Sunday, November 7, 2010

Plato Mendel & Darwin




Plato, the Greek philosopher, lived from 428 to 348. One of his principle concepts was that the soul is the essence of a person, being, that which decides how we behave. He considered this essence as an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our respective individual mortal physical presences. As bodies die the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies.

In Plato's time, human understanding was limited to what could be perceived by the naked eye, and much of philosophy was preoccupied with imagining the structure and meaning of the universe, without the help of higher mathematics, empirical research, or any enhancements to perception (such as telescopes or microscopes).

People in Plato's time, undoubtedly understood that sexual intercourse, for instance, leads to pregnancy, and that human reproduction proceeded by this process. However, the manner by which this actually occurs was unknown to them, since they had no conception of microscopic phenomena, the cell as the building block of animal or plant animus, or how sexual fertilization takes place. This enormous hole in their knowledge led them to posit all kinds of esoteric theories about how children are "created" in the womb, and how children inherit characteristics from their parents.

These concepts were mystical in origin, and were often included as a part of the metaphysics or theological systems of the time. Since Plato lacked the crucial information about how sexual reproduction actually works, in detail, he was obliged to supply a replacement description, for which there was no verification or proof whatsoever. Identity, for Plato, could only be "passed" through the medium of a soul, an incorporeal essence which entered the body at birth, and passed out at death. This soul was eternal, and passed through time, from body to body--in effect, the process of reincarnation.



It wasn't until the work of Gregor Mendel [1822-1884], and Darwin [1809-1882], that science finally began to understand how inheritance actually works, how the descent of species occurs at the level of sexual fertilization, creating a unique, hybrid individual from the DNA of separate parents, combined at conception. The mechanistic nature of this process would probably have astonished Plato, since, for him, the supernatural quality of the mysteries of life tended to be regarded as only possible through some kind of divine intervention, through means beyond human comprehension or description.




The idea that human evolution could proceed according to elementary combinations of strands of living DNA, according to laws of probability and chance, without apparent control from any external influence, would certainly have made Plato nervous. Human form and character the result of the gradual adaptation through the "accidental" occurrence of opportunistic mutations? Heresy!

But Plato's theory, as fundamentally naive as it now seems to us, was probably about as logical an explanation for genetic variation and "identity" as one could have made. Without the knowledge we now possess about genetics and natural selection, our hands would really be tied.

Things which we can't explain, because we don't have the information and data to analyze them, often lead us to make absurd speculations about how things work. The inception of the concept of the "soul" dates back well before the revolutions of knowledge which have explained vitality, aging, death, inheritance, and descent and selection. We continue to use the word "soul" to describe a host of qualities and conditions, because it's a handy term, a place-holder really, for things which we either can't explain, or for which we already have commonplace rational explanations, but which we'd prefer not to think of.

When people die, there is "nothing left" of their essence, their livelihood. The only part of them which may be said to extend beyond death is that itzy bit of DNA they passed on through their fortuitous encounter with the opposite sex. Unless, of course, you count their thoughts, or writings, or other artifacts (such as art). I have no descendants, my only child having died without issue. I am the end of my "line." For some people, this is a depressing thought; but I'm not bothered by it. Each individual lives and dies, and we all die eventually. Nothing that any of us "carries" in our memories or sensibilities will outlive us. It's all temporary.

But we also give some thought to posterity. We would rather the human race move towards something better, a perfected state of life. That's unselfish, and noble, and worthy.

