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From: John Jones on 20 Feb 2010 13:52
Jeff Rubard wrote:
> Literature and Biology
>
> Although I�m not actually feeling very philosophical, I think I ought
> to let drop a certain thought I had a while ago about the relationship
> between the science of biology and the art of letters. Although of
> course organisms are physical entities susceptible to genuine
> experimental research, no matter how molecularly accurate our
> understanding of organ and organelle and cell function becomes there
> is still something of the elan vital to biology, simply because our
> understanding of the living does not reflexively close; biological
> advances and the medical and agricultural engineering advances they
> drive change the status of life on Earth � though perhaps not quite as
> radically as biotechnology enthusiasts would have themselves believe.
> From the other side, the reality of evolution undermines our
> biological mastery; even if we reasonably thought we had a fundamental
> fix on the reality of a biological phenomenon like HIV
> transmissibility, it could easily change for any number of reasons
> making our formerly excellent theory inapplicable � including even
> social dynamics induced by the common knowledge of the statistics
> themselves.
>
> Really, to get an Archimedean point on living things, we would have to
> have an experiment where cells were �fixed� for eternity, and that
> would necessitate the removal of all observers composed of cells
> (Christian biologists, explain to your colleagues that�s not going to
> be a problem). No perfect knowledge possible; however, there is a
> humanistic index of good biology. The greatest naturalists, like
> Darwin and John Muir, are also very good writers, and this is no
> accident: their writerly skills keep human �drives� in equilibrium
> with the reality of biological phenomena, so we have the best possible
> theory of the living possible at any particular time. Furthermore,
> perhaps the Victorian futurism of the term �consilience� indicates the
> problems with E.O. Wilson�s �evolutionary psychology�: no such thing,
> since creatures great and small are allotted one brain per lifetime,
> with which they cast about for �proper functions�. And finally,
> literature proper makes a contribution to biological understanding by
> allowing us to understand when it is time to let go of the Wille zum
> Leben, which keeps us in a state of �blissful� confusion, and focus on
> �getting things straight� and letting others know.
>
> ---- [!]
> ~ by jeffrubard on July 27, 2009.
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