some quotes from Chapter two (Observing and Intervening) of Lifelines by Steven RoseMy intro is in Blue In the section headed Metaphors, Analogies and Homologies, Steven Rose describes some of his own research into memory formation in chicks and outlines 5 premises which are necessary if the observations are to be used as a particular exemplar of a general phenomenon: memory. The crucial premise is No 3: Human brains resemble chick brains in fundamental ways "Resemblance" can mean metaphor, analogy or homology. A metaphor is like comparing respiration with banking using ATP as an "energy currency". An analogy means that it makes sense to compare for example, blood circulation in animals with sap circulation in plants - or (my own example) bird with bat wings. Homology implies a common evolutionary origin. Steven Rose asks: Do those aspects I have extracted from the continuous processes by which the chick interacts with its environment really represent some unitary feature of the world? (i.e. they're homologous) He says there is a deeper issue: (Page 34-35) Can I extract from the continuous process by which the chick or I experience or interact with our environment, a discrete entity called memory? This raises a question which goes to the heart not just of scientific method but of philosophical traditions running back thousands of years. In general there are two ways of looking at what goes on in the world around us. In the more familiar, which derives from the cultural heritage of the Judaeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman traditions within which modern science is done, the world is composed of isolable entities - electons, or atoms, or molecules, or organisms, or tables and chairs - which possess discrete properties, such as memory, and interact with one another according to definable laws. In the second, less familiar view, the world is one of continuous process, out of which transitory entities occasionally crystalise. We are dealing again with distinctions between object and surroundings, foreground and background. This latter way of conceptualising the world is perhaps more akin to non-Western philosophical traditions such as those of India or China. But for most of the past hundred years, theorists have had to come to terms with such a world-view, for instance when they alternate between treating light as a stream of particles and as a wave, or when their mathematical symbolism demands that they speak of magnetic or gravitational fields. As I shall argue, many of the problems in the biological sciences derive from the cultural difficulty we have in perceiving a world of fields and processes rather than of objects and processes. In the final section of the chapter, Natural Kinds, Steven Rose discusses whether the categories we invent to create a picture of the world, e.g. species, organism, protein etc represent absolute truth lying out in the world or whether the categories we use determine the results we get. After giving many examples of the fuzziness of such categories, he concludes:
(Pages 42-43) Thus even though they give the superficial appearance of carving nature at the joints, definitions - "essences" - in biology are always operational rather than absolute. Even at their best, they are fuzzy at the boundaries. At their worst, like the definitions of "race" they may serve only to obfuscate, to pretend to differences that vanish or become sustainable on closer inspection. "Good" definitions are good because they are adequate for the purpose we intend them for, as they help us classify and order the world we observe. But we would be wrong to imagine that definitions have primacy over the observations upon which they are based; that they are in some way revealing a Platonic essence that exists prior to and independently of the observations which call them into existence and the purposes for which we wish to use them. In a world which is understood in terms of process rather than object, the joints into which we carve nature depend on our ultimate purposes, just as do those which human carnivores may carve slices of roast meat for the table, or an artist a tree into a wooden sculpture. Certainly they have to bear some relationship with the material world: we cannot alter butchery styles entirely at will, observe phantoms, carve imaginary objects on force them into configurations entirely at our own volition. But we do have choices, and these choices depend on an interplay between the nature of the world we are studying, our understanding of what type of answer to the questions we will accept, and the reasons why we are asking them. In the next chapter, Knowing what we know, he goes on to consider the social context of the scientific questions we ask, and the history of how the philosophy of science has dealt with this I have discovered an excellent precis of Lifelines, written by Steven Rose himself, here. |