21 comments:

jh said...

another priest
one georges lemaitre
articulated the equations to justify the "big bang" theory
he didn't call it that
but the math was there

for my tastes the flimsy descriptions associated with DNA are a testimony to mystery--the scientists are lying-
they don't know what it is
the genome project is science fiction
the scientists are mad
why do we have faith in them

mendel wrote of things visible
gave some math to what had otherwise been accidental

darwin maps (or presumes to )a whole mechanism of the invisible

psychology presumes to give definition to the human soul
this has resulted in the glorification of the purely grotesque - stranger the the entire population of greek tragedy

i look into the eyes of my friend
and i see something eternal
i see something that time cannot blot out
what is it

that you should end on a note of "perfection" curtis is hopeful (i've said it before - you betray some disturbingly catholic sentiments at times()

thomas aquinas articulates the propensity natural to human endeavor (perfection) in his 4th proof for the existense of "god"

if youd' care to have me spell that out in excruciating detail in the comment stream i'd be happy to

it'd be a huge leap for me to be convinced that the humanist rationalist tradition is forging anything close to what has traditionally been understood as the new and eternal jerusalem

if so i'd have to call them all
god's juvenile delinquents

: :
:
:::::

jh

jh said...

another priest
one georges lemaitre
articulated the equations to justify the "big bang" theory
he didn't call it that
but the math was there

for my tastes the flimsy descriptions associated with DNA are a testimony to mystery--the scientists are lying-
they don't know what it is
the genome project is science fiction
the scientists are mad
why do we have faith in them

mendel wrote of things visible
gave some math to what had otherwise been accidental

darwin maps (or presumes to )a whole mechanism of the invisible

psychology presumes to give definition to the human soul
this has resulted in the glorification of the purely grotesque - stranger the the entire population of greek tragedy

i look into the eyes of my friend
and i see something eternal
i see something that time cannot blot out
what is it

that you should end on a note of "perfection" curtis is hopeful (i've said it before - you betray some disturbingly catholic sentiments at times()

thomas aquinas articulates the propensity natural to human endeavor (perfection) in his 4th proof for the existense of "god"

if youd' care to have me spell that out in excruciating detail in the comment stream i'd be happy to

it'd be a huge leap for me to be convinced that the humanist rationalist tradition is forging anything close to what has traditionally been understood as the new and eternal jerusalem

if so i'd have to call them all
god's juvenile delinquents

: :
:
:::::

jh

J said...

Insofar that Plato knew little or nothing of the natural sciences, you are more or less correct (then, Darwin himself, while a capable empiricist, only had a rudimentary knowledge of basic chemistry--the Periodic table was far from being established. Mendel a bit superior--).

Yet I don't think you quite capture the Platonic theory of Forms, as it is presented in The Republic (and various dialogues..perhaps most clearly in the Meno). The status of human souls is only part of it: really platonism ...concerns the a priori truths of mathematics, and logic, and Justice, beauty, so forth (as you may be aware...but you don't really flesh it out in the post).

Thus as far as the philosophical issues go, platonism still remains somewhat relevant. It may seem a bit odd to ordinary joes to think that equations, numbers, relations, geometric shapes--or, say, Justice, or the formal beauty of great art, Bach, etc-- exist in some realm independently of nature or individual human minds--but you'd be surprised to discover that many traditional mathematicians thought in in those terms--Frege, for one. The early Bertrand Russell at times sounds vaguely platonic as well. (Hilbert at times also) The strict empiricist or naive Darwinist faces quite a challenge in explaining how say the circumference of a circle, or integrals for that matter arose out of mere sensation or natural selection, or "stimulus-response" in contemporary terms. Baboons don't do calculus......or write symphonies for that matter.

jh said...

when people die they live on
in the stories people tell about them

i am constantly hearing stories about monks of yore zealous missionaries and intellectuals bookish oddballs and farm wits
we remember on a yearly cycle all the monks who have died by mentioning their names at morning prayer on the date of their passing
even the name evokes a certain recollection

catholic life is peopled with history a history literally teeming with people and their lives are constantly made "alive" to us in the cycle of readings every year

i've never seen and never will see DNA
but i have seen some remarkable people and i know i carry with me some of what impressed me of these remarkable people

the way i hold my left hand on the guitar is due to the effort of one man and i have taught that same technique maybe 50 times
and it is a quite unique technique

the freedom of the left hand
that's a real gift

like i said before
if you'd like i could delineate the 4th proof for the existence of "god" of thomas aquinas
just give the nod pal

a very "catholic" post in many ways

another little fact you might like to google around with is
the name
georges lemaitre

thanks curtis

jh

Kirby Olson said...

