Below are a number of messages in response to the thread with Holmes Rolston on "Genes, Genesis and God". The first posting is from Paul Arveson in Rockville, MD, who writes to elaborate on crystals and the creative power of inanimate matter. Arveson suggests that "dust is not nothing." The second and much longer posting is from John Carvalho at Washington University in St. Louis in response to Holmes Rolston's discussion of "Genes and the Adapted Mind" in Meta 098. Carvalho argues human ideas originate from epigenetic factors as well as epi-cultural factors. He argues that a metaphysical component of soul is necessary to render the adapted mind intelligible to itself.
Carvalho writes "these epigenetic factors cannot be simply the cultural inheritance that we see in Rolston's article. Rolston's 'adapted mind' viewpoint must consider some creative component to the human condition that acts as a third element-one responsible for the initiation of cultural novelty." As we will read in Rolston's next installment on "Genes, Genesis, and God," this is not unlike what he himself will advocate. Stay tuned.
Finally, George Ellis <ellis@maths.uct.ac.za> writes from Cape Town, South Africa to alert us a recent book review in Nature of relevance to this discussion. Ellis writes: "your readers might be interested in the rather acerbic and penetrating review by Gabby Dover of 'The Origin of Life' (Maynard Smith and Szamary) in Nature Vol 399: 217-218 (20 May 1999). It starts of as follows: 'One of the sadistic pleasures to be had from the defunct age of selfish-genery was to witness the mental loops of its proponents as they tried to extricate themselves from the illogical cul-de-sacs of their own devising.'"
-- Billy Grassie
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From: "Paul Arveson" <bridges@his.com> Subject: dust is not nothing
Rolston wrote:
"The elegance of the thirty-two crystal classes is not to be confused with the grace of life renewed in the midst of its perpetual perishing, generating diversity and complexity, repeatedly struggling through to something higher, a response to the brooding winds of the Spirit moving over the face of these earthen waters. The genes do bubble up from below ("cranes"--if one insists on looking down) but these genes are lofted higher and higher in their creative genius, resulting in course in the genius of the human spirit, elevated enough to look the world over and ask ultimate questions--debating, as we are doing, the best metaphors for what has been taking place on this Earth."
Picking up on the crystal classes, there is something worthy of elaboration here. If you have seen a mineral exhibit at a good museum such as the Smithsonian, you have probably become aware of the existence of spectacular and bizarre structures formed by "nothing but time, chance, and matter". Nevertheless, these crystals in all their isomorphs and special forms -- which have shapes and symmetries that extend well beyond those of the formal crystal classes -- have in many cases never been fully explained. The creative powers of matter are indeed fruitful in surprising ways that never could have been inferred until we found these objects deep in the earth or under the sea.
The Biblical metaphor speaks of Adam being created from the dust of the ground into which the Spirit was breathed. This story also confirms that dust is far from nothing -- dust is an inexhaustibly rich substrate not only for life, but also for beauty and fantasy.
Paul Arveson
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From: "John J. Carvalho" <jjcarval@artsci.wustl.edu> To: <meta@templeton.org> Subject: The Scope of Evolutionary Reductionism in the Origination of Cultural Ideas
In his article "Genes and an Adapted Mind (Meta, 097, 1999)," Holmes Rolston III argues that the evolution of culture is not subordinated to the genetic constraints of the individual or population. Rolston stands in stark contrast to the Sociobiology Program, which contends that genetic constraints restrict human behavior and, therefore, the origination of cultural novelties and their propagation in history. The argument between Rolston and the Sociobiologists is by no means a new one. In fact, biologists Levine and Suzuki explain this problem succinctly:
"It is an undeniable fact of biology that an individual's genome affects the construction and operation of his or her brain. But the extent to which specific DNA sequences control and determine human behavior remains an open question" (Levine and Suzuki, 1993).
