There is nothing more naive than the darwiniste hypothesis of natural selection.
Natural selection does not exist. Seeing the logic of it it does not allow anything for the
origin of a species nore for its life-cycle nor for that matter the different forms and structures of species.
By tracing the first cause and the controlling factor you arrive at what you are looking for presumably as the efficient motor!
Soran 

--- En date de : Jeu 31.7.08, uncljoedoc@... <uncljoedoc@...> a écrit :

De: uncljoedoc@... <uncljoedoc@...>
Objet: [aristotle-met] efficient cause
À: aristotle-met@yahoogroups.com
Date: Jeudi 31 Juillet 2008, 5h16








In the interests of discussing the metaphysics of Aristotle, I ask the following question:

I am interested in the 'first cause' of 'modification' of species by means of natural selection. When a species is naturally modified in the sense of descent with modification has the modification been the effect of some efficient cause?

Joe

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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

 

I am very grateful for that reply. I am very much taken with the topic of the mode of thinking behind the theory of natural selection as presented by Darwin.I am only interested in the very inception of an idea that things changing in time are then selected for by a spatial ecological condition. I admit I want the thinking to be challenged as best as possible. What I want is to understand the theory as to how it has become a means of explaining. It is very powerful, such minds as Freud picked up on it within a decade of its publication. Freud thought it a way of understanding 'the world' and he said it inspired him to become a doctor. William James wrote that it was a 'triumphal achievement' of explanation involving two 'cycles of causation', one physiological and another environmental.

I was hoping to see how Darwin's theory of natural selection, or better, the mode of explaining that it represents, fares under scrutiny of the thought of Aristotle. Can it be criticized from the standpoint of Aristotles causes? Any feedback is appreciated. I read Aristotle from time to time, and I could follow a discussion about this.

Joe



YOU WROTE:

>>>>There is nothing more naive than the darwiniste hypothesis of natural selection.

Natural selection does not exist. Seeing the logic of it it does not allow anything for the
origin of a species nore for its life-cycle nor for that matter the different forms and structures of species.
By tracing the first cause and the contro
lling factor you arrive at what you are looking for presumably as the efficient motor!
Soran 

--- En date de : Jeu 31.7.08, uncljoedoc@... <uncljoedoc@...> a écrit :

De: uncljoedoc@... <uncljoedoc@...>
Objet: [aristotle-met] efficient cause
À: aristotle-met@yahoogroups.com
Date: Jeudi 31 Juillet 2008, 5h16

In the interests of discussing the metaphysics of Aristotle, I ask the following question:

I am interested in the 'first cause' of 'modification' of species by means of natural selection. When a species is naturally modified in the sense of descent with modification has the modification been the effect of some efficient cause?

Joe



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Soran Mardini wrote:

> There is nothing more naive than the darwiniste hypothesis of natural selection.
> Natural selection does not exist.

Then do you say that artificial selection does not exist? Do you deny
that men have deliberately bred many varieties of plants and animals?

Regards,
Bob Taylor

Joe:

I would say that is absolutely the case, from Aristotle's
perspective. But the efficient cause isn't the whole story. Maybe it
might help if we consider for a moment that the efficient cause is
the moving cause; it is the cause we find in the activity, the
process, as distinguised from the other three.

If a change happens, such as we see in natural selection, all four
modes of causality are necessarily involved in that change. There is
the form, the matter, the activity, and finally, the very nature of
the organism that is involved, where, here, the nature is to be
understood normatively, or, if you want to say it this way,
teleologically.

Darwin's theory of natural selection is not only a "mechanistic"
hypothesis regaring the emergence of species, but also
a "teleological" hypothesis as well. The teleology is obvious. It is,
to put it quite simply, the survival of the more fit, the better
adapted. The mechanism was, at Darwin's time, not very clearly
understood. That there was some kind of a mechanism involved in
breeding was not in doubt. What Darwin really clinched was the
universality of that mechanism with regard to the origin and the
disappearance of species over time on a vast scale.

The teleological aspect of Darwin's theory, the normative sense of
adaptation, ought not to be underestimated. Now, it just makes sense,
from an Aristotelian point of view, that where there is a telos there
is also a moving cause, some kind of a pattern of activity, a
process, which makes that telos actually happen, and also vice versa,
where there is an activity, especially an organic activity, there is
a teleology at work there in the moving cause. Something, not just
anything, is coming to be.