I'm actually with J on this one.

Even Godel has a Platonic aspect (he thinks numbers have a pre-existence, and were not invented, but are there, like mountains or clouds).

God is there, too, it's just that for some reason some people can't feel or hear Him, they are blind to Him, sort of the way some people don't see colors, or others cannot sing melodically, they are missing out on something that others perceive, perhaps not through their nervous systems, but through their souls.

But I think some people haven't got souls.

Or perhaps they are inhabited by demons....?

Curtis Faville said...

Kirby:

The idea that the behavior of humans--or any animal for that matter--must be explained by some kind of possession, is really wishful thinking, or maybe just superstition plain.

Humans developed very complex brains. Early on, this contributed to their ability to survive, since they (soft-bodied mammals) lacked any other defensive or offensive physical attributes. As our brains became more sophisticated, our cognitive capacity expanded into areas of consciousness which clearly have no immediate survival value, but which have facilitated our manipulation of the environment, and our ability to make language and speculate about nonexistent phenomena. The fact that we have this capacity does in no way "prove" the existence of things for which we have no verification whatever.

We dream, we imagine things, we "invent" bodies and concepts and fantasies. But occasionally we become so attached to these projections, that we come to believe that they have a power and immanence which we give a mythical importance to.

My point here was to show how ignorance of something leads to an ingenious theorization which has no basis in fact at all. Plato was a genius, but he lacked the necessary data to draw a logical conclusion. Birth and inheritance was something he simply didn't understand, so he made up an explanation to suit his curiosity. It was an interesting notion, but only that, nothing more.

Darwin "vacated" Plato's concept of the reincarnating soul. This doesn't mean Plato is stupid, only that there is a progression of knowledge. Also, it doesn't mean that we should hold ever more stubbornly onto outmoded pre-scientific concepts out of some misguided sense of loyalty to faith.

Finally, the text of the validity of an idea isn't the length of time that it has been assumed to be valid. In the arc of human evolution, the earliest ideas shouldn't, logically, be thought the most valid. As the progression of knowledge proceeds, we should give greater and greater credence to the latter manifestations of discovery and invention, not to the earlier; using that measure would eventually put us back with the cave-dwellers, who didn't have fire or the wheel or a sense of death. Is that where you think civilization should go?

J said...

The fact that we have this capacity does in no way "prove" the existence of things for which we have no verification whatever

When you praise the poesy of WS Williams (or whatever scribe), and attribute to it..."Beauty" (or sublimity, greatness, etc) what do you point to? Could you verify your aesthetic or moral judgements (say, your moral assertions in your essays a while back denouncing tasers, etc)?? Unlikely. And would you want to say your aesthetic or moral judgements are equally valid? Unlikely. You yourself hint at objective criteria, Sir Faville, which you could not begin to verify. Even if you say, it's in my brain, conditioned, a product of evolution or so forth you could not point to some brain area or neurological function which stands for "Beauty".

That said, Im not a creationist in the traditional sense. Evolution does describe the natural world--the fossil record included-- and I'm opposed to dogmatists who read the Old Testament literally (or New). But while Darwinism may do for horses, or horseflies, it does not at all suffice as an account of human cognition.

jh said...

curtis curtis
evan s connell ( in a book possessing the title of this blog for instance) is always a good resource
he holds out there this idea
that we've forgotten some of the best ideas of the past
and are thus somewhat doomed

it's this notion of progress that has our minds spinning

are we not infected with the efforts of people of past generations
i mean we still breathe the air of the workers union fights
somehow we have to know that their efforts did something they did forge the middle class

and who set the templates for intellectual inquiry?

