Randomness as (the absence of?) explanation

Towards Day 9 of Evolving Systems course

Cf. Diamond's "diffusion theory of agriculture" w/ BMC's new
"map of faculty connections" (with bilateral movements....?)

Kirsten: these changes ... all spread out.  Culturally, animals have spread out throughout the world.  The universe is constantly expanding, and biologically people have traveled, married other people and spread their genes throughout the world.

I. coursekeeping

did everyone get cake? 
attend any portion of/learn anything from the
conference on "History and Hope:
Women's Education in a Global Context"?

my key notes from Helen Horowitz's keynote speech
(which focused on the "history," not the "hope"):
when Bryn Mawr was getting established, M. Carey Thomas had to
fight against current evolutionary science, which highlighted
the distinctiveness of male and female bodies:

women had adapted to bear and feed young,
which meant they needed a distinct education:
"could not study and menstruate @ the same time";
"the miseducation of women was a primary cause of their 'hysteria'" (nervous disease)

MCT countered the belief in the biological WRONGNESS of women's education with new scientific studies on inheritance: shown to inherit intellectual capacities equally from mothers and fathers, girls were "crushed by the American environment," not "enabled by circumstances to use their powers"

it's a story about the force of social convention: the consequences
of being "cut off from essential association with other scholars"

it's also a story about the misuse of the story of evolution to explain social patterns (="social Darwinism" as an explanation for why some people flourish more than others; one of the stories Diamond is countering w/ his geographical explanations)

Aimee:  By discussing cultural evolution, we are flirting with some dangerous beliefs: racism, ethnocentrism, and nativism .... in the decades following the release of Darwin's Origin of Species, Herbert Spencer, a British biologist and social philosopher, created Social Darwinism ... the idea that human cultures have evolved so that superior, more intelligent societies have rightfully dominated lesser peoples.

[unasked] Q&A re:
the relation between mental work and mental health

II. back to the local!
conferences tomorrow w/ Bingqing, Tiannan, Sarah, Kirsten, Betrice
(Sarah: how 'bout moving permanently to 11?)

by tomorrow evening, e-mail the first paper in this second section of the course (looping back again to begin w/ what you already know,
before nudging into some as-yet-unknown spaces...):

write about the evolution of a culture with which you are familiar.
Be clear about how you know what you know (doesn't have to be personal; does have to draw on additional resources, include a works cited list, p. #s and a motivating question!)

for Thursday we'll continue our discussion
of cultural evolution w/ help from

• two articles from a Feb. 2004 special issue of Science Magazine
  on the Evolution of Language:  "Speaking in tongues" and "The
  first language," and
• a Mar. 2004 New York Times article about "Niles Eldredge:
  Bursts of Cornets and Evolution" 
   

topic anticipated by Olivia: We don’t tend to explain things specifically because our language allows us not to .... language can also affect the evolution of cultures

and picked up quite productively by JulieG, next door, in two directions:  the link between culture and language ... is something I studied a little .... the Greeks introducing the first fully phonetical alphabet ... enabled multiple words to be formed based on sounds made, creating a literate and philosophical culture where new words could be readily formed and recorded .... it enabled the transition of emphasis from the collective to the individual [cf. Mandarin's logogrammatic alphabet: less malleable?]

[and yet!]

I have noticed ... your statement "on how Chinese people think," that it is possible to speak of the largest population in the world as having one methodology of thought .... I doubt highly that the same could or would be conjectured of and by American people.

III. these are teases for Thursday;
for today, you'd posted your reactions  to our just-begun discussion about cultural evolution: What sorts of links do you see, or not, between changes in the physical world and other kinds of change?  To what extent do you think that cultural change has patterns and explanations similar to those involved in cosmological, geological, and biological changes?

start with a comment on one of the
papers we read together last week:

nina44: "I'd say a soul is the indestructible essence of an individual". "The uniqueness of one person is indefinite and cannot be broken." I just wanted to say that whoever wrote this paper did a very wonderful job. These two are my favorite lines from your essay and I feel like it did the description of a soul justice.

are souls (=selves) infinite? revisable? do they
evolve, or are they "fixed" and "unbreakable"?

  FluteSound4:  Does a soul evolve in us like our intellect or biological make up?

I've always believed in souls ... because the idea ... gives me hope that there's more meaning and purpose to life ....

are our beliefs the result of need, rather than observation?

we'll talk much more about individual evolution in a few weeks--

Bingqing: I really enjoy the path to self-identification. We are journeying ....

--but for now, let's locate our discussion on the cultural level:

Bingqing: During the discussion on Thursday, I was intrigued by the connections between seemingly irrelative things—the geography, the domestic animals and the empire. Perhaps, nothing exists independently in the world. (This point of view reminds me of the “Trees” on planet Pandora in film Avatar). How could I still believe that individuals are individual?....

wherefrom our uniqueness? are we...?

ecollier: I'll share this sort-of creation myth with everyone.
Its amazing: The Egg.

  Olivia: what’s the purpose of cultures?
What’s the direction of the evolution in cultures?

or: what are the mechanisms whereby cultures evolve?

-->FluteSound4: In my experience things cannot happen without a cause. However, just because we haven't seen an example of effect without cause doesn't mean that it's not true.

ecollier: I've never thought of randomness as the absence of explanation.