| sunday morning with McGilchrist, J.B.S. Haladane & others |
8. Nov 2026|11:10 |
teleology is like a mistress to a biologist; he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public.
..scientists who wants us to avoid making specific teleological observations of behavior, such as 'a turtle comes ashore in order to lay her eggs', by saying 'a turtle comes ashore and lays her eggs.' This seems like a hangover from bad old days of behaviorism, where all inner life is denied, even in humans. [..]
..yet the structure of science is not one which dismisses the higher-level categories and 'explains them away'. That is not what 'scientific' means.[..]
..one of the fundamental characteristics common to all living beings without exception is that of being objects endowed with a purpose or project, which at the same time they show in their structure and execute through performances .. Rather than reject that idea (as certain biologists have tried to do), it must be recognized as essential to the very definition of living beings.
Are we talking of a purpose of a single cell, or a single organism, or an evolutionary strain to which the organism belongs? All three: separating them out is to a large extent artificial, since they are different aspects of one process. At the macro level..the development of the eye - improbably complex as it is - has happened independently 10 times (the camera eye six times and the compound eye four times) over the course of evolution. At an intermediate level, a strain of flies, genetically manipulated so as to prevent eye formation, within a few generations produces eyes. At the micro level, a single cell of the creature is capable of reacting to unforeseeable circumstances so as to preserve its function in the whole organism, in ways that suggest intelligence. |
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