Small Souls
I should know better than to broach this huge subject in my limited blogging time this morning. But perhaps it will help me to decide how to bring this issue to some resolution before Friday's lecture.
We are coming to the end of our biology text. The next-to-last chapter is on Animal Behavior. Its authors have a point of view, but I want these students to consider other perspectives, especially when it comes to the issues of evolutionary psychology and genetic determinism to which the text gives considerable credence.
Reductionism--picking apart the whole into its component parts as a way of understanding--certainly has had its place in the successes of science. However, it has become a pervasive assumption in many scientific circles that organisms are nothing more than the sum of their parts, including man. Followed to the ultimate reduction, our behavior is nothing but an extrapolation of E O Wilson's ant colony. Followed, in my opinion, too far to molecular explanations, an organism--you, for instance--are only your genes' deliver package and a way for them to survive and propagate, as Richard Dawkins proselytizes. "A organism is nothing more than a gene's way of making more genes."
First, I do not believe we come closer to the truth by accepting this as the whole story of what life or man is "about." In our striving to free ourselves of ignorance and superstition, perhaps we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater. And secondly, it seems to me that we suffer a national schizophrenia as a result of delusions that have fallen upon us in the past generation, in part because of these reductionistic "presuppositions" that are so pervasive that few notice or question them. On the one hand, we are guilty of unmitigated arrogance in our belief that we are owners of the planet, entitled to live lives of individual self-satisfaction and material power. We are like gods. But we simultaneously believe that we are genetic robots, the products of selfish genes in a world where purpose and meaning and higher truth are merely subjective creations, illusions we project in our ignorance. We are star stuff, perhaps, as Carl Sagan often said. But we are not nothing but star stuff. Our dust once had a large soul.
We conclude from reducing human existence to its ultimate chemistry and physics that we are here merely to survive and reproduce. Tacitly, we are living out these assumptions, and our souls have become small. And yet we have the potential for magnanimous souls--magnum animus--large souls. To find this balance between what we are and who we might be, science and religion must talk, and not always from the point of view that religion has something to learn from science. Knowledge sorely needs the benefit of wisdom.
In my browsing for material to illustrate sociobiology and the selfish gene philosophy, I have found some good resources on the dialogue between science and religion that I look forward to exploring. I haven't decided if in class this week I'll delve very far into the science or dogma of these explanations for human behavior. But the search has rekindled concerns and interests in an area where I was once far more current and conversant. Could be I may talk more about the science-faith dicussion in the future. Could be I'll have to start a separate blog apart from Fragments for such stuff, if I could find the time. If I could only get that Ronco Day Stretcher...
Comments
Fred, my view is similar to what I was told in a "History of Religions" class about 50 years ago: that science and religion have different purposes. Science is in charge of exploring "how", while religion is in charge of exploring "why".
Yes, I believe that people should communicate about religion and science, but there need not be agreement. This is similar to my expectations in other spheres: I want the people in our governmental bodies to communicate with those in the business community, but I recognize that business and government have different purposes and do not expect agreement.
Posted by: Cop Car | November 30, 2004 7:26 AM
I read an example recently that I liked. It spoke of the two domains of understanding--science and faith--as two maps of a common terrain. They each reveal different aspects of that territory, just as one map can show contours and watersheds while another of that same country can show demographics and other statistics.
I would also envision something along the order of the yin-yang symbol--a complementarity in which there is a goodness of fit between separate but related truths. If there is a real world out there--and only one--then some descriptions of it via mathematics or spiritual understanding will come closer than others, and they will be pointing toward that same Ultimate Reality. Even then, there would exist, from our finite perspectives, unreconcilable paradoxes and antinomies.
I realize I'm sticking my neck out once again, but I've had this dialogue with myself lately about the blog as a filtering device. We find our one "voice" and then are type-cast by reader expectations to remain consistent to that mood, temperament and perspective. Every so often, I rebel against this restriction on the full spectrum of who I am and what I think. Maybe I should put a warning label on such aberrant posts, ya think? :-}
Posted by: fred1st | November 30, 2004 7:47 AM
If you are "typecast" in my expectations, it's for variety. Sometimes funny, sometimes dark and down, or warm and homey, or edifying and educational. Perhaps your readers already accept that your "voice" encompasses much more than you are giving it credit for -- and like that.
Posted by: Lin B | November 30, 2004 8:28 AM
If I were a teacher, Fred, I know I'd struggle to remain with the conventional boundaries of *my* subject, because I know (or believe, which in this case amounts to the same thing) that ultimately everything is connected.
I really like that maps analogy - it reminds me of a one-liner I picked up from NLP, in the context of we model the world of the psyche: "The map is not the terrain". Maybe the analogy would be useful for your students too, because it derives from a paradigm where it's okay to have more than one perspective on things. So in that paradigm it isn't that one view is right and another wrong, although maybe one is more more useful in a particular context. The lie at the core of Dawkins' philosophy (and much as I admire his intellect, his communication skill and his capacity for original thought, I balk at his evangelical manner of promoting his own interpretation as though it were Absolute Truth) is that there *is* only the physical world context, only the interaction of chemicals.
I for one would welcome these occasional diversions from what might be considered the Fragments straight and narrow, 'cause they aren't really diversions at all when you come from the paradigm of all being one :-)
Posted by: andy | November 30, 2004 9:03 AM
Amen
Posted by: Carl | November 30, 2004 1:25 PM
Slippery slope, Fred, slippery slope...
I discussed the biology question today with a classmate of mine in psych 101. There is a huge debate right now over the concept of "intelligent design" vs. evolution. I'm not sure who penned the term, but they left it rather open to interpretation. Intelligent...god? gods? aliens? Her point was that intelligent design (which I think in her mind translated into creationism) was just another theory.
"Theory"
(according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary)
1 : the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another
2 : abstract thought : SPECULATION
3 : the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art
4 a : a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action b : an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances -- often used in the phrase in theory
5 : a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena
6 a : a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation b : an unproved assumption : CONJECTURE c : a body of theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject.
My point here is that a scientific theory generally requires evidence, and there is not concrete evidence so far to make any sort of case for intelligent design. Whereas the theory of evolution is a well respected set of facts agreed on by many if not most if not all of the scientific community.
HOWEVER I think you are wise to sway from the singular viewpoints of evolutionary psychology and genetic determinism. The nature vs nurture debate has been going on for some time, and as any social scientist would tell you, the idea that we are genetically pre-ordained for all of our behavior is utterly ridiculous. We are socially constructed creatures. And not just human beings...look at the diference between a house cat and a feral cat.
Anyway, I like this topic, and could expound upon it further...but I have a paper to write!
Posted by: Mara | December 2, 2004 5:14 PM