Hive General Discourse

	Main Index Search Register Login Who's Online FAQ Links
	Main Index Search Register Login Who's Online FAQ Links

	2 Online, 0 Active		You are not logged in

This is a historical archiveThe forum is read-only. Private information has been removed. It is not possible to login.

	General Discourse

All posts Subject: Lifelines: Biology, Freedom, Determinism Please login to post

jsorex
(Hive Addict)
09-11-04 23:25
No 530931
Lifelines: Biology, Freedom, Determinism

Well. Perhaps in the future gene technology will enable us to get rid of all undesired personality traits, such as tendency to use drugs and asocial personality type etc.

Untill then here is an interesting article by Steven Rose,
Professor of Biology and Director of the Brain and Behaviour Research Group

Abstract
There are many ways of describing and explaining the properties of living systems; causal, functional and reductive accounts are all necessary, but no one has primacy. The history of biology as a discipline has given excessive authority to reductionism, which collapses higher level accounts, such as social or behavioural, into molecular ones. Such reductionism becomes crudely ideological when applied to the human condition with its claims for genes 'for' everything from sexual orientation to compulsive shopping. The current enthusiasm for genetic and ultraDarwinist accounts, with their selfish gene metaphors for living processes misunderstand both the phenomena of development and the interactive role that DNA and the fluid genome play in the cellular orchestra. DNA is not a blueprint, and the four dimensions of life (three of space, one of time) cannot be read off from its one-dimensional strand. Both developmental and evolutionary processes are more than merely instructive or selective; the organism constructs itself, a process known as autopoiesis, through a lifeline trajectory. Because organisms are thermodynamically open systems, living processes are homeodynamic, not homeostatic. The self-organising membrane-bound and energy-utilising metabolic web of the cell must have evolved prior to so-called naked replicators. Evolution is constrained by physics, chemistry and structure; not all change is powered by natural selection, and not all phenotypes are adaptive. Finally, therefore, living processes are radically indeterminate; we, like but to an even greater degree than all other living organisms, make our own future, though in circumstances not of our own choosing.

ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/.WWW/bbs.rose.html

	https://the-hive.archive.erowid.org	the-hive@erowid.org



Powdered by Psychic Vampires Version 0.14.5 gold ed., Copyright 2016-2022, Notorious Alcoholics Europe
Links Erowid Rhodium

	All posts		Subject: Lifelines: Biology, Freedom, Determinism		Please login to post


		jsorex (Hive Addict) 09-11-04 23:25 No 530931				Lifelines: Biology, Freedom, Determinism
						Well. Perhaps in the future gene technology will enable us to get rid of all undesired personality traits, such as tendency to use drugs and asocial personality type etc. Untill then here is an interesting article by Steven Rose, Professor of Biology and Director of the Brain and Behaviour Research Group Abstract There are many ways of describing and explaining the properties of living systems; causal, functional and reductive accounts are all necessary, but no one has primacy. The history of biology as a discipline has given excessive authority to reductionism, which collapses higher level accounts, such as social or behavioural, into molecular ones. Such reductionism becomes crudely ideological when applied to the human condition with its claims for genes 'for' everything from sexual orientation to compulsive shopping. The current enthusiasm for genetic and ultraDarwinist accounts, with their selfish gene metaphors for living processes misunderstand both the phenomena of development and the interactive role that DNA and the fluid genome play in the cellular orchestra. DNA is not a blueprint, and the four dimensions of life (three of space, one of time) cannot be read off from its one-dimensional strand. Both developmental and evolutionary processes are more than merely instructive or selective; the organism constructs itself, a process known as autopoiesis, through a lifeline trajectory. Because organisms are thermodynamically open systems, living processes are homeodynamic, not homeostatic. The self-organising membrane-bound and energy-utilising metabolic web of the cell must have evolved prior to so-called naked replicators. Evolution is constrained by physics, chemistry and structure; not all change is powered by natural selection, and not all phenotypes are adaptive. Finally, therefore, living processes are radically indeterminate; we, like but to an even greater degree than all other living organisms, make our own future, though in circumstances not of our own choosing. ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/.WWW/bbs.rose.html

	All posts		End of thread