perrin is on the right track, but i think it should be recognized that our search for truth is less about security as it is about the innate human desire to understand.
In Grobstein's discussion section on thursday i wondered whether with globalization/technological advances there would be a resurgence of evolution after generations of reproductive isolation.
i think it is fair to say that there is already a great degree of cultural evolution in many societies, and that this evolution will in turn lead to biological changes. orah made a point the other night, which i had been pondering myself, and that is whether this return to evolution is like the contraction and expansion we had spoken about in previous weeks. there is contraction and expansion in literature, science, and all aspects of life...so why not evolution?
Name: reeve (rbasom@haverford.edu) Date: 02/08/2004 13:57 Link to this Comment: 8027 |
| re-evolution Name: Julia (jeddy@bmc) Date: 02/08/2004 15:01 Link to this Comment: 8029 |
And on a similar more universal note, could other planets be different examples of evolution, like our own Earth story, but with different changes made over time and/or different paths taken? Are other planets the "what ifs" that we wonder about?
Mind boggling.... I shall have to continue thinking about this one.
| stories structuring societies Name: su-lyn (spoon@hc) Date: 02/08/2004 15:11 Link to this Comment: 8031 |
Name: su-lyn (spoon@hc) Date: 02/08/2004 15:27 Link to this Comment: 8032 |
| god Name: katherine (kpioli) Date: 02/08/2004 15:37 Link to this Comment: 8033 |
| words Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/08/2004 19:40 Link to this Comment: 8040 |
and i ask again,
what are the stories we tell to BE ourselves?
and how by being ourselves do we disallow others from being themselves?
| Of Myths and Mayr Name: Daniela (dmiteva@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/08/2004 20:38 Link to this Comment: 8045 |
Also, I find it striking that most gods are in the shape of humans (or bear human resemblance). Observing the natural world, people gradually came to the conclusion that no other known species is superior to them.(true, some are stronger, but none of them can come up with ruses and srtategies for hunting, harnessing water etc). This observation makes me wonder whether peole can worship something they can't imagine. Can human imagination beget forms no one has ever seen? Or can people only collect various pieces of the world they see and simply improvise on putting them together?
Furthermore, people have always tried to take some advantage of nature. Because trade/agriculture/the well-being in general of a society often depended solely on the nearby river/sea/ocean, why not try to propitiate the Spirits that control them? That natural objects are controlled by a superior force is beyond doubt for the primeval societies. From their observations of the regular patterns of natural events they could deduce that somebody/something must be in charge of them. So, if a society's well-being depends on this somebody/something, why not try to propitiate him/her/it?
Myths make me reconsider the role of Ernst Mayr's story. He is not telling a new story, what is the aim of the book then?
| Your toes, by any other name would still smell like feet... Name: bethany keffala (Anonymous) Date: 02/08/2004 22:34 Link to this Comment: 8049 |
PETER THOMAS: But sometimes, regardless of approach, historical linguistics is faced with an unsolvable puzzle. There is one language in Europe which has baffled scholars for centuries. Sarak looks like a typical French village, but its graveyard holds a linguistic secret. Inscribed alongside the French is the mysterious language of the Basque people. The language is called Euskara, and it has resisted any classification so far. It is called a language isolate, an orphan among languages with no known relatives. The land of the Basques straddles the borders of France and Spain. No amount of analysis has been able to link Euskara to French, Spanish, or to any European language, nor, in fact, to a language anywhere in the world. How could this linguistic isolation come about? Perhaps it was the fierce independence of the Basque people, their resistance to outside invaders and their strong history of oral tradition. But, whatever the reason, the Basque language has withstood centuries of influence. Scientists have wondered whether a biological comparison between the Basques and their Indo-European-speaking neighbors would reflect that isolation as well.
LUIGI CAVALLI-SFORZA: What we ordinarily do in biology is, really, bilateral comparisons, but we do them all, all the possible ones.
PETER THOMAS: Geneticist Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford University was a pioneer in the search for notable biological indicators.
LUIGI CAVALLI-SFORZA: They must realize that there is a degree of relationship, and that it's very important to take that into account. Otherwise, you cannot do anything.
PETER THOMAS: Cavalli-Sforza was interested in exploring historical relationships among different populations by examining their genes, rather than their languages. Would his research team find the Basques as unique as the linguists found them? If the Basques are as isolated as their language suggests, this isolation might also show up in their genetic makeup, blood groups, DNA patterns, and so on. New techniques now make it possible to carry out much more detailed analyses of individuals and populations using just a few living cells, in this case, cells from a hair follicle. The DNA pattern not only distinguishes the Basques from their neighbors, it suggests they must have been among the earliest people to settle in Europe.
LUIGI CAVALLI-SFORZA: Basques were recognized as genetically different a long time ago. Basques are so different that they must have been proto-Europeans. Basques were probably the descendants of cultures that have made all those beautiful painted rock paintings in the southwest of France and in the north of Spain.
PETER THOMAS: These cave paintings, many of them located in Basque country, were painted fifteen thousand years ago. Since the genetic data suggests the Basques have been a distinct group for thousands of years, isolated from other peoples, it may have been their ancestors who painted these caves during the last Ice Age. Although this conclusion is speculative, Cavalli-Sforza is trying to use these techniques to solve other linguistic puzzles, including Greenberg's controversial classification of Native American languages. DNA samples from may different tribes in North and South America were collected and analyzed in Cavalli-Sforza's lab at Stanford. He believes his results provide a strong confirmation of Greenberg's groupings.
LUIGI CAVALLI-SFORZA: When we took all the data from American natives, they clearly fell into three classes, and they correspond exactly to the linguistic families that have been postulated by Greenberg. Not only that, but the family which is most heterogeneous of all genetically is the one that is linguistically more heterogeneous of all.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2120glang.html
Thinking about it now again, there are more similarities between these two stories. It's possible, even likely, that language was 'invented', so to speak, simultaneously all over the place by groups of people who had moved around, as it is possible that different forms of life sprang up simultaneously in different places at the very beginning. For both ideas, it's possible that this process, or a process involving only one starting organism/language happened several times with the species dying, no life, and then a new one created. How many origins could there have been? Is this science? Philosophy? both...
...
ALSO!
I'm so glad that Orah and Katherine and Stefanie(and others?) feel this way about GOD/LOVE/UNDERSTANDING. It really strikes a chord (I've always wondered, is it strikes a chord, or strikes accord?) with me...I've always loved those 'AHA' moments when you find a parallel, a pattern, what in physics, I think, has come to be known as the theory of everything, how we feel that there is some answer that will make all of our questions obsolete, that everything is connected. I think we can feel it all around us, and yet it's so invisible and elusive, . I think that when we feel most fulfilled, it is perhaps when we come closer to understanding these connections, viewing at the same time these exapansions and these contractions, these fluctuations of IT, whatever that may be, God, Love, ultimate Understanding, George...
I think that's all I have for now...still brewing.
| connecting the dots? Name: emily (emadsen@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/09/2004 09:04 Link to this Comment: 8062 |
| Ponderings Name: katherine (kpioli) Date: 02/09/2004 10:05 Link to this Comment: 8064 |
There are some really mind-bending things being bounced around this week. Hard to keep track of it all, hard to find my own deep-down opinions about some of this stuff. If life on earth started over again, we went back in time to the moment when the rocks and gases first fused to make this planet, would evolution happen in exactally the same way with the same results as now? I must say flat out, No, I don't beleive we would find the same exact results twice. Evolution and life itself seems to be a matter of chance. (Especially if evolution is really not directed at any purpose, the purpose is nothing, why would it ever follow the same path twice?) Random mutations have no logical order, they just happen. So I think that it would be more likely to have a different random mutation and evolutions the second time around than the same one.
Um...what are the stories we tell to be ourselves? I take this to mean, how do we imagine ourselves? What do we bring together in our minds to create an image of who we are as an individual, and how is that reflected in our actions, and how do these actions affect people around us? I am not ready to divulge to this forum exactally what stories I tell myself to make me who I am, that's a bit personal, but what stories to Bryn Mawr students tell themselves, how does that shape the image of a Bryn Mawr woman? I think that we like to tell a story of strong womanhood. We like (but perhaps I am wrong) to imagine an instant link with each other because of our sex. The story of the Bryn Mawr woman includes free-will, free-expression, an excellent vocabulary, etc. And who do we esclude by creating this story of ourselves as Bryn Mawr women? Do we exclude raically, sexually (yep), or along class lines?
| scattered thoughts, as usual Name: Lauren Friedman (lfriedma) Date: 02/09/2004 15:51 Link to this Comment: 8070 |
| Stories and Fear Name: Aia Hussein (ahussein@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/09/2004 18:40 Link to this Comment: 8072 |
Reading this (and re-reading this over and over again) I couldn't help but feeling that Emily had struck a nerve with her statement. Where Emily tells stories out of fear, I realized that I believe in stories out of fear. If I don't have the "story" of God, or the "story" of religion, or even the "story" that somehow, in the cosmic existence of things, my life does really matter, that my life does hold some purpose, if I don't have these "stories" then I don't have my self. And if I don't have my self, then I am left with nothing but a story of myself...and why would this story be any different from all the rest?
We tell stories, and we believe in them, because this is what shapes our existence. Last week I was concerned with the evolution of thought, but more importantly, it was the introduction of thought that set us apart from all the other species of the world. And what did we do once we began thinking as a species? We began to tell stories. Without these stories we don't exist. And to not exist is a very scary thing.
| Perfection Name: Elizabeth Deacon (edeacon@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/09/2004 18:48 Link to this Comment: 8073 |
I think most people who like to say that humans are perfect, or at least more perfect than anything else, or at the top of the food chain or what have you mean that we are the best at what we do. Most Americans like to think of themselves as above average, and to some degree this attitude is visible in all humans, visible in that we almost always think of ourselves as better than all other living beings.
Obviously we're the best; we speak, build cities and use complex tools, reason out how the universe works, do so many things that place us far above other animals. True, they can often run faster than us, or hear better, or live in better harmony with the world, or do something that we can't do at all, like fly. But those things just aren't as good as talking, right? Well, I suspect that if, say, eagles can think, and are pondering the nature of the universe as they turn lazy circles high up in the air, they're thinking about how they are obviously superior to all other beings, especially us humans who spend all our time running around for no good reason and can't even fly.
My point here is, when most people say humans are the best, they mean we're the best at what we do, which is the most important thing to be able to do because we can do it and we're the best.
Mayr, of course, talks about levels of perfection of all creatures, not just humans, but I think he's just expanding that same thought process to all creatures. A creature that is "perfect" in some way is a creature that is very good at something it does. Maybe it's the best of all creatures at that thing. So when he says things are perfect he doesn't mean they've reached some goal, have found some evolutionary nirvana; he just means they're very good at what they do.
Probably this isn't the whole reason Mayr calls things perfect; there's no reason to use such a touchy word when he means something relatively innocuous. But I feel that' s part of the reason he describes things that way.
| Mayr's use of "perfection" Name: Jen Sheehan (jsheehan@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/09/2004 19:34 Link to this Comment: 8074 |
But I didn't get the impression from reading the book that Mayr was implying such a thing. I found myself nodding in agreement with Elizabeth in her estimation of Mayr's intent: A creature that is "perfect" in some way is a creature that is very good at something it does. Maybe it's the best of all creatures at that thing. So when he says things are perfect he doesn't mean they've reached some goal, have found some evolutionary nirvana; he just means they're very good at what they do. On Thursday when we were divided into our sections, Anne commented on how Mayr's rather careless use of "perfection" might have simply stemmed from a scientist's natural awe at the world, and a biologist's appreciation of just how amazing it is that life has evolved into such rich diversity and adaptability. I remember when I was in the rainforest in Costa Rica two years ago and looked around me, thinking to myself, "This is so perfect" -- and I didn't really mean "perfect" in the strict definition of the word, but just how all the flora and fauna and even the accompanying weather (a tremendous downpour of rain, followed by bright sunlight filtering through the trees) seemed to be in such a wonderful balance and state of "rightness." Every plant was suited for that environment; so was every animal.
And yet, it didn't have to happen that way; Prof. Grobstein asked in this forum "whether biological evolution is inevitable. Suppose that one were to start the proccess over again, would it come out the same?" I believe that evolution in inevitable, but if we started the process all over again, I highly doubt it would come out exactly as it has in our world. Perhaps Alternate Earth would have life even better adapted to its environment...but life on this earth is pretty impressively adapted itself. And that, I think, is part of what was in Mayr's mind when he spoke of "perfection." I wish he didn't use the term, but I can understand his reasons for doing so.
| career and evolution Name: Elizabeth Catanese (ecatanes@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/09/2004 19:46 Link to this Comment: 8076 |
Julia said "so much of our personal evolution is random spontaneous actions that are often taken for granted." I was having a conversation with a friend this weekend. She is a BMC senior who has taken science courses for all of her life and is pre-med. She has always wanted to go to med school and become a doctor... but just recently she has begun to reevaluate that and has started thinking that she might want to be an architect instead. This is causing quite a bit of anxiety on her part because she has spent so much of her life headed in this one direction and does not find anything terribly wrong with the direction where she's going. She said that she never would have even considered doing something other than med school if there had not been several things which happened in the past two years, one of which (the factor particularly relevant to this particular forum entry) was deciding to take architecture courses at Bryn Mawr because she had never done that before. So I guess the point is, that this random act of taking architecture classes may have a lasting effect on her future. I think it's wonderful that she's open enough to re-evaluate... (to let different prokariotes bump into each other to speak metaphorically) because something really wonderful and unexpected may evolve. My friend and I taked for a long time trying to figure out what she should do and in the end, I told her that it didn't matter too much what she did because there are an infinite number of "whats" in the world but only one "who"... that she will still be essentially who she is at the core whether she becomes an architect or a doctor. I hadn't thought that this was much related to evolution but I do think that it somehow is, especially with Professor Grobstein's lecture... that a large part of evolution did in fact happen by chance... I guess what matters is not so much how it happened as the fact that it happened. But as individuals, we somehow need to know how it happened to exist happily within the realm "it did indeed happen." Frightening, exciting, necessary, perplexing... Here we all are.
Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/10/2004 07:10 Link to this Comment: 8087 |
In our discussion we may be shifting our own definition of something that sounds brittle and inflexible (perfect) to something that's iterative and regenerating...as if all that happens happens on two interacting axes—like the earth rotating around the sun, combined with the earth spinning on its axis—both of which contribute to the changing seasons. Maybe this is a universal formula that applies at both the macro and micro levels in our realm of reality.
Maybe we're recognizing that nothing may go in a straight line from simple to complex (or good to better to best of all). The relevant geometric shapes for evolution seems to be the circle, the sphere.
BTW, does any of what we're thinking about--or the way in which we're thinking and talking--remind anybody of Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass"?
| when an economist tells stories Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/10/2004 10:35 Link to this Comment: 8089 |
In the "bridging" which this course attempts between science and the humanities, the areas and ways in which social scientists work are also directly relevant (and perhaps brought into question?). For instance, the business section of y'day's Philadelphia Inquirer (2/9/04), featured an economist, Sophia Koropeckyj, who describes what she does (analyzing trends in labor and industry for Economy.Com) as "finding the story among the statistics":
her "work stands for a psychologically reassuring idea in a world that seems all too chaotic. 'There is an assumption that you can identify patterns and that there are predictable relationships'....In other words, life is orderly and the future predictable as long as the proper patterns are discerned, then applied....She sees herself...as a storyteller, someone who weaves together the patterns in the numbers to provide a coherent story about the state of the world."
David Ross, of the Econ Dept. here @ BMC, has also spoken quite strikingly and probingly about the consequences of the work he does as a storyteller; see "Bucks, Values and Happiness": When Counting Changes What We Are Counting.
| stasis vs. the virus of time Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/10/2004 10:38 Link to this Comment: 8090 |
It's hard for me to pick up any newspaper or journal these days w/out seeing echoes and extensions of our class discussions. My breakfast reading this morning was the 2/12/04 New York Review of Books, which featured an extensive discussion of Tony Kushner's Angels in America. I haven't seen the new TV film (which prompted this review) but seeing the play @ the Annenberg years ago was a profound experience for me. In the language of this review (and this class?),
"The ability of human beings to evolve and change in time stands in stark contrast to ... God, [who was] bored by the sempiternal stasis that was life in Heaven, and 'bewitched' by man's ever-evolving ingenuity, curiosity, and forward-moving aspiration....The angels want to turn back the clock, to reverse the 'virus of TIME'.... what [they want is]...'STASIS!' Kushner, in other words, has created a cosmic model of the conflict between beautiful abstract systems and the unruly, illogical energies of lived life."
More of the same, soon.
A.
| Projecting the story of a single individual onto the group they belong to. Name: Simran (skaur@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/10/2004 12:34 Link to this Comment: 8097 |
I would like to direct you to two cartoons that were published in the New Yorker.
http://www.student.brynmawr.edu/students/nmegatul/life_at_the_mawr.htm
I found these on the internet, please refer to only the first two images.
The first image is the well known, "She's all I know about Bryn Mawr and she's all I need to know," while the second refers to the rebirth of "rugged individualism." This second one depicts a Mawtyr adhering to the impression of Bryn Mawr as an elitist school in the early days! However, it shows that the student adhering to the "traditional" dress is being shunned by her casually dressed peers.
There are two impressions of Bryn Mawr being portrayed here. The first shows that the behavior of a Mawtyr in public is assumed to stand for the entire picture or story of Bryn Mawr (not that I mind in this case!!) The second shows Mawtyrs themselves ogling at their peer who chooses to dress in a certain defining way.
The two Mawtyrs these cartoons focus on are telling stories about themselves by the way they act or dress. However, in the first case, this behavior is projected onto a larger group and the "outside world's" belief in this story immediately results in their disbelieving the story the girl in the second cartoon is telling.
I feel like I'm being really cryptic here. Just trying to answer the question as I see it, by showing the disparity behind the acceptance of a single story as a portrayal of the whole, and also the inherent irony behind such acceptance and belief!
Thoughts?
| The catalyst? Name: Mary (mferrell@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/10/2004 14:16 Link to this Comment: 8099 |
It exists, we know.
and it does things.why???
The metaphysical questions exist too. Plenty of them.
We pull out patterns particularly and we tell, listen to our stories.
the catalyst, you ask? What is the catalyst of what???
Name: Natasha (nseth@bmc) Date: 02/10/2004 14:27 Link to this Comment: 8100 |
Name: orah (Anonymous) Date: 02/10/2004 17:42 Link to this Comment: 8104 |
Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/10/2004 22:31 Link to this Comment: 8110 |
and then the intensity reaches it's peak when this man, dripping with the sores of death, this man who has just been told that life is only pain and ultimate destruction, this man says,
"i want more life. i can't help myself. i do. i've lived through such terrible times, and there are people who live through much much worse, but....You see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. i don't know if that's just the animal. i don't know if it's not braver to die. But i recognize the habit. the addiction to being alive. we live past hope. if i can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best i can do. it's so much not enough, so inadequate but...Bless me anyway. i want more life."
and at first i started typing this because it is so beautiful and i thought ya'all might like it, but as i type i realize that it is relevant.
grobstein said today (if i understand correctly) that life is driven not by competition, there is no means acheived, no underlying reason WHY we want life, but rather it is ingraned in the very definition of life to want more (and this desire is random???). life = not having enough. why do the single celled organisms move outward? because the very definition of their beings DESIRES.
(shoot i'm sorry guys, but i have to keep going...)
and i think maybe the word perfection should not be taught as a goal of evolution...evolution is random...but! i think this desire to live for humans is rooted, cemented deeply this yearning toward perfection. we won't acheive it. and this fact is the driving force behind human life. ((saying that the driving force behind life is random just doesn't work for me...is of no use TO ME.) and salinger writes in franny and zooey, "an artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms." and i think we are all artists: poets, scientists, mathmaticiens, football players. because WHAT MAKES AN ARTIST IS THE DESPERATION, and we all have it.
(this is just my story...i'm not asking anyone to agree...i realize i might sound preachy...i'm not trying to... just desperate :)
and the reason that we all WANT MORE LIFE is because we never acheive this perfection...life never reaches it's goal.
Name: Patty (ppalermo@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/11/2004 17:51 Link to this Comment: 8118 |
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF001.html
| Cockaigne Name: Roz (rschorr@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/11/2004 21:27 Link to this Comment: 8124 |
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/12/2004 09:45 Link to this Comment: 8134 |
Very early into the first chapter Dennet expresses a need to protect Darwin's idea in the same way that the creationists need to protect religion from iconoclasts. However, I cannot sympathize with this need to protect Darwin. The notion of evolution, for me, stands on its own two feet, whether we help it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not..
While reading this I was immediately reminded of my decision to come to Bryn Mawr. I had been accepted to both of the schools I applied to: Sarah Lawrence and Bryn Mawr. It was a seemingly impossible decision. I was very excited about both, and I thought that both would suite me perfectly. In the end my decision came down to one thing. I could easily say yes to both acceptances, but WHICH ONE COULDN'T I SAY NO TO. Darwin is Bryn Mawr.
| why NOT? Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/12/2004 18:51 Link to this Comment: 8142 |
On Wednesday afternoons, my daughter Marian works as an aide at James Rhoads Elementary School. When I drive her in, I have the remainder of the day for exploring West Philly on my own. Yesterday I stopped in at the Institute of Contemporary Art @ Penn, and found myself in the Yoshitomo Nara exhibit, "Nothing Ever Happens." I was struck both by the echoes of hearing my own children (on occasion) say that, and by the sharp juxtaposition of our conversations in this course with this bit of catalog copy:
"Nara's figures... remind us...: We are limited by the fact that our experience... is a less-than-small part of the factual and experiential world, and an even smaller part of the infinite possiblities that could and will occur. Then why not have a pissed-off look forever stuck to our over-important-and self-expanding about-to-blow-up big head and eyes? Why not?"
Very much looking forward, next week, to hearing how each of you sees herself in relationship to the story Paul told about the story Mayr told about the story Darwin told about multiple observations made by himself and others....
Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/12/2004 19:46 Link to this Comment: 8143 |
changed story: the definition of life is wanting more life, not wanting death. but according to the first law of thermodynamics death is inevitable. so as CONSIOUS beings the only way to exist is in desperation because the make up of the world in which we live forbids us from aquiring our " directional movement" as living beings.( this directional movement being the attempt to escape death...to always have more life.) so what do we do with this desperation? we create "the after."
damn consiousness.
Name: orah (Anonymous) Date: 02/12/2004 22:37 Link to this Comment: 8144 |
but, those aren't pragmatic thoughts...(i don't know if i'm a very pragmatic thinker...alas...)so lets think things like: this is such a beautiful world and even if it is fleeting how wonderful that we get a chance to be IN IT. it's kinda romantic to be in this finite droplet of exquisite beauty...
Name: Perrin Braun (Pbraun@bmc) Date: 02/12/2004 23:14 Link to this Comment: 8146 |
I was thinking about the discussion of consciousness in Prof Dalke's discussion group today. Guilt is defiantly one of the primary signs of self-awareness/consciousness because it demonstrates that an organism is aware of right and wrong and the repercussions of its actions. Psychology tells us (somebody correct me if I'm wrong) that a pathological sociopath is biologically wired not to feel any guilt and therefore does not realize that stealing, raping, etc. are morally wrong. So maybe our blessing/curse as a species is feeling guilt?
| this week ... Name: Paul Grobstein, Anne Dalke (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/13/2004 08:32 Link to this Comment: 8148 |
| Hey... Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/13/2004 10:39 Link to this Comment: 8149 |
BTW, I was surprised to learn (regarding Paul's story about the word "serendipity") that Walpole coined it from the old name of Sri Lanka. According to American Heritage, "this name was part of the title of "a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of . . ."
| "help me see the part of me that lives inside of you..." Name: em (emadsen@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/13/2004 13:47 Link to this Comment: 8150 |
| its all okay. Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/13/2004 19:18 Link to this Comment: 8152 |
Name: (Anonymous) Date: 02/13/2004 22:09 Link to this Comment: 8154 |
| let's talk about sex Name: em (emadsen@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/14/2004 09:38 Link to this Comment: 8155 |
| on its being ok and sex and thermodynamics Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/14/2004 11:08 Link to this Comment: 8156 |
Orah and I had an email exchange relevant to her recent posting. Here's a perhaps relevant bit of what I wrote to her:
Plants don't worry about dying (I don't think); they just go about their living business until it stops. And, like us, they too tend to leave traces of their existence after their dissolution (image of a tree trunk bearing the mark of a vanished vine that had once grown around it). In fact, we have (in our DNA, as plants have in theirs) traces of untold millions of ancestral organisms and, in one form or another, we too will leave traces of ourselves long into the future.
So, the "worrying" isn't a property of life; its a property of a particular evolved form of life, a form (ourselves) which has the capability to conceive of "death" and both the first and second law of thermodynamics. But, interestingly, it also has the capability to conceive of eternal life and of transcendence. Given that these are all "stories" and that part of what stories do is to give birth (unpredictably) to new stories, I'd say that ... there is no way to know whether the notion of "eternal life and transcendence" is "just pretending" as opposed to one of the ingredients out of which emerges a new story in which the first and second laws of thermodynamics turn out to be less significant than they appear to be in the current story of stories.
In any case, the current story of stories puts the problem many billions of years into the future, at least insofar as one is willing/able to be comfortable with the idea of becoming and having others become at some point a "trace".
Let me also add my thanks to those of Ro for a particularly rich discussion on Thursday. The idea from there that seemed important (to me at least) to share with everyone is the idea that the FIRST law of thermodynamics (rather than the second) is actually the one that speaks most directly to the fundamental importance in evolution of death. Its the first law that says that the total amount of "stuff" never changes, and hence that all that can happen is to transform one organization of stuff into a different organization of stuff. From which it follows that to make new stuff one has to get rid of old stuff? Maybe what life represents is the discovery of how to maintain traces of the old organizations in the new organizations? (This actually relates in an interesting way to a conversation Bethany and I had yesterday about time that I hope she'll say something about here).
Finally, I heartily endorse Emily's "let's talk about sex". Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia is a very funny and very wise exploration of story telling (better even than Big Fish) in which he suggests an equivalence between sex, randomness, and the second law of thermodynamics.
Lady Croom: Of what?
Thomasina: The action of bodies in heat.
The second law, Stoppard suggests, is what generates randomness ("heat"), which is in turn the fundamental significance of sex ("heat"): it is a way to scramble things up so as to create the novel (to transform from one organization to a new one?). And yes, it is apparent in reproduction but is also separable from reproduction, both in biology and otherwise.
Speaking of which, thanks to Emily and others for a smashing production of the Vagina Monologues.
