Abstract
There is one more introduction I would like to make before we move on (I know: I am trying my readers’ patience. But they are autonomous creatures, after all, and can skip this chapter if they so choose). I want to pause here and devote attention briefly to the question I am asked invariably by students, year after year, at the beginning of our second lesson, after the class and I had allowed ourselves in the first lesson to get lost in our fumbled search for the notoriously elusive boundaries of our discipline.
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Notes
- 1.
Darwin , of course, also classified animals into different groups and species. But in his account (as in those of his prominent predecessors, like Lamarck) , the species “undergo” constant change (slow, but constant), and therefore have no essence at all. In Darwin’s account, all the species are descendent from a single ancient origin (or at most from a small number of sources). A species for him is nothing more than a collection of individuals capable of fertilizing each other and producing fertile offspring. This observation appears to echo Aristotle’s statement about horses and people, but in fact betrays its arbitrary aspect in a way that cannot be avoided, since the ability for mutual fertilization is itself a property in constant flux and is often the result of markedly arbitrary circumstances. If we were being strict Darwinians, for example, we would be forced to admit that sterile mares are not part of the species Horse (and sterile women are not part of the Human species). Or consider African elephants. They cannot mate with Asian elephants just because of the vast distance between the two groups and not due to a physiological limitation of any sort. These two groups cannot produce fertile offspring, then, for reasons that are wholly accidental. But for Darwin, this is a sufficient reason to regard them as distinct species. According to him, they may become a single species if and when they are brought together artificially, for instance in a zoo, so long as they are able to produce fertile offspring together.
- 2.
This false conception of language is often described in the literature as the “Augustinian” picture of language, after a ridiculing description of it that appears in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (where it is used in effect to ridicule a view expressed in Wittgenstein’s own early philosophical work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus). Incidentally, in the Jewish tradition this same false picture rears its head in the beautiful creation myth that tells of Adam, the first human, giving every animal its true name.
- 3.
The talk of “substances” has of course become largely dated and not exactly “kosher” in its application to the elementary particles of modern physics. This is why I prefer the term “basic items” in the chapters to come. Interested readers may want to consult the classic but still very helpful Schrödinger (1957) , 192–223.
- 4.
Popper (1945) , Chap. 11, especially Sect. 2, pp. 9–21.
Bibliography
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Bar-Am, N. (2016). On Questions of the Form “What Is X?”, and on the Seemingly Innocent Question “What Is Communication?” in Particular. In: In Search of a Simple Introduction to Communication. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25625-2_4
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