who inspired so that others might be inspired

blake bob dylan ginsburg eliot pound thoreau and untold persons of virtuous kindness have helped to make the world a living possibility

to give ones mind over to a benign nihilism is to disregard what is great within us

it's a way of disregarding the important work of unheralded great teachers

in one sense you could say it is all senseless play
but we shrivel and die for lack of what is found there

progress is always the honoring of what is best in the past
and to a larger degree the worst - that we could one day learn from it...we dredge up things in order to know who we are

i'll never yield to mechanistic predestination
and a few scientists telling us we know what it is

that's a priesthood of satan
i do declare

the mind is incorporeal substance
incorporeal substance is not subject to decay

and we yield our reflective thinking to an intuition for perfection

something then must be ultimately perfect

or
am i mistaken

jh

it will be by virtue of compassion charity patience honoring the good of people selfless honoring of the other
that the world stands a chance of getting along to further decades

i can't believe that J and kirby agree on something

BLOGOMANIA!!!

jh

WV whatin - (gawds name is goin on?)

Kirby Olson said...

Curtis, Darwin won't have the last word on this. He noticed a progressive set of paradigms, but the creationists are responding with various other paradigms such as punctuated equilibrium.

J is of course right that you can't really point to beauty, morality, truth, justice, or anything else.

So we must have pre-formed concepts of these things, which bring us back to Plato's accounts of the universals.

Animals do have a few limited ideas about justice.

But they don't have justice systems among the worms, or among the burying beetles.

The only way you can go wrong is by failing to replicate.

Among the higher animals it is expected that when you're playing as dogs you don't break the skin with your bite. If you do, you are jettisoned from the dog community.

Humans have much more abstract and complex concepts. As J says, you can't get from a dog to a human by following some kind of straight line.

Something else has taken place. I don't think Darwin will have the last word on this. No one has even as yet explained consciousness. Some goofy gus village explainers like Daniel Dennett have tried, but they are just appallingly simplistic.

When you think about beauty or justice, no one really knows what's going on in that moment.

Plato's account remains better than anything else I've seen.

This is not something that is just in our genes. It's something beyond that. How do you explain Charlie Manson or the Unabomber, or weirdos like Stalin or Hitler unless you think they have cracked souls, as Plato put it, or are living with a demon inside of them, as the church fathers put it?

No one really knows what's going on in terms of any significant issue. Darwin certainly offers us something, but it's not a total theory that accounts for why we see things like beauty and justice differently. You'd have to follow the Kant-Wittgenstein-Midgley line for something more -- concepts and words and intuitions seem to guide us, but there are certainly some among us who have defective reasoning, and none could reason ethically as well as Christ.

J said...

Actually I'm not in complete agreement with KO as far as theology goes, and Im not saying "Plato was correct", or "immortal souls exist," etc. However, I do think the uniqueness of of human thinking, and "a priori truths" (or innateness in another lexicon), presents a challenge to Darwinians and biological reductionists--its sort of like the old monkeys on typewriters--when do they write a play? not for a few hundred more centuries. Perhaps that more like an Argument from Reason (tho not specifically judeo-christian) than jh's favorite Thomistic First cause chestnuts (tho' TA had sort of a Design argument as well, not directly related...)

And I think we should be aware of the dangers of biological reductionism characteristic of Dawkins and Dennett (and of a certain type of naive atheism)--so in that sense I agree with jh (and KO to a degree). There are, however, dangers from religious fundamentalism as well, obviously.

Finally all real poets admire Lord Plato, don't they? One of the rules of poetic etiquette, or something (Pound did).

Curtis Faville said...

J:

The business about the descent of monkies is idle speculation--one of the fantasies of consciousness.

Genetics doesn't suggest that monkies would ever "improve" to a higher consciousness. Descent is a combination of accidents and opportunities, most of them lost. There was nothing "inevitable" about the development of the human brain. Did our ability to, for instance, "make things" assist us in surviving long enough to improve our breeding potential? Perhaps. We're not sure.

Curtis Faville said...