Name: Susan W. (Anonymous) Date: 02/14/2004 12:38 Link to this Comment: 8159 |
Okay so lets see if I can put some thoughts of mine down in writting. I am not very good at this.
First off, this idea of death, and how it relates to our theory of "niches" (spelling?). It seems to me that in life, we are constantly providing new "places" for other things to inhabit, new areas for things to emerge and grow. Death in my opinion isn't just "the end" but provides us with another "niche" another "doorway" into something... i dont necessarily mean that it is a spiritual place, although it COULD be. I dont doubt that we will cese to exist as we know it. At the same time, its easy to see how this idea of filling another space gave rise to the spiritual idea of an afterlife. I am thinking of Jonathan Livingston - the seagull. I think it was all based on some Greek philosophers conception of life and death and truth (was is Aristotle? The cave analogy?) Anyway, Jonathan's goal was to be able to accomplish great feats of flying that was baned by the flock of seaguls he was in, and as a result, when he would accomplish one task (like flying at the speed of light) he would "die" and pass onto another "level". In other words, according to the author, death was just another level, another niche that we have to live in. I dont know if I am making any sense, but that's what's been on my mind.
Secondly if evolution is a random process, why is it that our thinking or consciousness is something that goes forward? Randomness vs. linear thinking, how is this possible?
| altruism Name: meg (mfolcare@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/14/2004 13:00 Link to this Comment: 8161 |
Name: Charles DaCosta (dacostas@post10.tele.dk) Date: 02/14/2004 13:25 Link to this Comment: 8163 |
No, consciousness goes forward and backward, you can even say it transcends time and space. And yes, this process appears sequential but it is random.
An exp: relax and look at a cup for about a minute (remembering your thoughts). Walk away for a while, than come back to the cup and do the same. Were your thoughts the same?
If you did not "intend" on thinking the same thoughts, your thoughts will be different; and if you hand no "intent," it is random – what you will think - unless your mind is being dominated by a strong attachment.
AND looking at the big picture, the events in life are somewhat random, however, you can plan what you will be doing today, but there is no guaranty that your plans will be fulfilled, especially without unplanned events.
Name: becky rich (Anonymous) Date: 02/15/2004 14:26 Link to this Comment: 8173 |
| Imperialism and Evolution Name: Aia Hussein (ahussein@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/15/2004 14:45 Link to this Comment: 8174 |
How strange would it be if the sentence read: The importance of competition is demonstrated most graphically when...the extinction of many native New Zealand [Aborigines] when European[s] successfully established themselves there and outcompeted the natives? Is imperialism a subset of evolution? Are we innately programmed to compete with other peoples for the sake of our own survival?
| Humans?! Name: daniela (dmiteva@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/15/2004 15:48 Link to this Comment: 8177 |
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/15/2004 16:19 Link to this Comment: 8178 |
Anyway, on to my question. I don't have a page number to refer to, but I would like to know how Mayr and Darwin feel about death. There were allusions to it in the book, and at parts where I thought Mayr was heading towards some great philosophical explanation for its meaning it would fizzle. Its like an elephant in the room that no one is talking about, probably because we've all skirted the issue of religion. Do the two go so hand in hand that we can't talk about one without the other? Does evolution assign a meaning to it as religion does? If not, prehaps this was the sole reason religion is still going strong-it does assign a meaning. Or, perhaps it is unfair to demand such an explanation from the evolutionists.
| fitness and smarts Name: orah (Anonymous) Date: 02/15/2004 17:01 Link to this Comment: 8180 |
Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/15/2004 19:00 Link to this Comment: 8181 |
OK...how is it that we have not become fully bipedal? (except for when we're looking under our beds for missing socks)... he seems to be suggesting that this would complete us ...how so? I mean, what selection pressure are we under that is threatening our extinction if we don't ....er, stand up straighter!?
2 -pg279 "Stasis apparently indicates the possession of a genotype that is able to adjust to all changes of the environment without the need for changing its basis phenotype."
I realize that he sort of avoided the genotype in this book...but to then explain stasis by saying that it's due to an above average genotype is confusing. Add to that the observation made by many in his field that prolonged stasis of a species is followed by a rapid descent to extinction seems to suggest that stasis is not a great strategy. Do we know what role stasis plays in the life of a species?
3- last question...not directed to any particular page in the book...I'd like to understand extinction better...are all species destined to become extinct? What would preclude that? (I'm not asking about mass extinctions imposed by things like meteorites)
| Mayr Questions and Thursday Thoughts Name: Elizabeth Catanese (ecatanes@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/15/2004 19:58 Link to this Comment: 8183 |
A rather simplistic thought but I was thinking that if we take the idea of perfection to be "well adaptedness", then perfection is fully attainable and if we take the idea of perfection to mean "self-sufficiency" then perfection is not possible.
We were also talking about the dangers of answers as well as throwing around the idea that maybe humans can never be entirely happy in their quests for knowledge... there seemed to be a general anxiety about obtaining answers, a frustration being expressed. I've recently come to think of answers simply as waiting places for new questions or if not waiting places then bridges to new questions. And in that sense i think that answers are absolutely crucial... which may or may not lessen anxiety about the human search for truth.
Here are some questions from Mayr...
page 254 "The expectation of a smooth continuity of transitional stages in homonization is based on typological thinking."
I am having trouble understanding what this statement means in and of itself and, on a more broader scale, what typological thinking is, on page 165, Mayr says that it is species which are from a well circumscribed class... I don't understand this either. Does typological thinking relate to essentialism or population thinking? Maybe someone could help me out with this sentence... I think it is really just something small that I'm not getting (distinctions in words.) So Mayr is saying that typological thinking is not the way to go for anything?
Also, Mayr says that evolution happens so slowly because "thousands of generations which have undergone the preceeding selection, a natural population will be close to the optimal genotype. The selection to which such a population has been exposed is normalizing or a stabalizing selection" I can't fully grasp this... what is a population's optimal genotype... does this mean that in the begining, things evolved very very quickly because things were not close to their optimal genotype? From what Professor Grobstein has said, I don't think that this is true... evolution has always been slow... What is Mayr saying is the reason for this?
Finally Mayr talks a lot about adaptationism (p. 229) which we did not talk that much about in class. I read the last paragraph on page 229 and was wondering (with Prof. Grobstein's lecture on chance and the primary importance of chance in evolution) if this last paragraph would coincide with Prof. Grobstein's story... Here is the paragraph-
"One can conclude from these observations that evolution is neither merely a series of accidents nor a deterministic movement toward ever more perfect adapatation. To be sure, evolution is in part an adaptive process, because natural selection operates in every generation. The principle of adaptationism has been adopted so widely by Darwinians because it is such a heuristic methodology. To question what the adaptive propertises might be for every attrivute of an organism leads almost inevitably to a deeper understanding. However, every attribute is ultimately the product of variation, and this variation is largely the product of chance. Many authors seem to have a problem in comprehending the virtually simultaneous actions of two seemingly opposing causations, chance and necessity. But this is precicely the power of the Darwinian process."
So does Darwin's story take in both chance and necessity as equal partners? Where does adaptation fit into random chance/ creatures occupying niches.
Thanks!
| Mayr thoughts Name: Julia (jeddy) Date: 02/15/2004 21:54 Link to this Comment: 8185 |
My second, and unrelated thought, on Mayr but really evolution in general involves the actual mechanism of these changes. I understand that many many many many generations are needed to see evolution of new traits, and all changes are initially random but then selected for via natural selection... but I think I am still a little baffled by HOW mutations or gene interactions in a SINGLE ORGANISM result in the change into an entirely new species... how does the change stay "uniform" among all members of a species if it only starts in one? I think I get it and perhaps it is just hard to truly grasp the amount of time and generations, but it seems fairly unbelievable that one organism's genetic information could spread to a whole species soley based on selection of those genes in reproduction. And for that matter WHY are the changes always selected over the original anyway?
Sorry, I think I may just be confusing myself and others now.
Toodles for now.
| hmmm... Name: bethany keffala (Anonymous) Date: 02/16/2004 00:00 Link to this Comment: 8190 |
Some interesting quotes:
"Such a new gene is called a 'paralogous' gene. At first it will have the same function as it's sister gene. However, it will usually evolve by having its own mutations and in due time it may acquire functions different from those of its sister gene." - Mayr, 109
"Actually, survival is not a property of an organism but only an indication of the existance of certain survival-favoring attributes." - 118
"Elimination does not have the 'purpose' or the 'teleological goal' of producing adaptation; rather, adaptation is a by-product of the process of elimination." - 150
"...the niche is the outward projection of the needs of a species." - 152
also, an ironic, funny quote from Ro. - "I don't know if I can keep the thought long enough to get it out..." - This makes it seem as if maybe thoughts undergo a process of elimination, of natural selection as well...
...
Ok, so what I REALLY wanted to talk about was something that was sparked during the conversation on Thursday...It was when we were imagining a situation in which there was no death. It hit me that this type of arrangement means no second law of thermodynamics, and then, what was more interesting to me at the time, no natural selection. Ultimately, no death means no weeding out, no 'fit' category. EVERY possible combination is VALID. If death were obsolete but then evolution carried on, we would have present every single organism ever to live, and those that did not make it even to the point of living. We'd have all the missing links, all the previously unsuccessful recipes.
I suppose in a way this gives me a good bridge to talk about my time idea...it's definitely still in the works...I just thought of it on Friday afternoon, and I don't know if I completely understand it yet...just a hunch :) Anyway! so>>
I was having trouble you see, with two theories that were floating around. One came from language working group, and it deals with the way our minds work. Basically, the point of the theory is that for the brain and the nervous system, there is no past, there is no future, there is only now, this moment, here. *pathetic attempt to explain* It's as if you have a computer, which has a program. This program requires an input, which makes the computer go into a state to create a certain output. so, we have this sequence of inputs creating states creating outputs which are the inputs that create the states that create the outputs and so on and so forth. For the computer, there is no past, there is no future, there is only the current state, which causes the next current state. We see the pattern of inputs and states and outputs, but the only input for now that the computer needs to create the next output is the now input. SO! This implies that past and future are in fact all contained NOW! (scary implications for fate, perhaps?) So yes, I can definitely see the sense of this theory. (If I made it hard to understand, which is the most likely situation, ask PG, he'll explain it for you, and then you can laugh at my mess of confusion above)
But then, contradiction? We were discussing general relativity in physics, and the point was brought up that we tend to think of time as a distance...for example, it takes 16 hours to get to my house. We have timelines, time is, for us, a spacial entity of sorts. But oh no! This implies past and future! I can remember, I can predict. How on earth to reconcile these two theories???
Possible answer:
I wish I could draw on this thing...
Ok, so maybe the physical brain is, in a way, a reference frame. This is the reference frame for us in which time is CONTRACTED>> we are ALWAYS HERE, we are ALWAYS NOW. No past, no future, just present. Perhaps this is the unconscious mind?
Then, we have a second, SEPARATE reference frame, in which time is EXPANDED. From this reference frame, we can look at ourselves in the other reference frame, and we see time expanded as the spatial entity. Past, Present, Future. Is this the conscious mind?
It's almost as if these are dimensions. The first starts out as a line, perhaps, and then the second, a perpendicular, is added to make the next dimension, the next expansion. Where's the next perpendicular?
Also, and interesting thought: When we dream, we are unconscious. When we dream, time is 'warped, distorted'.
Ok. well, I think that's about as much as I want to say, and I am sure more than you wanted to read. I dunno. Maybe it's worth a look, maybe it's trash. Your thoughts?
| Altruism Name: Jen Sheehan (jsheehan@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/16/2004 02:26 Link to this Comment: 8195 |
In Anne's group on Thursday, Elizabeth brought up (and I can't remember the exact context -- sorry!) how the quintessential quality of self-awareness and consciousness is guilt...and how self-aware a being or species is can be determined by the extent to which that being/species experiences it. I've always seen an inextricable connection between guilt and altruism, given my belief that there is really no such thing as pure altruism. When you help an old blind lady across the street, aren't you at least in part motivated by the desire to maintain your conviction in your own goodness, and the knowledge of the guilt you'd feel if you failed to live up to certain moral standards? When you help work at a soup kitchen, aren't you at least in part motivated by the desire to make yourself feel better, and by a sense of guilt that you have so much compared to the homeless and poor?
I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this, other than to explain (rather simplistically) the connections I'm seeing. Human altruism is a byproduct of guilt. Guilt is a byproduct of self-awareness, and an ability to conceive of a more fluid time than simply the present; it's our awareness of the past and future that makes us feel guilty about past actions and how we should behave in the here and now. Our self-awareness is a byproduct of our species' evolution, though of course this leads back to Aia's question of where did consciousness come from in the first place. In any case, I know this isn't what Mayr was getting at when he linked altruism to evolution, but that's the link I saw.