What modern science clues in on is something that even Aristotle, I
think, certainly realized, and that is once you get a grip on the
moving cause, the "how it happens" you are now in a better position
to more fully explain that phenomenon. With an account of the moving
cause, you can really sink your teeth into the phenomenon. Modern
science has done just that. And, as a matter of fact, the other three
aspects of causality are not as downplayed as we might think. What is
rejected by modern science is a naive nursery school kind of
interpretation of causality, especially of final causality, that does
not really even resemble Aristotle.

How, I ask, is a law of nature NOT a final cause? It IS normative, is
it not? We say that falling bodies OBEY the law of gravity, just as
we now say that the gemesis process of organisms OBEYS the law of the
survival of the better adapted organism by means of a mechanism of
natural selection that, as it were, takes advantage of the natural
indeterminacies involved in the physical encoding and transmission of
genetic information from one generation to the next. This does NOT
mean that it is all merely accidental. It is, in point of fact, quite
intentional. What, after all, is DOING the adapting here? The
organisms? Or the genesis process? That, to me, is the intriguing
question that was brought up by Hegel. So, how is all of this NOT
deeply teleological? And, even SCIENTIFICALLY so?

Okay, so, according to Aristotle, the activity IS the fundamentum. It
is prior. That is what Aristotle has in mind, at Metaphysics Book
Theta 1049b5 where he says that actuality is prior to possibility.
The activity, the energeia, is the actual process of undergoing,
which fulfills, or not, the potentiality, the dunamis. Aristotle's
analysis of form and matter ultimately recognizes the fundamental
identity of form and activity. Where there is form, there is
activity, and vice versa as well. Activity is, at bottom, physiology,
in the broadest possible sense of the term.

But, on the other side of the coin, the telos, how the fundamentum IS
the form and matter undergoing what it is undergoing, what it is a
becoming into, is not unimportant. It is, in fact, absolutely
essential, and there is something to be said, I think, for the
interpretation of Aristotle's final cause in terms of an ousia, of an
essence or a nature, as well as of a substance, an individual
substantial form. The term ousia wasn't just ambiguous. It was rich.

Aristotle is actually quite Platonic about this. But he has his
scientific eye, the interest of a student of nature, on the Form as
it is exhibited in nature, something that was less of a concern for
Plato who was mostly interested in the visibility of the Form in
ethics and politics. The two men can actually complement each other
quite well. There is really no need for a Plato-Aristotle antagonism
here.

The point is, I think, not to think all of this one-sidedly. If we
take Aristotle seriously, all FOUR causes have to be present in an
adequate metaphysical account, otherwise there really is no account,
and excluding any one of them is NOT an option. An over emphasis on
any one of them would necessarily be a distortion. So, if we want to
ask about the rather astonishing success modern science has had with
explanations according to the moving cause, we best not forget that
the matter and the form, as well as the normative role that is played
by the essential nature, or the phusis, the telos, simply cannot be
excluded from such an assessment.

Just a closing thought. What if adapatation is all there really is to
evolution? Well, consider this. There may be more to the idea of
adaptation than a result of a mere accident. The very thought of
adaptation ties into the thought of integrity, and that, right there,
is a thought that has as much application to ethics and politics as
it does to biology. We should not be too quick to dismiss the cogency
of the thought of adaptation, itself, as a fundamental teleology of
nature, because it leads, quite naturally, organically, and even
biologically, to a foundational thesis of ethics.

The fact that the meanings of the terms become necessarily equivocal
is not as big a problem as we might think. It is actually an INSIGHT,
not a problem! Aristotle, and Plato, both address the issue of
equivocity. It is profoundly important to metaphysical thinking. You
can't think metaphysically without it. And that, right there, is one
of the things that shows HOW metaphysics is so very different from
science.

Hb3g

--- In aristotle-met@yahoogroups.com, uncljoedoc@... wrote:
>
>
>
> In the interests of discussing the metaphysics of Aristotle, I ask
the following question:
>
> I am interested in the 'first cause' of 'modification' of species
by means of natural selection. When a species is naturally modified
in the sense of descent with modification has the modification been
the effect of some efficient cause?
>
>
>
> Joe
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>