Kirby:

The behavior of "monsters" is a phenomenon explained by the sociology and psychology of groups. Objectifying a principle of "evil" behavior along an ethical scale, the way ideologues and priests do it, is simply the application of a rule or prejudice to abstract "members" of classes of individuals. In India there were the castes. In Europe people could be witches or devils. In a small group, a man like Hitler or Stalin couldn't function efficiently enough to carry out elaborate kinds of terror and mayhem. It requires very large social organizations, separations, insulations between groups and the sophistications of structures and media, etc. Imagine how pathetic and impotent a man like Dubya would be in a smaller group--tongue-tied, ingratiating, inconsequential. But within the context of a large, organized machine like a political party, all kinds of sinister things can be accomplished.

The idea that some men have a demonic, evil quality which animates and guides them to do some kind of higher mischief is an illusion. There are clear psychological reasons for people like Hitler and Stalin, but they have nothing to do with religion.

J said...

Not exactly--there are few variations of the "infinite monkey theorem" (check the wiki) but basically it shows that...human communication, especially in a written form requires something unique that we call "intention", and that primates such as chimps, etc don't have that, or only minute traces (tho it's also read in a probabilistic way---with the P. of monkeys on typewriters everywhere writing even a coherent sentence = 0. )

The naive Darwinist tends to forget intention--or as I said previously...Baboons don't do calculus. Not a real fancy argument, but relevant. Now, you might be correct that monkeys will never develop writing, but ...I think most humans would agree writing, communication represents a "higher stage"--a progression, at least from the human POV. The analogy shows something. (and evolution in ways at times seems to have a religious aspect itself...perhaps more Hegelian than strictly Darwinian...)

Curtis Faville said...

You miss my point.

You're thinking along deterministic lines.

Genetics tells us--well, Darwin came up with the idea about the opportunity of mutations--no one sets out to "make" mutations, unless you prefer to think of this as "god's intervention"--

The likelihood of monkeys attaining higher intelligence devolves upon a number of vast numerical odds. Given what we know of the problems of sustained life on the planet, it's unlikely any other (non-human) mammals will endure long enough to reach higher levels of consciousness, without some kind of deliberate intervention. That's the joker in the pack: Genetic manipulations may be coming down the road much sooner than once predicted.

J said...

You miss my point. --Wouldn't yr own Darwinian premises reduce The Iliad (or Shakespeare, Pound, yr favorite beatnik, etc) to something like a tool--a meme, in DawkinsSpeak-- to advance the gene pool, or confer some advantage in terms of survival ? Is The Iliad merely a stick for Chimpski to stick in a termite hill???? Yo no se pienso.

The Darwinist jargon works well for..mammals, birds--Darwin's discussion of finches impressed me once--reptiles insects, so forth. Not for humans, who require a slightly more subtle ontology (including...something like intention....and language)

And few are as deterministic as the Darwinian mechanist. You are the one who rules out the very possibility of Mind, freedom, accountability, tragedy, etc--

so, your latest poetic role model--those words she produced were just conditioned, environmentally and genetically? A response to stimuli! Isn't she just a bio-bot more or less, according to your own biological determinism? it would seem so.

Curtis Faville said...

Was language an inevitable consequence of our higher brains? I suppose that's true.

Do the works of language stand in as plateaus of the progression of man's consciousness in the evolution of society? Sure. But from a deterministic point of view, I don't think any of them is necessarily "inevitable." Shakespeare's plays, Milton's epics, Chaucer, Blake, Yeats--none of that is inevitable. They're unique instances, the accident of circumstances.

jh said...

i've wondered more than once why we don't have the occasional temerity to see to theorize perchance to observe the lesser primate reality as a form of decadence that in fact monkeys have descended from humans they were once very vital human populations and forms but after generations of inbreeding they have devolved into mere treedwellers and tireless fornicators

which i suppose might make monks a different form of missing link
but let's not go into that right now

no one
not even edward wilson ("sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong")can claim to ever having seen
the moment of speciation at work
it is still all hypothetical

perhaps in the end darwin projected onto the scene of human knowledge a vision of what he wanted to see not of what is actually there

jh

J said...

consciousness?? Das ist Verboten to strict Darwinists, Sir F. Besides, even if you agree that something like consciousness exists, it's just an accident, or byproduct. A type of fallacy--"mentalism"-- as Skinnerians said a few years ago.