I would have liked Mayr to discuss more aspects of human evolution -- how our species attained the level of self-awareness and speech it did, and why. Would he consider these characteristics to have come about mostly by random chance or by necessity (adaption)? (On P. 228, he asks that question with regard to overall evolution, and I'm curious as to how it would apply specifically to those aspects of humans which make us "unique")
| More on altruism Name: Mary (mferrell@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/16/2004 03:58 Link to this Comment: 8197 |
| during the tango of objectivity and subjectivity, is truth a possibility? Name: Mary (mferrell@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/16/2004 04:16 Link to this Comment: 8198 |
Mayr's interjections of his beliefs into his story, reminded me that all science stories are partially based on observation, and partially author imprinted. Mayr's contemporary mindset, needs and culture embellished his version of evolution. Although perhaps there is some truth in this scientific story, and maybe we can account for a small amount of bias (like in statistics), and claim that this story represents an accurate estimate of the truth. The story of Evolution does have a ton of observations and rationality supporting it. Oh, but then I think of the principal of uncertainty, the theory that we cannot 'simply observe' and report truthfully what an observation actually -- IS--because our method of observation always infects the observation. Well, I guess then, that we will have to account for a bit more bias. As well, we, readers contribute to the story of Evolution, embellishing it along the way with our own mindsets, etc.... We create the story as we learn it, recall it and retell it.
QUESTION: I wonder why the majority of stories on evolution
that are being told
and remembered,
use competition as the dominant pattern of Evolution? It is a story being told as 'survival of the fittest'.
QUESTION: Why not think of evolution as survival of the luckiest random change? Not a good enough sound bite? No, I bet there is more to it than that.
Are scientific stories advancing humanity firmly toward the truth? The way I see it, the scientific story of Evolution is a great story. It has biases and belief systems intermixed, but it does seem to have truth mixed in as well.
Name: reeve (rbasom@haverford.edu) Date: 02/16/2004 09:33 Link to this Comment: 8202 |
Two things from Mayr. 1) What did you think of Mayr's explanation of human races (pg. 262-3)? I'm not sure I'm satisfied with his version. I think there is a lot more to understanding the social construction of race and the absence of a biological basis for race.
2) In appendix A Mayr lists one unanswered question that persists within evolutionary theory. This question has to do with the complexity of genotypes and various levels of resistance to recombination. I would like to better understand this persisting question and the extent of the unknown that it represents in evolutionary theory.
Name: Susan (swillis@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/16/2004 15:40 Link to this Comment: 8215 |
| This book... Name: Nancy (nevans@BMC) Date: 02/16/2004 20:30 Link to this Comment: 8229 |
I guess because I am from small town, bible belt, Georgia, I know a good lot of people who go to church every Sunday and thank God for creating them, the grass, their dog. I think Dennett's approach to creationism (saying that in its most basic form it is something that only an insane, deluded person would believe in) is exactly the kind of 'othering' (organizing categories to delineate who is in the outgroup vs who is 'right') that keeps more people from venturing into the world of evolution.
The Copernicus analogy, (near the very beginning of the book), seemed to hint that religion is 'behind the times', so to speak, and that in a hundred years or so, new scholars will be scoffing at the ridiculousness of the naivite of it all.
I suppose thats all for now. I''m not sure about this book; I feel suspicious if it and almost as if I'm being tricked. Maybe I will think of a better way to explain this later....
| Loneliness Name: Elizabeth Deacon (edeacon@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/17/2004 00:29 Link to this Comment: 8238 |
Perhaps it's odd to view belief in aliens in the same way as belief in God, but there are parallels. You get your hard-core contingent, the religious fundamentalists on one side and the SETI people on the other, and you get your more casual believers, people who celebrate Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny or think Star Trek is really cool. Mayr, skeptic about everything except science as he is, thinks they're all being silly.
This brings up a lot of questions for me. For example, what does Mayr believe in? Does everyone have to really believe in something other than the cold hard facts around them? That one's a yes, of course, he has to believe what his senses, unreliable as they always are, tell him. Is it silly to believe in God or intelligent aliens? Is one sillier than the other? How about believing in fairies? I suppose fairies are closer to us, easier to disprove, not as flexible. By flexible I mean that if we find out God didn't do something people used to think he did, like create each and every species, He's still God, He just did something different with His time. If there aren't aliens on Mars, they could still live on Alpha Centari (small furry creatures from Alpha Centari for evah! Okay, I'll stop). Fairies, on the other hand, can be more easily disproved since they're supposed to live closer.
Of course, just because something is disproved to one person doesn't mean it's completely disproved. Mayr is clearly convinced through and through that Creationism is disproved, but I bet you could get a religious fundamentalist to read through this book and they'd still be convinced that all the creatures were set down as they are now six thousand years ago in Eden.
Name: Fritz Dubuisson (fdubuiss@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/17/2004 01:43 Link to this Comment: 8243 |
| time and ... Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/17/2004 10:07 Link to this Comment: 8248 |
If we think of the brain as working in terms solely of the present producing the next present, then the past exists only insofar as it is represented in the present and the future doesn't yet exist (more or less from language group, right?)
Therefore, only the present is "real", and the notion of time as a location, standard in physics, is odd (your notion from physics class, anticipated in last year's time symposium; see http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/time/chen.html for the "block model" vs "naive model" distinction and http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/time/time.html for my thoughts about this in re brain).
Importantly, this inference presumes a non-deterministic universe, ie there is nothing "odd" about the block model if the every present absolutely determines the next future and has been absolutely determined by the previous past. In that case, knowing the way the brain works just illustrates a limitation of the brain; that the brain is locked in the present is the problem/limitation for humans; that is the oddity, not the notion of time as a location. That's interesting in its own right ... it matters a lot whether one starts the story with the brain or with physics.
Things look different from different reference frames, so maybe the two ways of seeing time are the same thing represented in different reference frames (you from physics, yes?) Two diverging (?) tracks from there, one you started down from physics, the metaphor from physics of time differing in different reference frames .... perhaps still worth pursuing but we ran into a block since those time variations occur to a noticeable extent only at large relative velocities.
The other the flatland (csem, story evol) idea that new spaces can come into being/be created by drawing a perpendicular to existing spaces. If the brain had a way of noticing that the state of locations in itself were particular values out of an infinite array of possible values, then it would bring into existence a perpendicular for some (all) locations, and, in so doing, lay a groundwork for subsequently creating the idea of time (in pursuit of finding an explanation of the particular state it observes in itself in the present). Along this track, one part of the brain creates the block model of time as an offshoot of its effort to make sense of changes in another part of the brain; time as a location is a by-product of story telling.
Lots of possible routes of exploration, new stories, seem to be to be radiating out from all this. Thanks to Bethany, all for bringing it into being.
| time Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/17/2004 13:19 Link to this Comment: 8249 |
thank you for such an interesting topic... can't wait to talk more about it... :)
| MORE about sex Name: Kat (kmccormi@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/17/2004 14:35 Link to this Comment: 8251 |
My interest in this quote became stronger when I began to think about sexual reproduction as representative of interaction/togetherness and asexual reproduction as isolation/uniqueness. Isn't it interesting, then, that a tendency towards interdependence would be biologically prefered, despite the drastically increased "efficiency" of asexual reproduction?
| some poetry for ya'all Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/17/2004 16:47 Link to this Comment: 8254 |
also, when in the human evolution did this consious part of the brain evolve? and is this consious part the part that as mayr says defines us as husmans? or is it the other part?
and i like the scientific definition of consiousness, but then what is self -consiouness? it seems as though there is not a diferentiation between the two.
and did grobstein say that the primary mind (the one without consiousness) is the one that does not have a sense of time? or is it the consious mind?
and i'm wondering if time is a manmade construction that doesn't actually exist.
and TS Eliot is a god.
and i'll just quote to you for a while:
"time past and time future / what might have been and what has been / point to one end, which is always present."
"at the still point of the turning world. neither flesh nor / fleshless; / neither from not toward; at the still point, there the dance / is, / But neither arrest nor movement. and do not call it fixity, / where past and future are gathered."
"Time past and time future / allow but a little consiousness / TO BE CONSIOUS IS NOT TO BE IN TIME."
or is it that time is what is and consiousness, this second brain, is not real? is this second brain manmade?
and then he writes, "words move, music moves / only in time; but that which is only living / can only die. words, after speech, reach / into the silence."
we move, we evolve, we tell our stories, say our words to escape this "only living" which "can only die." there is something else that i am missing. we live for meaning. and we are always scrambling to acheive this meaning. we are under the impression that more life may enable us to acheive this meaning. if i were convinced that my life had meaning NOW then i would be content to die. but, no one is content to die, no one feels as though their life has meaning.
life is not 'just wanting more,' change is essential, movement and breath are essential. words cannot just pin, they move in the silence, are digested and processed, and destroy US.
oh man, please read eliot's four quartets, i am forced to paraphrase for the sake of space but he talks about how he (the god of writing in the past century) has waisted his time trying to be precise with words and he inevitably fails because time moves and when he tries to peirce the moment with words the moment is already gone. he writes that words are 'shabby equitment always deteriorating" and his feelings are left as "undisciplined squads of emotion" - IS THIS LIFE WITHOUT CONSIOUSNESS? IS THIS LIFE WITHOUT THE SECOND BRAIN? are words a tool we use to discipline ourselves?
and then he keeps going and says that when he does figure out how to say something he finds that someone has already says it then he writes, "BUT THERE IS NO COMPETITION- THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT TO RECOVER WHAT HAS BEEN LOST AND FOUND AND LOST AGAIN AND AGAIN: AND NOW, UNDER CONDITIONS THAT SEEM UNPROPITOUS. BUT PERHAPS NEITHER GAIN NOR LOSS. FOR US, THERE IS ONLY THE TRYING. THE REST IS NOT OUR BUSINESS."
we tell these stories and they inevitably fail because ourSELVES, and words and moments move and are never stagnant enough to capture. but FOR US THERE IS ONLY THE TRYING, for us there is only the story telling.
and i think what he is argue is that we tell stories, we try to discipline, we try to live out of time and this is our futile attempt to make meaning, but the only place to have meaing is "the unattended moment, the moment in and out of time, the distraction fit, lost in a shaft of funlight, the wild thyme unseen , or the winter lightning of the waterfall, or music heard so ddeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts. "
LIFE=MEANING. we are the meaning that we are searching for.
((i have not idea what that means, but i trust elliot.))
thanks for helping me to think all that!
ps sorry for all the englishy stuff...this class is crosslisted...
| this actually makes a little sense, i think Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/18/2004 11:43 Link to this Comment: 8263 |
| freud and the brain Name: nancy (nevans@bmc) Date: 02/18/2004 20:58 Link to this Comment: 8275 |
The other day, in class, as I was mulling over things from my corner, I was struck by an interesting idea for my paper. I run the risk of admitting I haven't formally begun my paper yet, but I think it is going to be some sort of synthesis of evolution/freud/and the idea of a shared or collective nature of the unconscious that contains enough similarity to allow us to evolve. I know its kind of foggy, it is to me at this point, but i think I can get somewhere with this!
I guess I am writing this because it's strange that scientists recognize the parts of the brain that control the unconscious, but in a completely different way. I guess it may just be the way I am prepared to use 'conscious' and 'unconscious' right now. hmm.
ps-- I hate dennett less. hes pretty smart, i guess
Name: Heather Davis (Anonymous) Date: 02/19/2004 02:38 Link to this Comment: 8286 |
ps-I found this definition of Altruism interesting: "Instinctive cooperative behavior that is detrimental to the individual but contributes to the survival of the species."
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/19/2004 20:51 Link to this Comment: 8298 |
| Thought and Language Name: c. sante (schamovi@haverford.edu) Date: 02/20/2004 01:08 Link to this Comment: 8304 |
| Errors in Dennett...according to Dennett Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/20/2004 06:47 Link to this Comment: 8305 |
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/errors.html
| the evolution of a creation story Name: orah (ominder@bmc) Date: 02/20/2004 10:26 Link to this Comment: 8310 |
have a wonderful weekend, friends! (( especially the froshies ))
| the evolution of a creation story Name: Charles DaCosta (dacostas@post10.tele.dk) Date: 02/20/2004 15:40 Link to this Comment: 8319 |
Could these two accounts be of two seperate beginnings? AND
Could the genus beginning have brought about somethings that were not "selected", therefore requiring a new beginning? OR
Could it be argued that, together, they allude to part of the evolution of "GOD"?
Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/21/2004 07:31 Link to this Comment: 8328 |
I found an abstract of a book called "Thinking Without Words" by José Luis Bermúdez. He begins with a familiar phrase, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" and uses it as the springboard to discuss inference and presumption as an aspect of thought. As an aside, I don't even think the quote needs a question mark.
Which led me to thinking about games of strategy...like chess and tennis (or even complex, real-time negotiation maneuvers in cross-cultural settings...), where I don't think I think in words before making moves. Or what about when we enter a classroom and pick where to sit—do we think in words before picking our spot?
But, but, but...did evolving abilities to speak lead to further refinement of the brain and to the capacity for thought, or vice versa? Is "internalized thought" different in some important ways from thought without out words?
Speech is food for thought. Thought is food for speech...and what is it with proverbs?
Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/21/2004 07:59 Link to this Comment: 8330 |
Altruism according to American Heritage: (1)"Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness;" OR 2) "Zoology. Instinctive cooperative behavior that is detrimental to the individual but contributes to the survival of the species." The word can be found in both Greek (allos) and Latin (alter) root words, which mean "other."
It's the second meaning that got me going and posting again. Zoology. Animals exhibit altruism: bees die when they sting in order to their hive, ants go to war to protect their colony, mama bears protect their cubs.
Then there's that word, "INSTINCTIVE"...
Which got me thinking about aggression as the flip side of the coin. Darwin certainly allowed for aggression...survival of the fittest, struggle for survival at the level of the species. He speculated that the altruists in a species would die off (taking this trait with them) because of their selflessness. For example, think about a collective of animals that slows reproduction among its members when food supplies are short for a long period of time. Bet ya it's the altruistic ones that elect to curtail reproducing themselves.