Undoubtedly, the genetic framework is an important component to Homo sapiens. It is virtually unanimous amongst biologists that genes do have some control over human intelligence. Nevertheless, Rolston emphasizes, quite rightly, that cultural inheritance is at least to some degree autonomous from genetics:
"Ideas are discovered and transmitted, and the mechanism of transmission is cultural. One does not have to have Plato's genes to be a Platonist, Darwin's genes to be a Darwinian, or Jesus' genes to be a Christian. The thinkers responsible for shifting physics to a Copernican view, biology to a Darwinian view, and ethics to universal human rights were not from any particular racial or ethnic group. The system of inheritance of ideas is independent of the system of inheritance of genes." (Meta 097, 1999)
Rolston's position is echoed by John Polkinghorne:
"No one would deny, of course, that evolutionary necessity will have molded our ability for thinking in ways that will ensure its adequacy for understanding the world around us, at least to the extent that is demanded by the pressures for survival. Yet our surplus intellectual capacity, enabling us to comprehend the microworld of quarks and gluons and the macroworld of big bang cosmology, is on such a scale that it beggars belief that this is simply a fortunate by-product of the struggle for life." (Polkinghorne, 1998)
Though these scholars give credence to the existence of epigenetic forces responsible for shaping culture in human populations, they do not entirely eliminate the counter arguments of the Sociobiologists. Those in the Sociobiology Program may suggest that there exists a certain reservoir of genetic material, which is passed along from parent to offspring, that places us in the species human. This conserved material, it may be defended, is sheltered from evolutionary history only in so far that any attempt at change would result in "non-human." Such a component to the genetic framework may exist as the foundational biology responsible for allowing us to make the decision to transmit culture from older to younger generations (vertical cultural evolution) or allow us to imitate our peers as a mechanism for cultural propagation (horizontal cultural evolution).
To truly investigate the validity of the Sociobiologists' claim, we must actually explore beyond "propagation" of ideas in culture. We must understand whether or not the very "origination" of these ideas are genetically or epigenetically based. Rolston, in his article, speaks about the transmission of ideas-the "evolution of the software"-as he calls it, but he does not really address the issue of how these ideas even come about. Likewise, the Sociobiologists contend that ideas are reducible to the genes, but they never really explore how the origination of novelty can arise in a biologically predestined organism. In fact, it is this very lack of a comprehensive explanation for reductionism that has led many philosophers of biology, most notably Ernst Mayr, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University, to rebuke the reductionist paradigm. Mayr denounces any vitalistic component to living organisms, but he is a strong proponent of recognizing the different types of reductionism. In his "Growth of Biological Thought," he distinguishes between constitutive, explanatory, and theory reductionism, and ultimately asserts that the differences between inorganic matter and life is in the "organization" of biological systems, not in the "composition" of life. This understanding of "emergentism" as a separating factor of the living world from the inorganic universe is echoed in "Toward a New Philosophy of Biology":
"Systems at each hierarchical level have two properties. They act as wholes (as though they were a homogeneous entity), and their characteristics cannot be deduced (even in theory) from the most complete knowledge of the components, taken separately or in other combinations. In other words, when such a system is assembled from its components, new characteristics of the whole emerge that could not have been predicted from a knowledge of the constituents. Such emergence of new properties occurs also throughout the inanimate world, but only organisms show such a dramatic emergence of new characteristics at every hierarchical level of the system. Indeed, in hierarchically organized biological systems one may even encounter downward causation." (Mayr, 1988)
But is Mayr truly able to explain the emergence of cultural ideas if life is reducible in the sense of "composition?" In fact it can be argued that this form of reductionism, which Mayr accepts, must be taken further. Sociobiologists might claim that the genetic "component" allows for a reductionism of the origination and propagation of cultural ideas to evolutionary theory based on natural selection. Hence, we arrive at a philosophy that suggests natural selection will select for a reservoir of genetic material that is responsible for the condition "human."
This argument, though provocative, has a number of problems. First, we must understand that there is a component of evolutionary reductionism that is based on the present functionalist-reductionist neurobiological paradigm. Certainly, some scholars will take issue with this assertion, but it is apparent that most biologists who hold a reductionist view seem to be in general agreement on this point. Essentially, the theory states that all human behavior and mental processes ultimately stem from the biological framework. Every activity, whether it be physically manifested to others or internally contained (such as apprehensions in the mind and self-awareness) is "entirely" reducible to the material processes of the organism in relation to the organism's environment. The subject has no choice available because "free will" is an illusion arising out of the unavoidable biochemical reactions in the human brain. Or, at best, the choice that we do have is constrained, limited and the sole result of biochemical mechanisms. In essence, human beings are "reactionaries" and any deceiving, apparent action is nothing more than a biological necessity that is crucial to the organism's perpetuation or the perpetuation of the species. Essentially, this philosophy lays at the core of the Sociobiology paradigm. Otherwise, the Sociobiologists could not claim the dominance of genetics over human behavior.