So, per your premises a Parthenon arises just randomly more or less, ex nihilo. Monkeys slap together some marble....

For that matter, you overlook the author's own intentions. I doubt even the more skeptical of the scribes you alluded to would have agreed to your materialist premises. I suspect Shakespeare was sort of a lapsed catholic (possibly of a Dantean sort)--Evil exists in Shakespeare's world--Macbeth's not merely naturalist determinism. Milton and Blake believed in a spiritual dimension as well, whether one agrees or not...

Kirby Olson said...

Hamlet was 100% Lutheran, albeit lapsed, until he realized he loved Ophelia, at which point the lights came on for him, theologically speaking.

I sometimes wonder about human evolution. You see, I teach freshman composition, and am not always very optimistic. When J writes,

"I think most humans would agree writing, communication represents a "higher stage"--a progression, at least from the human POV. The analogy shows something. (and evolution in ways at times seems to have a religious aspect itself...perhaps more Hegelian than strictly Darwinian...)"

I then think of certain freshman writers. Higher concepts like grammatical constructions elude many.

I have no idea what this means.

I do have one very good section this year. The other section is very poor. Strangely, I think it has to do with the shabbiness of the room itself. It makes me feel there is no hope, and perhaps this shabbiness of the room brings down ALL of our expectations.

The other room is well-appointed, and the students do far better in that section.

Kirby Olson said...

What is art's place in evolution? I think it's good to bring up Darwin and Mendel, but what is art's place in Darwin's thought?

It might be nice to remain focused on the natural versus the artificial.

But they're very hard to distinguish.

Are words natural, for instance, or artifical?

Is poetry natural, or artificial?

Is it natural to tattoo the body, or artificial?

This is not necessarily a dead end. The political move of the Language set was to argue that words determine what we regard as natural.

But there is nevertheless a REAL, which lies outside of all our symbolic frameworks.

LANGUAGE didn't make death go away.

They didn't make suicide go away.

They didn't make the need to eat go away, or the need to defecate.

Or to remain warm, or to procreate.

Comedy remains a pattern that ends with a marriage. Hence, reproductive success.

Tragedy remains a pattern that ends with a death. Hence, reproductive distress (Love Story, by Segal).

Language was wrong about everything. It's a good move to go back to Darwin, but also back to the church. The church helps inspire a functional attitude toward the world (not the Episcopalian church, mind you, but the Baptists, and the Lutherans -- or at least my subsection of the Lutherans).

The Human Development Index is based on Scandinavian Lutheranism as the apex of human civilization which means greatest longevity, greatest hygiene, greatest capacity for science and art, greatest freedom for men & women and children, etc.

And of course reproductive success.

Some cultures ARE better than others, because their thinking is more realistically appreciative of nature.

The Language people thought you could change genders, and live a longer and merrier life if you wished.

This is easier said than done.

J said...

Scandinavian Lutheranism as the apex of human civilization

Heh heh. Heh. So much for...Plato & Co (not to say..Aeschylus et al). As much as it offends the usual WASP students (an/or wannabe Miltons), the literary tradition comes out of Greece and Rome (...and arguably, via sanskrit/vedas...not much semitic). Thats the case even in anglo-renaissance, Schackaspeare,etc

Catholic-papist corruption was an issue, but let's not forget Lutheran/evangelical book burnings (with probably the works of Plato and Aristotle--even Euclid, in rural areas--some of the first to be set afire). Even during say Hume's era, evangelical oppression was still common (as it was in early America). Latin itself was suspect for many evangelical zealots, lutheran,baptist, presby, etc. Really, Luther nearly sounds pagan in some sense with his love of all things germanic. He needs a thor-helmet on him on Lut-Sur, and some runes (or is it swazi)