Is altruism different in humans? Do thought and speech play a role? Is it also physiological, e.g., testosterone contributing aggression from some versus altruism from others--as two very different ways to achieve the same goal, i.e., "contribute to the survival of the species"?
| Correction to last post Name: ro. finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/21/2004 08:09 Link to this Comment: 8331 |
Is altruism different in humans? Do thought and speech play a role? Is it also physiological, e.g., the level of testosterone in a person (both men and women have and use testoserone) that tips a person's instinct towards aggression or altruism --as two very different ways to achieve the same goal, i.e., "contribute to the survival of the species"?
| thought and language, science and religion, physical and moral worlds.... Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/21/2004 08:34 Link to this Comment: 8334 |
Want to toss into the mix two reviews from the 2/26/04 New York Review of Books. The first speaks to the questions several of you pose above about the relation of thought and language (see "the redemptive power of language" for a review of a just-republished book by Helen Keller). The second is a new book by Richard Dawkins, A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hopes, Lies, Science and Love, which pushes the idea of a selfish replicator beyond genes to cultural entities (those "memes" Dennett talks about at such length). Dawkins is a well-known science-booster/religion-basher; this reviewer tries to get him out of that bind/binary by saying that "scientific beliefs are propositions about the state of the world; religious beliefs are an attempt to attach meaning or value to the world. Religion and science thus move in different dimensions." I think the questions so many of you asked this week--about how we can move from biological changes over time to altruism--suggests that we, as a class, are not quite ready to dis-attach the study of the phsycial universe from discussions of meaning, value and ethics. Understanding the first DOES seem to us to have important implications for the second...
keep on reading Dennett. And stay tuned for further discusion of altruism on Tuesday--
| My current state Name: Mary (mferrell@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/22/2004 03:27 Link to this Comment: 8346 |
Words try to capture the fleeting moments, and some wonderful poetry does slow it down for us to take a better look, ...but we continue to travel as electricity, and continue to experience. More words come. Words also on a continuum of time, the past words effect present words, which affects future words. (What you have all said in the forum is effecting my present words which will somehow effect the future words). We move, we evolve, we tell our stories...and the stories move and evolve because they are part of us. They are a function of our structure. I think the function of speech/storytelling has evolved because it helps us to survive better when we work together with others through communication. It just so happens that we have these other adaptive functional components called emotions and they have the ability to intertwine with speech/storytelling, hence storytelling's search for meaning, or expression of beauty, or fear, or happiness. And it all happened by chance. Quite remarkable isn't it? Of course, this is the way my story goes.
c. sante asks: Are thought and language inextricably linked? ... is thinking independent of linguistic ties ...
Ro gives her examples of thinking without words –tennis and chess, etc.. Makes me think of that 'in the zone feeling' when I am focused deeply with the experience of the current state. I've been there in tennis also Ro. And I've been there in the zone of thought and no language at other times – like when I read Orah's question from a previous posting – "How can we live believing that we are going to die someday and be nothing – not exist?" My mind responded by going into a deep place where I could feel some weight of the troublesome unknown. I could also feel the inhibiting force of shock that occurs when something is too painful to realize. Death........................Basically, I was just feeling. I was having a thought formulated by my emotions. Really there are no words to adequately relay how I felt. (I'm no TS Eliot). I feel like that a lot though. That my words are inadequate to describe the depth of my thoughts/feelings. So I guess, c. sante, I do feel that thought and language are separate from one another.
| swimming with(?) the tide Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/22/2004 11:10 Link to this Comment: 8347 |
So, seems to me that we need to talk a bit more not only about altruism, but also about where "word" comes from and how it relates to intention/meaning ... and consciousness (and "memes"?). Let's see what we can do with all that on Tuesday. Feel free, of course, to add whatever thoughts you're having, on that or anything else, between now and then.
| music heard so deeply... Name: em (emadsen@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/22/2004 12:48 Link to this Comment: 8350 |
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/22/2004 14:53 Link to this Comment: 8356 |
Two cars pull up to a red light. One car has a Jesus fish on the back, the other car sports a Darwin fish. The car with the Jesus fish revs its engine. The light changes and the cars speed off in competition. After a few moments the cars reach a cliff at the edge of the mountain. The car with the Jesus fish tumbles down the side and crashes. Simultaneously, the car with the Darwin fish coasts off of the side, sprouts wings, and flies away.
My friend is making a short film using this narrative. When she told me this story I immediately thought that I needed to share it with all of you. Do with it what you will, I'm only asking that you consider it. It speaks to me because I often observe this type of arrogance in devoutly religious people. I don't mean to attack Christianity at all, I of course think that this attitude is just as prevalant in my own religion. What do you all think? Do you read this story the same way that I do?
| on jesus, eliot, swimming, and absolute truth Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/22/2004 16:47 Link to this Comment: 8359 |
((ps get involved in your community ........vote for traditions))
| oh yeah ... Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/22/2004 18:47 Link to this Comment: 8363 |
Forgot to mention another interesting idea that arose this week: the notion that origin myths might have but don't NEED to have a time dimension to them. Some explanatory stories account for things in terms of patterns in the present instead of by history. Something is here because something else is there and some other thing is in a third place and the original something therefore has to be where it is because that's the PATTERN by which things are organized (this is another way to think of essentialism, of the story telling style favored by Plato and Aristotle, as opposed to the atomists).
So "story" (as per conversation with Anne in which this subject came up) can exist either with or without a narrative (ie time organized) form. And that in turn relates to an earlier conversation about differences between scientific and literary story telling. Science actually has an historical preference for the non-narrative story (don't tell me how you got to this view; tell me what the view is and what would most easily help me see it). And that's interesting because much of modern science (not only evolutionary thinking in biology) is being forced to deal with historical explanation. Despite which, it still attempts (in the sense just described) to "flatten" the story.
And THAT, of course, is interesting in re the earlier discussion of the brain and ITS flatness. So maybe flattening is the equivalent of "abstracting" and is essential to turn an historical explanation into something that can be "generalized", ie representing in a flat (no time axis) brain?
Yeah, a little cryptic (flat?). Maybe Anne will expand it.
| Thursday notes Name: julia (jeddy@bmc) Date: 02/22/2004 20:46 Link to this Comment: 8366 |
Another topic of interest was that we have no real memories; if i understand it correctly, we only have an imprinting in our mind of our body's state (emotional, physical, etc...) at the time of the memorable moment. It sounds like our brains are always piecing together and comparing imprints in order to translate into a "memory." So if we have no TRUE memories, only pieces and pieces that other people tell us, I wonder how much of my memories are untrue, and I know that they are fragmented. confusing.
Thirdly was this idea of having thoughts without having words. Possible? Immediately my mind goes back to the person that was brought up on Thursday, Helen Keller. Helen Keller must have had thoughts, she had emotions for sure, but they weren't words, or at least not words as we know them. Words as we know them... makes me think that so much of our knowledge must be somewhat limited in a way because of our need to translate everything to words. It seems to all come back to the wondering of what is being lost in this translation (excellent movie by the way)?
| indeterminacy Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/22/2004 21:06 Link to this Comment: 8369 |
Werner Heisenberg [in Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen]: "you have no absolutely determinate situation in the world, which among other things lays waste to the idea of causality, the whole foundation of science--because if you don't know how things are today you certainly can't know how they're going to be tomorrow....."
Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea (p. 408): "the indeterminacy that...others see as a flaw in Darwininan account of the evolution of meaning is actually a precondition for any such evolution....Meaning, like function...arises...by a (typically gradual) shift of circumstances...."
As we turn our heads, w/ Dennett's assistance, towards questions about the relationship between the stories science tells us about the nature of the universe, the new things science's stories can bring about in the universe, and the moral and ethical questions that these stories and these newly-made things raise for us...
I want bring into the discussion a production I saw last night by Lantern Theater Company @ St. Stephen's Theater (10th and Sansom, in Center City). The play was Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, which is a performance of multiple "drafts" (=re-enactments) of a famous encounter in Copenhagen in 1943, between the great German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his one-time mentor/also great physicist, the Danish Niels Bohr.
Heisenberg (evidently) asked Bohr something along the lines of, "Does a physicist has a moral right to work on the practical exploitation of atomic energy?" Bohr was (evidently) horrified @ the question--and what it "meant" (was Heisenberg working on an atomic bomb for the Nazis? did he know that one could be made? did he not know what critical mass was needed to sustain an effective chain reaction? had he not done the calculations, or done them incorrectly? had he done them correctly, and hidden the knowledge from others, so the Nazis could not produce a bomb? was he trying to get information from Bohr about what the Americans were up to?)--all these possibilities still exist in the realm of speculation, and the play begins w/ Heisenberg, Bohr and Bohr's wife Margrethe, long dead (!), but still playing and re-playing all the possibilities....
There's a way in which the play, though very VERY cleverly written and adroitly performed, struck me as ultimately "closed"--a constant re-shuffling of the same bits of matter, the same characters, that didn't really invite (it may not even allow) the audience to bring new questions to it--and you know how I feel about closed systems!
On the other hand, some of its central ideas seemed to me wonderful extensions of our class discussion, and I want to record two of them here, as bookmarks we may want/I hope to return to as we get deeper and deeper into cultural and ethical questions (as extensions of science) in this course.
One of the things that Margrethe brings to the conversation is a very concrete, grounded and personal dimension (Carol Gilligan long ago, in In a Different Voice, named this perspective "a woman's voice," and I found myself wondering how different the play would have been w/ two of these rather than one of them....) Anyhow, Margrethe is continually applying the understandings of theoretical physics to matters of psychology, in ways I found quite illuminating. For instance, when Heisenberg says that "measurement is not an impersonal event that occurs with impartial universality. It's a human act, carried out...from the one particular viewpoint of a possible observer...the universe exists only...within the limits determined by our relationships with it. Only through the understanding lodged inside the human head, " Margrethe asks just who the man is whom he puts @ the center of the universe, and insists that the answer matters:
"If it's Heisenberg at the center of the universe, then the one bit of the universe that he can't see is Heisenburg....so it's no good asking him why he came to Copenhagen in 1941. He doesn't know!" [She then goes on to tell her husband,] "That was the last and greatest demand that Heisenberg made on his friendship with you. To be understood when he couldn't understand himself. And that was the last and greatest act of friendship for Heisenberg that you performed...to leave him misunderstood." This idea that NOT knowing another--allowing them the privacy of NOT being known--can be an act of friendship--intrigues me, and intersects strikingly w/ a just-gotten-very-lively discussion in the Graduate Idea Forum (also fed by Carol Gilligan) about the dance of human relationships: our complimentary desires both to be known and not-to-be.
Margrethe makes "psychological" sense not only of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle but also of Bohr's complimentarity principle (in shorthand: particles are things, complete in themselves; waves are disturbances in something else; the behavior of an electron can be understood completely only by descriptions in both wave and particle form, but we can't see both @ the same time, or, in Margrethe's words,) "If you'd doing something you have to concentrate on you can't also be thinking about doing it, and if you're thinking about doing it then you can't actually be doing it...."
Also known as tacit knowledge, what we know without knowing that we know it, what we CAN'T know by looking @ directly... which is a topic for another day....
| expansion Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/22/2004 21:52 Link to this Comment: 8373 |
ALWAYS a dangerous invitation.
Picking up from Copenhagen, I'd say you could think about it this-a-way:
every idea can be understood either as a particle, a thing complete in itself (a scientific abstraction: concentrated, just what it looks like on the mountaintop, a birds' eye view), or as a wave, a disturbance in the universe (a humanistic expansion: a diffusion, an account of the whole landscape traversed to get there, seen from on-the-ground). So: when I explain an idea I have, I like to give a full account of how-I-got-there: I tell an elaborate story of where I was when who asked me what and why she said it and what I said back...that's the in-time account, one w/ a long history and lots of dimensions, lots of peaks and valleys. I'm not always sure just what should be foregrounded/what left in the background: it's not very selective, not "flattened" out @ all: it's not always clear which details in the story are the most important, so I keep them all in the telling, which is organized sequentially. (For an example, see Trees and Rhizomes.) In contrast, when Paul gives an account of an idea he has, he likes to begin just by saying what it IS and what's important in it, and then fill in w/ the observations/supporting data. All the historical details of how he got there/account of his journey/steps up the mountaintop aren't important in this sort of "flattened," out-of-time account, which is organized according to the pattern it makes. (For a contrastive example, see Emerging Emergence.)
This could be a scientist/humanist split, a male/female split, a conscious/unconscious split, an out-of-time/in-time split, a Platonic/historical split, a flattened/multi-dimensional split...or just (following Neils Bohr): complimentarity.
Two different ways of telling the same tale.
Sometimes the in-time narrative makes the better (=more useful) story;
sometimes it's the timeless numbers.
| Language and Thought Name: Elizabeth Deacon (edeacon@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/22/2004 23:25 Link to this Comment: 8379 |
On human thought and language, though. Language is definitely a boost to thought, at least to some point. At another, later point, it is a constraint on thought. As a boost it gives us a way to clearly define foggy thoughts and feelings and using these clearly defined ideas, move them around and see how they relate to each other, and see if they might relate better in a different way and what it would mean if they did. This is, in my opinion, the basis of basic communiaction and higher thought, including everything that contributes to college.