Unfortunately, a host of flaws accompany this form of neurophilosophy. For one, functionalist-reductionism fails to adequately explain how human beings grasp "universal concepts" when in fact each individual manifests "uniqueness" both in his genetic framework and his particular history of environmental conditions. Since no individual possesses the "exact" genetic composition "and" environmental history, each of our neurocircuitry and the stimuli that would influence our neurocircuitry "must" be different. Such a dissimilarity in the matter of the brain and the history of the individual would compel people to harbor a complete and different perception and understanding of reality and interpretation of reality. Since humans would possess this dissimilarity, the human mind would necessarily be incapable of comprehending universal principles. One of the common illustrations of this is when we think of the idea "2 + 2 = 4." When one apprehends this mathematical example, he may see in his mind a black chalk board with white colored numerical symbols displaying the equation. Another person might visualize in his mind two sets of two apples and a set of four apples separated by a mathematical equality sign. So far, this scenario supports a functionalist-reductionist theory because of material and historical differences between individuals. The disparity is abolished, however, when we come to realize that each person does understand the "math." In fact, St. Augustine revealed this in his famous dialogue with Evodius (Wipple and Wolter, 1969). This break in functionalist-reductionist logic suggests that there exists some other element to the human condition, unsupported by the Sociobiologists, that allows humans to grasp universals in all situations.
There is another formidable argument against the Sociobiologists' position. If we agree that "reason" is the determining factor that separates human beings from other species in the biosphere, then one would propose, correctly, that a reservoir of genetic material is "responsible" for reason. The ability to understand universals and "generate" ideas and concepts would itself be reducible to these genes. However, such a reductionism is problematical for the fact that all biological processes are "triggered" to occur. DNA replication, transcription, protein synthesis, cellular respiration, electrical flow between neurons, even the SA node firing in the right atrium of the heart are all, in some way or another, excited. There exists no biological system that can work without first being activated by another system. When it comes to human thought, however, mental actions can arise arbitrarily. Human beings can initiate in the human mind without being stimulated to "necessarily" initiate. Likewise, human beings can choose to ignore certain stimuli and so pose their actions differently. The "free will" of human beings transcends their biological constraints regardless of whether or not the physical world allows such freedom to be manifested. To a large degree the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus recognized this truth. Epictetus philosophized that we cannot always control the situations in our life but we can usually command the way we react or respond to them.
In light of these findings, it appears that the Sociobiologists must acknowledge that the origination of ideas must stem from epigenetic factors or, at least, epigenetic factors in harmony with genetic factors. However, these epigenetic factors cannot be simply the cultural inheritance that we see in Rolston's article. Rolston's "adapted mind" viewpoint must consider some creative component to the human condition that acts as a third element-one responsible for the initiation of cultural novelty. Since this third element to the human condition is neither biologically based or culturally-environmentally based, it must exist as a metaphysical, as opposed to physical, pole in the human condition. It must be something inherent; a component capable of creating or initiating the arisal of new form, not a reactionary, biochemical machine bereft of agency and destined to only respond to external stimuli or succumb to the limitations imposed on it by DNA. Nor can it be subordinate to the environment or capable of only receiving and analyzing information from predecessors (older generations handing down cultural ideas to younger generations). Essentially, then, it must be the soul or the spiritual.
The demise of a pure, evolutionary reductionism and the inadequacy of a cultural inheritance that lacks a creative component to the species human leads us to realize that the human condition is composed of three parts: two physical poles (genetics and the environment) and one metaphysical (the soul or the spiritual). Only in this way can we understand a gene-culture co-evolution that consists of the arisal of new form and its subsequent propagation to offspring throughout time.
References:
Rolston H. (1999) "Genes and an Adapted Mind." Meta: Science and Religion. Vol 097.
Levine J. and D. Suzuki. (1993) The Secret of Life: Redesigning the Living World. Boston: WGBH.
Mayr E. (1988) Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist. Harvard University Press.
Polkinghorne J. (1998) Belief in God in an Age of Science. Yale University Press.
Augustine, St. (1969) "De Quantitate Animae." Medieval Philosophy: From St. Augustine to Nicholas of Cusa. Ed. J. Wipple and A.B. Wolter. New York: The Free Press.
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