Abstract
We wish to start with the following observation: the humanities and the ‘hard’ sciences (here meaning especially biology and a good part of the cognitive sciences) differ considerably in their ambitions concerning the ‘big questions’ . The hard sciences are more daring than ever in proposing how the cosmos formed and life originated, how species evolved and the destiny of it all. In contrast, for the humanities it has been a time of dispersion, of fragmentation, of a dissemination which resists any attempt at integration on a grand scale. The time of the ‘big theories’ seems to have been left far behind.
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H. Maturana and F. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition, (Boston Studies, vol. 42], D. Reidel, 1980;
L. Margulis, Symbiosis in Cell Evolution, Freeman, 1982.
F. Varela, Principles of Biological Autonomy, North-Holland, New York, 1979.
The ones we have in mind here are Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, The Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1965; Violence and the Sacred, ibid., 1977; Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde, Grasset, 1978; Le Bouc émissaire, Grasset, 1982.
The term différance does not exist in French, and was introduced by Derrida to designate both a difference and deferral.
See in particular: S. J. Gould, ‘Darwinism and the expansion of evolutionary theory’ , Science 216 (1982): 380–387;
S. J. Gould and R. Lewontin, ‘The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A critique of the adaptationist programme’ , Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 205 (1979): 581–598. For more general discussion, see Eliot Sober The Nature of Selection (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984);
M. Ho and P. Saunders, Beyond Neo-Darwinism (New York: Academic Press, 1984);
J. Endler, ‘The newer synthesis? Some conceptual problems in evolutionary biology,’ Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology 3 (1986): 224–243. For a recent defense of Neo-Darwinism in the face of these various challenges see: M. Hecht and A. Hoffman, ‘Why not neo-Darwinism? A critique of paleobiological challenges?’ Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology, 3 (1986): 1–47. Our discussion in this section also owes much to M. Piatelli-Palmarini, ‘Evolution, selection, and cognition,’ in E. Quagliariello, G. Bernardi, and A. Ullman (eds.), From Enzyme Adaptation to Natural Philosophy, (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1987), which explores similar themes, though in the context of a defense of cognitivism.
This term is from Eliot Sober, The Nature of Selection (op. cit.).
R. Lewontin, ‘A natural selection: Review of J. M. Smith’ s Evolutionary Genetics,’ Nature 339 (1989): 107.
An interesting example of this revisionist mood is the critical study of the classic example of industrial melanism in moths as a textbook case of natural selection. According to D. Lambert, C. Millar, and T. Hughes, ‘On the classic case of natural selection’ , Biology Forum 79 (1986): 11–49, this example can be transformed into a classic study against neo-Darwinism by considering a substantial amount of ignored extant literature.
H. Clemens, Alfred R. Wallace: Biologist and Social Reformer (London: Hutchinson, 1983).
Richard Lewontin, ‘The organism as the subject and object of evolution’ , Scientia 118 (1983): 63–82.
Richard Lewontin, ‘The organism as the subject and object of evolution’ , Scientia 118 (1983): 63–82.
This designation is justified by John Haugeland, ‘The nature and plausibility of cognitivism’ , reprinted in Mind Design: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, John Haugeland (ed.) (Montgomery, Vt.: Bradford Books, 1981). Sometimes cognitivism is described as the ‘symbolic paradigm’ or the ‘computational approach’ . We take these designations as synonyms for our purposes here.
See Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Cambridge/Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978).
See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press, 1979).
For the best thorough and technical discussion of this point see G. Oster and S. Rocklin, ‘Optimization models in evolutionary biology’ , Lectures in Mathematical Life Sciences, vol. 11 (Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society, 1979), pp. 21–88. For recent discussion see J. Dupré (ed.), The Latest on the Best (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987).
This analogy was first proposed in G. Edelman and W. Gall, ‘The antibody problem’ , Annual Review of Biochemistry 38 (1979): 699–766. It is also used by M. Piatelli-Palmarini, ‘Evolution, selection, and cognition’ , in E. Quagliariello, G. Bernardi, and A. Ullman (eds.), From Enzyme Adaptation to Natural Philosophy. We use the analogy here with an extension which is not in line with the intention of either of these authors.
Cf. § 109 and 374 Gay Science, and II-§ 133 The Will to Power.
More on this logic in J.-P. Dupuy, ‘Tangled Hierarchies: self-reference in philosophy, anthropology, and critical theory’ , Comparative Criticism 12 (1990): 105–123.
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Dupuy, JP., Varela, F.J. (1992). Understanding Origins: An Introduction. In: Varela, F.J., Dupuy, JP. (eds) Understanding Origins. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 130. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8054-0_1
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