Language is also a constraint, though. This is visible in the fact that some languages have words that there is no equivalent for in other languages. For example, what exactly does schadenfreude (sp?) mean? Or frisson? You may comprehend the idea behind those words, but if you tried to explain those ideas solely in English you'd have a hard time of it. So, then, what would you do if you wanted to discuss those ideas but didn't have the German or French word to help you out? And what of all the ideas that have no word to describe them in any language? I know there must be some, must be a lot. Languages are finite and I don't think ideas ever can be. Languages are compartmentalized into words and suffixes and prefixed; ideas are huge, multidimensional continuums. And our minds, used to thinking with the relatively clear, modular parts of language, have a hell of a time trying to handle all those ideas without words and we often give up, leaving those ideas left alone unless we can come up with a good enough definition to assign a new word to, which only sometimes works.
So language is not the perfect aid to advanced thought, but it seems to be the best we've come up with so far, and it must be admitted that it does a fine job, as far as it goes.
| words words words Name: Elizabeth Catanese (ecatanes@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/23/2004 12:32 Link to this Comment: 8391 |
| Feeling Thinking Language Name: Lindsay (lupdegro@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/23/2004 12:36 Link to this Comment: 8392 |
| 500 meter mark Name: katherine (kpioli) Date: 02/23/2004 12:53 Link to this Comment: 8393 |
Tagging on to the question: does language and thought have to go hand in hand, or can we have one without the other? I am reminded of a similar question posed in a novel, The Art of Motorcycle Maintainence, which goes as follows: if there were a child born alive, but without any of our five senses- no sight, sound, taste, touch, smell- and if this child, through care from others, lived to reach its eighteenth birthday, would this child be able to form any thoughts?
This hypothetical question makes me think about where my own thoughts come from. After pondering this for a while I begin to think, aren't my thoughts just responses to the environment around me- to the sights and smells, etc? If I didn't have any senses I conclude, I would not have any thoughts. I would just be a machine taking things in and spitting them out- as in food turned to waste.
But does thought need language? Do our mental processes always need articulation? How many of you (us) think in pictures instead of words? I often think to myself in pictures. If I am preparing for something, going through the phases of a boat race in my head, seeing the 500 meter markers, feeling the pull of the oar and the slide of the shell, I don't need words, I need images. But, if I am preparing someone else for a race, I need laugauge to prepare them, to describe exactally how dead tired they will be at the last 500 meters, but how they will- must- keep pushing anyway. Being such socially dependent animals we need language, but that doesn't mean that though needs language. Language, however, is used to communicate an idea, so yeah, wouldn't that NEED a prior thought?
Name: Perrin (Pbraun@bmc) Date: 02/23/2004 19:48 Link to this Comment: 8401 |
I was also wondering about our definition of 'thinking.' To me, the word implies a means of reasoning and judging, but do we need to reason in words? For example, chimpanzees and other such animals don't (I think) have a structurally formal language like ours, but they are able to solve problems that occur in nature, which demonstrates their ability to do simple reasoning. So have chimps and other animals been able to think without words? In a way, could that make them "higher" organisms because they don't need to rely on extraneous/verbal thought?
| The Language of the World - Alchemy Name: Aia Hussein (ahussein@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/23/2004 19:53 Link to this Comment: 8402 |
Our Lady Mary, with the Baby Jesus in her arms, decided to come down to Earth and visit a monastery. The monks proudly joined in a long queue, each eager to pay their respect to the Virgin and her Child. One read poetry, the other showed paintings, another read the names of all the saints, one after the other praising the Mother and Child.
The last monk of the monastery, the humblest of them all, who had never studied the learned books of the time, came for his turn. Ashamed, conscious of the disapproving looks of the monks around him, he took a few oranges from his bag, tossed them into the air, and began juggling.
It was at that moment the Baby Jesus smiled and started to clap his hands. The Virgin reached out her arms, inviting him to hold the baby. (Paraphrased from the original)
Coelho states that the language of the universe can not be captured in pictures or words. (Earlier postings talk of this phenomenon...not finding the words to describe a situation, feeling that language is actually a limiting process), and that, as humans, because we are so fascinated with language and words we forget about the language of the universe. I think language as we know it has an intimate relationship with our thoughts, but only because we have made it so. When a baby cries, before s/he is able to articulate its feelings, we know it is because s/he is scared, upset, hungry, etc... Aren't these emotions also in an intimate relationship with the thought process? Regardless of the absence of language?
In the above quotation, Santiago has to turn himself into the wind or else he will be killed by Bedouins in the desert. He succeeds in turning himself into the wind only after he abandons his earthliness and gives himself up to the universe where he is able to "talk" to the desert and wind, convincing the both of them to help him.
| beginings without intent...absolute truths....an explanation needed Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/24/2004 16:44 Link to this Comment: 8461 |
Name: ro. finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/24/2004 18:53 Link to this Comment: 8464 |
IF we are the product of a serendipitous process which, itself, originated serendipitously , AND we have evolved to being capable of creating and evolving stories, and therefore, our own story, THEN we can and probably will (have already? e.g., cultural evolution, evolutionary epistemology...) reshape the process that created and shaped us, which will shape new things that may affect us...etc, etc, etc....including what we view as absolute truth, and this,too, may change. It's all in our heads.
The game of life progresses from chaos to order, but never in the same ordered configuration.
Time to feed the dog, who knows nothing about such things and depends upon the same monotonous structure '-)
| go with me here... Name: em (emadsen@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/24/2004 21:51 Link to this Comment: 8470 |
"Many Worlds"
A physicist proposes time does not exist, only an infinite number of dramas, grand or banal, in different locations: a Wyoming ant hefts a leaf and begins the blind trek home. Nancy nicks her thumb chopping arugala in Manhattan. Sheets of rain batter the empty head of a seagull hunkered down amid blonde grasses. A Sudanese teenager takes the first of nineteen steps toward a landmine he will, or will not, trip with his left foot. A star in a tri-folded galaxy sputters and implodes. And so forth, ad infinitum. I read about this while drinking a steaming hot Columbian blend on the day we call, for convenience sake, Sunday.
But if there is not time, I wonder as I take antoher sip, why do I keep needing stronger glasses? And, if time is to be summarily tossed onto some landfill, wouldn't we be wise to hire a caretaker, an experienced force to guard the perimeter? One would not want the Spanish Inquisition leaking into Stonington, for example, where I currently reside. And I do not like to imagine walking the frozen streets of Buffalo, New York, and bumping into myself at the age of two, bundled in my mother's arms as she hurries me into the hospital, my appendix burst, my time running out.
How immediately I bend the poor physicist's notion to my own fears and wishes... Why must I understand every idea in terms of myself, my own little life and death? In all probability I misunderstand him completely and do not, as usual, know what I'm talking about. I wish I could step outside, into one of the many worlds to the left and right of me. The boy recovered, in time, and lived. But if time does not exist then why, as I continue sipping, does my sorrow deepen?
Name: orah (Anonymous) Date: 02/24/2004 21:52 Link to this Comment: 8471 |
ps i don't think life is a game and i don't know what IMO stands for.
Name: (Anonymous) Date: 02/24/2004 21:55 Link to this Comment: 8472 |
Name: emily s. (esenerth@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/24/2004 22:52 Link to this Comment: 8478 |
dillard was preoccupied with the idea of simply existing, as opposed to assigning cultural, or verbal, meanings to her surroundings. she describes this as "...less like seeing than like being..." and strives to attain this state throughout the book. according to her, "consciousness itself does not hinder living in the present. in fact, it is only a heightened awareness that the great door to the present opens at all. even a certain amount of interior verbalization is helpful to enforce the memory of whatever it is that is taking place...self-consciousness, however, does hinder the experience of the present. it is the one instrument that unplugs all the rest." dillard has an interesting perspective on the interaction of humans with the rest of nature- she believes that it is preferable to abandon some of our evolved self-consciousness in favor of experiencing the rest of the world with fewer filters, including language. for her, the condition of being in what she terms "the present" is simply thought without language.
abbey as well struggled with the limits of verbalization versus purely experiencing nature. in particular, he resisted personification of natural phenomena, animals especially. "i am not attributing human motives to my snake and bird acquaintances. i recognize that when and where they serve purposes of mine they do so for beautifully selfish resons of their own. which is exactly the way it should be." this is another way of saying that snakes and birds are "model makers." to really understand them is to avoid language which will incorrectly assign them consciousness. of course, this is incredibly tempting for humans, who cannot imagine life without self-consciousness. especially story tellers such as abbey who have very few other options if they want to give readers an idea of what a snake or a bird seems to be.
in his introduction, abbey states that "it will be objected that the book deals too much with mere appearances, with the surface of things, and fails to engage and reveal the patterns of unifying relationships which form the true underlying reality of existence. here i must confess that i know nothing whatever about true underlying reality, having never met any...for my own part i am pleased enough with surfaces- in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance." in a way, abbey is right. do we really need to give verbal and conscious significance to the rest of the world in order to appreciate it? what is the benefit of analyzing nature and determining the "true underlying reality?" abbey as well seems to believe that thought can exist in the absence of language- on the surface- and that this condition is preferable to becomming bogged down in rhetoric.
Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/25/2004 08:20 Link to this Comment: 8484 |
Orah wrote: "if you don't cling to absolute truths to what do you cling? and if you don't cling how do you live? seriously. i need to know. it's upsetting."
I wish there were something I could conjure that would allay your angst. What works for me may not work for anyone else. I cling to absolute possibility. Discontinuity creates space. It thrusts us forward and keeps us on our toes. I like that. Intuitively, it feels safer to keep moving, to accumulate more adaptive traits. In my mind, stasis attends absolute truth, and "just believing" in something may be the ultimate risk, even if —in the beginning— certain truths was not manmade. Perhaps that's why so many of us have questions we cannot shake. Maybe a questioning mind is a trait that has been 'selected for' for our own survival.
em--thank you for skinner's poem.
| thank you, ro! Name: orah (Anonymous) Date: 02/25/2004 09:07 Link to this Comment: 8485 |
| and on ... Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/25/2004 10:08 Link to this Comment: 8486 |
I made in fact already a few small changes in the Tuesday notes (in the "altruism" subhead of "language based culture") to bring out a point that was in the background (my brain) but not probably not explicit enough. Remember that this is A story (one I'm working on), not THE story, so others can use or not use it and any piece of it insofar as it is useful in their own story writing. And yes, it is a story of ongoing (eternal?) change, with some perhaps troubling implications.
It is NOT, though, a story of purely random change, nor of aloneness, nor of "meaninglessness". It is a story of the ongoing exploration of what can be, of a present whose richness (and limitations) are built from the past and that it turn serves as the basis for future exploration, all endowed with whatever meaning we individually and collectively wish to give it (or not give it). It is (for me at least) a story of space, of room and wherewithal, of connectedness to each other/other organisms/the universe, and of opportunity to bring into being what has not been and what one dreams might be.
People are different from one another, and that's in fact an important part of the story, an ingredient without which exploration would (at least by humans) be much less generative, the future much less spacious. I for one am more than willing to trade in "absolutes" and whatever benefits they offer for the room created by their absence. But others need to make those kinds of choice/write their stories in their own ways. That's part of the story.
| smart friends, another revision, and a question NEEDING answer. Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/25/2004 16:28 Link to this Comment: 8492 |
friend 2: "I do think there has to be some kind of universal constant that connects all of us. I don't necessarily think we can prove this is the case, but neither do I think we can prove it is not. To me truth is equated with God in many ways, as if there is no absolute truth how could god exist? I think our acceptance of truth is born out of necessity, and I find that necessity eventually leads us to faith, which is the only way we can approach this question.
maybe there is no one answer, but instead each of us responds with our own faith and that must be what allows us to cling to something--anything. Truth will always be subject to interpretation, and depending on what place we're at we'll respond differently. That's part of what troubles me...we'll all always be at different places, i.e., we never arrive at full maturity or truth or nirvana or whatever you want to call it (not in this lifetime anyways?), so we'll never be able to jugde just what truth is. We're constantly affected by our world view, background, environment, etc. I do think it's hard to relate to people who operate only on scientific principles since they can't identify with the element of faith which is so crucial to our line of thought. But I do believe at some point they will need either to choose faith or to choose unhappiness."
i think a lot, so my views are CONSTANTLY changing...and sometimees i look back over past thoughts, things i've said, past postings, and cringe a little bit because now i don't fully beleive what i previously said so addamently. so, i revise: it's okay if we aren't all clinging. it makes me feel better that if i am pained: others are pained. if i am scrammbling: others are scrambling. but, as one of my friends said: isn't it okay if i cling with the clingers while others don't cling at all. yeh, i guess so. i kinda wish we'd all cling together, but i'll live my way and you live your way...
and i guess the reason i feel so threatened by the prospect of there being no absolute truth is because THAT is what I NEED. i really really really need there to be a constant out there, becaues that's why i'm here.
so, i'll conclude these obnoxiously long thoughts with this longish question:
i don't think everyone should be allowed to tell their own story. i disallow you to tell your story if it physically harms others. i disallow militant racists to tell their story. but we MUST draw the exact line of whose story is allowed and whose story is not allowed. so, i ask: where is that line drawn?? ya'all obviously affected me with the whole "there are no absolute truths," but was i so affected that you should be disallowed from telling your story?? obviously not. should we all just shut up and tell our stories to those who we know aggree with us?? i don't think so. should mel gibson be able to tell his story even if it might insight others to violence?? should bush be allowed to impose his story on us??
tell me! who gets to tell her story and who doesn't?
| How free... Name: daniela (dmiteva@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/25/2004 22:17 Link to this Comment: 8509 |
According to this description of memes, an individual cannot generate germane memes without being influenced from other people. Does this mean that our thinking is dependent on other people's thinking? Can a person live alone insolated from other human beings and be creative? Original? Can a person generate something that has never existed before? Or is imagination a new way of putting old elements together?
Do we have control of the processing of the memes? On one hand, their influence may be too subtle for us to perceive it, so that we may turn into " a sort of dungheap in which the larvae of other people's ideas renew themselves..." (346).
Another opportunity exists.If we happen to somehow resist the influence of the memes, and try to stick with our own, may we eventually be turned into pariahs, because our way of thinking differs from that of society? So, we do conform sometimes to the social way of processing memes? Of course, we will remodel them in accordance with the idiosyncrasies of our brains, but the attribute of the meme stays the same (this process emulates the renga pictures in a way. Thus, certain different cultures are formed.
So, does the freedom to be unique exist?
| I'm agrivated!!! Name: Patricia (ppalermo) Date: 02/25/2004 23:37 Link to this Comment: 8512 |
| look at all the lovely flowers... Name: bethany keffala (Anonymous) Date: 02/26/2004 11:40 Link to this Comment: 8523 |
About Paul's pattern idea, the one about the clock on the wall, telling the story without relying on time: Your story requires a pattern, right? And REcognizing a pattern requires MEMORY, right? Does that mean anything? Is that relying on time? Or maybe I don't understand...
Another thought about language and...thought :) - I don't know if everyone is familiar with the case of Genie, (sp?) but this may help shed more light on what we've been wrestling with...
- So, there was this girl, who lived, I think in California? She was horribly abused by her family in the following way: They kept her locked in a room, strapped to a chair, and periodically brought her food. They wouldn't talk to her, and she had only brief contact with either parent. She was found years later, after the vital period for language acquisition. She could not speak, she had no language. Psychologists taught her rudimentary English, an extremely difficult task. In fact, she never really took to it, it was just too late, and she eventually lost all the little she had learned. HOWEVER! When she did have some use of this semi-communicative ability, she was able to describe her experience during the abuse. What does this mean? She remembered her experiences from before she had language. She was thinking before she had language.
hmmm...more to say...I have to agree with Orah- I think I need the concept of absolute truth, too. It just seems to fit, I know this is a horribly unscientific way to look at it, but I feel that it exists, my intuition tells me that it exists.
ooops...class is starting...more later...
Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/26/2004 13:19 Link to this Comment: 8526 |
| more puzzle pieces Name: bethany keffala (Anonymous) Date: 02/26/2004 14:21 Link to this Comment: 8527 |
ok...absolute truth...yes. Perhaps I shall come back to that later? It gets away from an idea I had in between now and when I posted before... just remind me about falling vases and then I'll ask you a question...
In response to Em's post about struggling with time as something made up, and especially the bit about running into your two year-old self, I think the important thing to remember is that each state, each present, is the context for the next state, the next present...does this have to do with laws? Someone was talking about laws...was that Orah? Maybe the laws are like programming rules...they dictate which outputs are possibilities for which inputs...
So! I was thinking, and I think I saw something interesting. I was mulling over language and thought and their relationship, and this is what I came up with. When we come up with theories, or just with ordinary thoughts/observations, it seems like they are in an expanded form in our heads. In order to transmit these thoughts (assuming they are complex enough for a gesture or a glance to be insufficient) to someone else, we have to put them into words. We contract our ideas into these words, and then speak them, they find their way into the ear of whomever we are talking to, where they expand again, perhaps in the configuration in which they were expanded in our heads, perhaps not. (Understanding versus Misunderstanding?) This reminds me of those little capsules that they used to give us in the bathtub, you know...they look like colored gel-caps and then you put them in the water and then they explode into little sponge dinosaurs and things...hehehe. Ok. but the second part of this idea was connected to altruism...when we give someone a gift, or help, or when we act kindly towards them, is this a contraction of our feelings? In other words, there are our feelings, expanded in ourselves, and then an action, a gift, a gesture, which contracts what we are feeling, is symbolic of it, and is intended to create a certain feeling in the receiver...Anyone else see this?
(expanded)IDEA >> (contracted) LANGUAGE >> (expanded) IDEA [maybe same, maybe not]
(expanded)FEELING >> (contracted) GIFT >> (expanded) FEELING [maybe same, maybe not]
alright...well, I've lost my train of thought. please let me know if you find it :) thanks
| rhythm, memes and uniqueness Name: Elizabeth Catanese (ecatanes@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/26/2004 17:13 Link to this Comment: 8529 |
Another thing that I was thinking was, exactly what did happen when I gave directions to the person looking for Thomas. Before I could say where it was, I said, it's a big grey building. So a picture came into my mind first, then I described the picture in my mind and only then was able to get to the how do I get there part... actually by this point the person had given up on me, nodded like it was apparent that she had picked the wrong person to ask and was already driving off... I know people for whom there is virtually no lag time when a directional question is asked. I can sympathize quite a lot with people who give directions based upon floating over a place.
Finally I'm thinking about newness. And I'm thinking about Elizabeth D's hub cap wearing and the phychoanalysis example and how it all relates to pattern making... When trying to create a new meme (not that anyone does this particularly conciously)... I guess what i'm trying to say is when creating a new anything... essay, piece of artwork, thought... it is not always necessary to look explicitly at what already exists and has existed and to get caught up in the past... because then you can't make any leaps... In retrospect it's good to know that what you've done was done before in a certain way but in the process of doing it sometimes you've just got to trust that your subconcious mind (taped into a collective unconcious?... perhaps a whole new thing to be explored) will do what it has to do to create something meaningful for people (independent of whether its entirely new). If it is not new, it can still be unique, special, revolutionary, life-changing, humanity altering etc... So whether or not something is entirely new doesn't matter. It's the unique, special revolutionary part that matters...
I'm thinking about the concept of being too far fetched, too far out there- I think that there are these constraints on thought, on society in general- negative cultural memes I guess stereotypes would be examples...although that's not precisely what I mean...
People are strongly connected to things from the past, so that patterns can be derived... but it's the things which seem inherently patternless at first which can be the most unique, innovative... but only particular people can make enough of a leap so as to convince people to make the leap with them... to enter into a world with an unfamiliar framework and extreme recombination of thought. I think that installation artists and multi-media artists are able to perform this societal function to a great extent... But because of pattern making convention, sometimes society limits itself.
One example of this would be object connotations... It's debatable the extent to which a nude body will not in some way bring up sexual connotations... Context or artist intent can help to change this slightly but, in general this will always be imbedded meaning. It's things like this which frustrate me- things that close the system down slightly. Objects and words gather baggage over time...and this bagage counteracts the development of the unique... I don't know if it can be another way but it is interesting to note how what we use to communicate while expanding the potential for understanding, can also limit it in a variety of ways.
| WARNING: VERY LONG POST AHEAD Name: Perrin (Pbraun@bmc) Date: 02/26/2004 17:57 Link to this Comment: 8532 |
On another random note, I was taught in psychology that there is a "critical period" for language acquisition (as per Chomsky) and that if you "don't use it, you lose it." Bethany, I watched a video about Genie! If this hypothesis is correct, then Genie would never be able to speak properly. She was subsequently never able to master the syntax and semantics of language, even after years of training. I guess this disproves the theory that grammar is inherent to all humans?
This is relevant, I swear. In terms of our discussion of words and/or language, I was wondering if we dream in words AND pictures. I only seem to remember visuals in my dreams and never words. This brings me to my next point...I think that emotions are the foundations of our words. Meaning that before verbal expression, there were feelings. For example, little children who haven't learned to verbalize their emotions may cringe when watching a scary movie. BUT it is only when they become aware of their cringing that they can put a label on their emotion and say out loud that they feel afraid. I think that all of our words can be traced back to our emotions, so is language purely selfish?
More randomness. The following is an African folktale that I read as a child about the origin of stories that I was arbitrarily reminded of today, so I looked it up on the internet for your enjoyment =) It's pretty interesting when you contrast it with the Paul and Anne's perspective; although I think that science is such a large part of our life now that this story is completely unbelievable to me, but something to think about nonetheless...maybe this is how memes came into existence too? Perhaps this can explain the "very first meme" that was discussed in Anne's discussion group today? Anyway, here it is:
It was long ago in Africa, when there was First Spider, Kwaku Anansi. He went everywhere, throughout the world, traveling on his strong web strings - sometimes looking more like a wise old man than a spider. In that long-ago time, child, there were no stories on Earth for anyone to tell. The sky-god kept all stories to himself, up high in the sky, and locked away in a wooden box. These the spider wanted, as many creatures had before him, so that he could know the beginnings and endings of things. Yet all who had tried for the stories had returned empty-handed. Now Anansi climbed up his web to the sky-god, Nyame, to ask for the sky-god's stories.
When the powerful sky-god saw the thin, spidery, old man crawling up to his throne, he laughed at him, "What makes you think that you, of all creatures, can pay the price I ask for my stories?"
Spider only wanted to know, "What is the price of the stories?"
"My stories have a great price, four fearsome, elusive creatures: Onini, the python that swallows men whole; Osebo, the leopard with teeth like spears; Mmoboro, the hornets that swarm and sting; and Mmoatia, the fairy who is never seen. Bring these to me."
Bowing, the spider quietly turned and crept back down through the clouds. He ment to capture the four creatures he needed as price for the stories. He first asked his wife, Aso, how he might capture Onini, the python that swallows men whole.
She told him a plan, saying, "Go and cut off a branch of the palm tree and cut some string-creeper as well. Take these to the stream where python lives."
As Anansi went to the swampy stream, carrying these things, he began arguing aloud, "This is longer than he; You lie, no; it Is true; this branch is longer and he is shorter, much shorter."
The python was listening, and asked what spider was talking about, "What are you muttering, Anansi?"
"I tell you that my wife, Aso, is a liar, for she says that you are longer than this palm branch and I say that you are not."
Onini, the python, said, "Come and place the branch next to me and we will see if she is a liar."
And so, Anansi put the palm branch next to the python's body, and saw the large snake stretch himself alongside it. Ananasi then bound the python to the branch with the string-creeper and wound it over and over - nwenene! nwenene! nwenene! - until he came to the head. Then the spiderman said to Onini, "Fool, I will now take you to the sky-god."
This Anansi did as he spun a web around the snake to carry him back through the clouds to the sky kingdom.
On seeing the gigantic snake, Nyame merely said, "There remains what still remains."
Spider came back to Earth to find the next creature, Osebo the leopard, with teeth like spears.
His wife, Aso, told him, "Go dig a large hole."
Anansi said, "I understand, say no more."
After following the tracks of the leopard, spider dug a very deep pit. He covered it over with the branches of the trees and came home. Returning in the very early morning, he found a large leopard lying in the pit.
"Leopard, is this how you act? You should not be prowling around at night; look at where you are! Now put your paw here, and here, and I will help you out."
The leopard put his paws up on the sticks that Anansi placed over the pit and began to climb up. Quickly, Anansi hit him over the head with a wooden knife - gao! Leopard fell back into the pit - fom! Anansi quickly spun the leopard to the sticks with his web string.
"Fool, I am taking you to pay for the sky-god's stories."
But the sky-god recieved the leopard saying, "What remains, still remains."
Next the spiderman went looking for Mmoboro, the hornets that swarm and sting.
Spider told his wife, Aso, what he was looking for and she said, "Look for an empty gourd and fill it with water."
This spider did and he went walking through the bush until he saw a swarm of hornets hanging there in a tree. He poured out some of the water and sprinkled it all over their nest. Cutting a leaf from a nearby banana tree, he held it up and covered his head. He then poured the rest of the water from the gourd all over himself. Then while he was dripping he called out to the hornets,
"The rain has come, do you see me standing here with a leaf to cover my head? Fly inside my empty gourd so that the rain will not beat at your wings."
The hornets flew into the gourd, saying, "Thank you - hhhuuummm - Aku; thank you - hhhuuummm - Anansi."
Anansi stopped up the mouth of the gourd, and spinning a thick web around it, said, "Fools, I'm taking you to the sky-god as price for his stories."
The sky-god, Nyame, accepted Mmoboro, the hornets that swarm and sting, and said, "What remains, still remains."
Anansi knew very well what remained - it was the fairy, Mmoatia, who is never seen. When the spider came back to Earth, he asked Aso what to do. And so, he carved an Akua's child, a wooden doll with a black, flat face, and covered it with sticky fluid from a tree.
Walking through the bush, he found the odum tree, where the fairies like to play. He then made eto, pounded yams, and put some in the doll's hand and even more of the yams into a brass basin at her feet - there by the odum tree. Anansi next hid in the bushes, with a vine creeper in his hands that was also tied to the doll's neck.
It wasn't long before the fairies came, two sisters, to play. They saw the doll with the eto and asked if they could have some. Anansi made the doll's head nod, "Yes", by pulling on the string-creeper. Soon the faries had eaten all the eto and so, thanked the doll, but the doll did not reply. The fairies became angry.
One sister said, "When I thank her, she says nothing."
The other sister replied, "Then slap her in her crying place."
This the fairy did, she slapped it's cheek - "pa!" - but her hand stuck there. She slapped it with her other hand - "pa!" - and that hand stuck, too. She kicked it with both one foot, then the other, and both feet stuck to the sticky wooden doll. Finally, she pushed her stomache to it and that stuck.
Then Anansi came from his hiding place, and said, "Fool, I have got you, and now I will take you to the sky-god to buy his stories once and for all."
Anansi spun a web around the last of the four creatures and brought Mmoatia up to Nyame in the sky kingdom. The sky-god, seeing this last catch, called together all his nobles. He put it before them and told them that the spider-man had done what no-one else had been able to do. He said in a loud voice that rang in the sky,
"From now and forever, my sky-god stories belong to you - kose! kose! kose! - my blessing, my blessing, my blessing. We will now call these "Spider Stories"."
And so, stories came to Earth because of the great cunning of Kwaku Anansi, and his wife, Aso. When Anansi brought the wooden box of stories to his home, he and his wife eagerly learned each one of them. And you can still see today that Aku and Aso tell their stories. Everywhere you look, they spin their webs for all to see.
(in the story that I remember, Anansi dropped the box of stories as he was climbing down from the sky kingdom and the stories spilled out, spreading all across the world)
That's all for now. Thanks for the great class today!
Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/26/2004 19:18 Link to this Comment: 8533 |
i'm still really struggling with the idea of not needing this absolute....
it's kinda earth shattering....
for so long i've worked off the formulated idea and defined god for myself on the basis that everyone needs to cling, needs an absolute...whether they call it god or not.
but, i'm not sure any more.
give me a little while and i'll figure it out....
thank you everyone.
ps bethany, i think heather talked about laws....i want to hear about falling vases
Name: Diane Scarpa (dscarpa@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/26/2004 19:55 Link to this Comment: 8534 |
First, I do absolutely, undoubtedly believe that living things have free will. However, sometimes these choices are disguised. For instance, Anne claimed today that humans need to eat in order to survive. I would argue that eating is a choice, we do not need to eat. There is nothing that forces us to do this. This choice is confounded by an even greater choice, the choice to survive. So, while it seems we do not have a choice as to whether we wish to eat, we certainly do. The possibility of making this choice to is clouded by a prior choice, the choice to survive. It can seem as if we have no room to decide things for ourselves because we are not always cognizant of the even bigger, more pressing choices we made long before.
| Science journal: The Evolution of Language Name: su-lyn (spoon@hc) Date: 02/26/2004 19:55 Link to this Comment: 8535 |
Name: Ro. Finn (Anonymous) Date: 02/27/2004 06:53 Link to this Comment: 8538 |
OR are we considering that a person DOES exercise choice over the memes he/she takes in? Are there meme filters? The more I think about this, it makes sense. Consider Dennett's point about "D-F#-A" not being a cultural unit/a thought phenotype, but the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth qualifying as one. IF we think about somewhat isolated populations—in this case, a population with a strong affinity for music—then "D-F#-A" may well be a cultural unit within that circle...it may make the same immediate, tacit "click" for that group's members, but be totally opaque to people/populations who have not honed their thought skills in that discipline. Think of all the highly specialized lingo that's specific to one "cult" or another...
What really intrigues me—and I think of it right now as tangential to memetics—is the notion of our having a common "brain language" (Dennett 353). Makes me think of the story of Babel, which presumes that we all started with the same language before an omnipotent being broke up the party. But the story may have derived from our actually having had a common language of sorts. If so, MIGHT WE STILL HAVE IT? Could we dig down into our tacit knowledge brain parts and haul it up? As a writer, I am fascinated by this possibility. It's a bore writing for only one language population, one subset of cultures. For example, should I try writing in sounds that ALL can earthlings hear, not English words? What would be the reaction, I wonder.
By the end of the reading, I liked Stephen Gould even more :-)... "The basic topologies of biological and cultural change are completely different. Biological evolution is a system of constant divergence without subsequent joining of branches. Lineages, once distinct, are separate forever. In human history, transmission across lineages is, perhaps, the major source of cultural exchange" (Dennett 355). So, BIO-EVOLUTION IS DIVERGENT. SOCIO-EVOLUTION IS CONVERGENT—and never the t'wain shall meet? One "story" might be that memes move way faster than their bio-evolutionary equivalents, so they can trace back down branches and then up others, overcoming divergence in the same way that we overcome taking a wrong turn into a one-way side street. Could we cover this, please, in class sometime soon?
Have a great weekend!
| more games for Paul Name: cham sante (schamovi@haverford.edu) Date: 02/27/2004 18:37 Link to this Comment: 8546 |
Anyways, these games/programs intrigued me and ive since come across another survival game called "Tit for Tat". in over 200 trials against computer programmers and mathematicians from all over, Tit for Tat won every time. All it did was follow a simple set of rules in order to "survive". Tit for Tat was just simply nice- It started out by cooperating and then simply copied what its opponents did. if the other player cooperated, so did Tit for Tat and both players flourished. if the other player "defected", Tit for Tat retaliated and so therefore did not lose out to defectors. So, why did Tit for Tat always win? Im not exactly sure, but i feel as though the game as a whole is trying to get at one important point: group advantage can come out of individual strategy without the need to appeal to evolution for "the greater good" (i.e., a possible explanation for human altruism). perhaps this provides a story for how cooperation evolved?
Futhermore, Tit for Tat was not being cooperative for the greater good of the group/species (although it could easily be interpreted this way), but instead it was actually being selfish while hiding behind a mask of cooperation. sounds like this could present a problem in terms of our discussion of morality, in that we must now consider the advantages of both outward and thus perceivable morality versus true(?)internal morality.
| more matters arising .... Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/28/2004 12:28 Link to this Comment: 8551 |
re Bethany (and post conversation with her):
Language expansion/contraction is a really neat idea, that I earlier ran onto in a book called The User Illusion by Tor Norretranders. And it has a very interesting connection to what some research I was doing on the frog made me understand about how the nervous system works generally: going from input to central representations (in this case of space) to output is a process of contracting and then expanding in terms of the dimensionality of how things are represented in the nervous system. And that, in turn, connects to the earlier conversation about "time" as a dimension ...
Re Cham:
Glad to be a source of entertainment; hope others enjoyed it as well. Truth be told, we spent more time on the "Game of Life" then I'd intended and so less time on some later things, including ... "Prisoner's Dilemma" which, I would have said if we'd had time, has exactly the significance that Cham outlines. Nice to know there are people around who can offset my deficiencies.
And that in turn brings me to our section discussion thursday (which, I understand, was not unrelated to Anne's discussion section). Morality, personal responsibility, free will? Is there "morality" before the concept/word comes into existence? (Does a falling tree make a sound if there is no one there to hear it?). Does morality depend on "free will"; when/where did that come into existence? And how does all that relate to genes/memes/Dennett?
Its not only Prisoner's Dilemma that we didn't quite get through last Tuesday, but some of the rest of this as well. Maybe we can do something with all this next Tuesday. And with whatever else is on peoples' minds/shows up here before then?
| Morality Name: meg (mfolcare@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/29/2004 09:44 Link to this Comment: 8556 |
Name: orah (ominder) Date: 02/29/2004 22:40 Link to this Comment: 8569 |
later!
| I should be sleeping.... Name: bethany keffala (Anonymous) Date: 02/29/2004 22:58 Link to this Comment: 8570 |
No, it doesn't disprove it. There is tons of evidence suggesting that 'grammar' is innate, but it's not grammar as you are probably thinking of grammar. One important part of learning a language or languages is learning them when you are still in the critical period, the most? important time of which I believe is between 2 and 5 years old? Oh dear, have forgotten exact ages, but something like that. That's the reason it's more difficult to learn a language that is not your mother-tongue. We tend to start learning foreign languages in high school, sometimes college, and it's hard. we whine, we have to study. If you are not exposed to any sort of language, then you aren't going to just start speaking. If there is no sort of linguistic nurturing/exposure when your body is primed to learn language, then you will have problems. After the critical period is over, it seems that the shop is more or less closed for business.
oh! falling vases are coming, I swear! just not between bedtime and early crew...I'll be back.
| memes Name: su-lyn (spoon@hc) Date: 02/29/2004 23:03 Link to this Comment: 8571 |
Name: reeve (rbasom@haverford.edu) Date: 02/29/2004 23:31 Link to this Comment: 8572 |
| Empty story-telling Name: su-lyn (spoon@hc) Date: 02/29/2004 23:35 Link to this Comment: 8573 |
| Thursday's headache Name: Julia (jeddy@bmc) Date: 02/29/2004 23:38 Link to this Comment: 8575 |
We sort of came to the decision that it was not comfortable but doable to accept the concept of a big bang creating the universe within which evolution could take place, shaping planets and non-life, then creating life to also evolve into more life. It was much harder, however, to imagine something (even dust) from absolute nothing without the influence of something greater.
For me, even more difficult was the acceptance of language and thought, including every cultural aspect of thought (such as morality, kinship, and all social contract) being the results of completely random generation coupled with selection. I was left questioning my own morals and wondering if the social contracts that we have with others of our species are merely the product of randomness, leading me to believe they easily could have not ocurred at all. There could have been a world without rights and wrongs, just and unjust, rights and laws, not to mention feeling. The examples brought up in class that stick with me are the socially unjustness of killing innocent children or being responsible for genocide. But given this frame of thought, responsibility could have been a quality never developed leaving us with a world unimagineable and frightening to me.
It was hard to find comfort in this story, to justify everything that I so soundly believed in and had never really questioned but all of a sudden was, such as protecting the "rights" of our fellow man and keeping our world beautiful and peaceful, but the thought that I reminded myself of was that it doesn't even really matter how it all came about i suppose because like it or not this is where we are and that is what i believe so I should stand by it even if it might be for "nothing". sigh... all for now.
| beetle time Name: em (emadsen@brynmawr.edu) Date: 03/01/2004 10:00 Link to this Comment: 8581 |
went to hear carol mosely braun speak last night at haverford. wow. she told us about her experiences as the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand. there, she was made an honorary member of the Maori. the Maori have a way of looking at time that is completely different from our way: they envision the past as something in front of you. you have seen it happen, you know what it consists of, and it is something to keep in your vision at all times. in contrast, the future is something behind you. it is unknown, unseen, and it is your actions in the past and towards the past that make it possible for the future to come into being. reading orah's post, and thinking over this Maori idea got me excited and scared.
perhaps time is not working against us, perhaps we are working against time. what with all our wrinkle-creams, photographs, stories, and vitamins: we are trying to stop time: distill it, slow it down, own it. however, this is dangerous. when i was seven or so, my aunt (who is an entymologist) reached into her freezer and pulled out a glass jar. inside was an enormously ugly black beetle. "i found this last month and it is not common in this area. i wanted to take a picture of it as proof that i had found it, but it was moving around so fast, it wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get it in the frame. i put it in the freezer to slow it down, and that killed it." i was horrified that the beetle was dead. "maybe it's sleeping?" "no, it's dead," she answered, "but i have my picture."
that's my story for today.
| an assimilated water droplet Name: katherine (kpioli@brynmawr) Date: 03/01/2004 11:45 Link to this Comment: 8584 |
Orah wants answers and something to cling to. She wants to find others who feel the same as her, like they are stuggling to hang onto something- some truth- and yet her own search makes her aggitated and confused.
I think that I am approaching life very differently. Instinctively I think that we all want something solid in life to hold onto, but it either doesn't exist (there is no truth) or it is so elusive I don't think that anyone has ever found it. so instead of frustrating myself I am trying a more zen-like approach to my life. I don't want to stand on the dry, stable ground of absolute truth and meaning, I am trying to find a feeling of content ment in not knowing. I am learning to be content with allowing life to wash over me, to just enjoy the moments. I am a water droplet in a stream flowing to a greater river and I don't want to fight upstream, I just want to go with the flow.
Still, for all my wanting to be a water droplet, this class is really challenging me to think and fight upstream past the currents that I have already created in my mentality and beliefs. for instance, and this is a major instance, I am beginning to question "god," in my own simple way. I have never believed in a creator before, just believed that things happened according to scientific laws. now I am feeling like these scientific laws have just as many holes in them as the bible does. when prof. grobstein played with his computer evolution modle which eventually ended in extinction or a stable population he tried to tell us that this occured randomly without any outside help or rules. but anne dalke called him on that, and I would like to as well. there were rules to the game, specific rules to identify which dots should turn red and which green. and a man, who ever designed the game, created these rules. so it did not occur without some greater guidance. and are we to believe, similarly, that in the very beginning, beginning, beginning, that this game of elements and plants and stars and evolution started without any thing to set the rules or create the rules. Is there after all something that set this all in motion and then let random chance take over. this questioning may seem elementary to some who already poses an ounce of religion "faith" but this is earth shaking to me.
And of coarse I can't sign off until I have addressed Daniela who asks: "Can a person live alone insolated from other human beings and be creative? Original?" I think that a person living in complete isolation, who had to reinvent what it means to be human all over again (without actually knowing that that is what they were doing)would indeed be creative. They would not paint a van gogh, or build a pyramid, or write any sort of poetry, but even the simple tools built for survival would be a product of creativity. I also believe that the tools that this person would create would be recognizable to us- in some way. All animals have instinct, whether knowing that within a few minutes of birth they must stand and run, or knowing how to use their claws and teeth and who is an enemy and who their mother is. For humans, the memes that have aided in the creation of tools and such things are a product of instinct.
This conversation, about uniqueness and originality which began in our small group class, has bothered me ever since it began. Why are we clinging to our uniqueness? Is this how we define our self-worth, but how different we are from other people? by how little we need to depend on others for ideas, memes and in the end survival? I think that uniqueness is a quality which we prize when we talk about it. Being original and one-of-a-kind sounds g