Aaron Antrim’s blog

Brian: I’d like to add in that the point of interest you find in Wilson, that he is not a “textbook” this or that, is what I appreciate most about him — that he expresses and explores many views and positions, even ones he disagrees with, that he draws ideas from and engages many different disciplines and fields. But he is always a scientist. Always science.

I completely agree with you that the major flaw of Consilience is that with something as overarching as this book, he does not look outside the text enough and consider the many different ways his text might be received by different audiences. That of course, would be what a social scientist might be more interested in, whereas a scientist is interested in publishing data and facts, often leaving what is to be done with this information to other people. For an example of what I mean about not addressing the variation of possible responses and audiences, see my post “E.O. Wilson: Racist or not?”

The benefit of Wilson being a scientist but engaging other disciplines, even if science always seems to get the upper hand in the framework he sets up is that it gets people talking about the issues of consilience where before many humanities people make no attempt at the project. The project of consilience, I think, is worthwhile and should be pursued but it seems like it might require adjustments on both sides (as to how exactly this might play out I have no idea).

On “The Fitness of Human Nature:” I want to clarify that just because a genetic predisposition exists, it is not justified, but understanding genetic bases might help us to exercise more choice in our behavior and culture.

aaron :: Nov.30.2005 :: Inscape / Landscape class :: No Comments »

“It is not difficult to visualize how the stepping-stones between the natural and social sciences might be arranged and traversed. Consider a particular macrosocial event such as the decay of families in the American inner city, the implosion of rural populations into Mexico City, or middle-class resistance to the prospective introduction of euro currency in France. Social scientists addressing such issues start at the level of conventional analysis. They bring order to the facts, quantifying them in tables, graphs, and statistical interpretations. They examine the historical background. They draw comparison with similar phenomena in other places, examine the constraints and biases of the surrounding culture, and determine whether the genre to which the event belongs is widespread or instead unique to that time and place. From all this information they intuit the causes of the event and they ask: What does the event mean, will it continue, will it occur again?

To respond to parts of Consilience I find that I have to be careful to separate how I feel about Wilson’s ideas from whether or not I agree with them. One might think that if I am bothered by an idea it is probably because I disagree with it, but this isn’t always the case. Like in the above passage, for example.

Initially, I was a bit taken back by Wilson’s claim that our current social science and humanities based approaches to solving political and social problems is insufficient. His motion to not just introduce natural science into the search for solutions to social problems but to base the entire process on these sciences strikes me as a little bit frightening. I cannot help but think of the way ecological landscapes are managed by experts. I’m not saying this is inappropriate or that there is any better way of doing this, or that this is bad. It’s just that this process involves a certain amount of objectification, and to do the same thing to human societies (which is already being done, but in an imperfect way, argues Wilson) seems just a little bit scary.

Step 1 is studying and understanding societies, just like with ecological landscapes, and then the natural step 2 would be to do the same thing that we do with natural landscapes — manage them. Now, what is important to remember here before I bring up a worst-case scenario is that most natural resource management is not about intimately managing and regulating the minutiae of forest ecology but letting little critters do their thing. Still, I can’t help but feel Wilson’s dream is just a little bit 1984ish or Brave New Worldish, or that there is at least see a risk of increased technologization of the human organism in some of the projects Wilson oulines.

aaron :: Nov.28.2005 :: Inscape / Landscape class :: 15 Comments »

The interesting thing about Wilson, from my own myopic understanding of philosophy and theory, is the difficulty of pinning him down as a “textbook” this or that. Is he a humanist, biocentrist? of course, in application, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a person who occupies a static identity that can be articulately defined and expressed. Often I make observation of conversations where someone who self identifies as a liberal activist, details a vision of “liberal activism” which closely resembles neo-conservative ideas. It is not uncommon to be confused about what is really being said or done by certain words or actions. I think in To What End, there is some confusion about what agenda is really being forwarded as evidenced in classroom discussions that vacillate between seeing his project as benign, useful or destructive. I think we will all have difficulty saying what is really happening in the text until we look outside it.
That said, there are still a few theoretical issues I have with the last chapter, aside from the critique of the biocentric point of view implicit in all of his musings on population and resources. I sense through this chapter that he views science as the key to emancipate the life-world from the trouble of Modernism and the Enlightenment, while maintaining that the project of Modernism is still a valuable pursuit. While he is a scientist, and accordingly he should write about science, he precariously extends the discipline of science. I tend to side with Jurgen Habermas who would probably call this project a false negation of culture for its gross assertion of the sciences over spheres of aesthetics and morality. Real unity comes from efforts in all spheres not just one.

Yarish :: Nov.22.2005 :: Inscape / Landscape class :: 7 Comments »

I haven’t watched “Altered States” yet as Brian recommended. It seems to me that the example of psycho-tropic drugs works both ways as far as establishing our ability to perceive reality. Drugs can show us the alterable and unreliable nature of perception, the dependence of consciousness on brain chemistry. But at the same time they give us a way of gauging our “unaltered” state, or, should I say our state which has been altered only by years of evolution. I think that most people would agree that in this state we are amazingly more able to perceive the world around us, and even if many people do claim drug-induced insight, it is only in relationship to unaltered reality that they are able to arrive at these insights.

aaron :: Nov.14.2005 :: Inscape / Landscape class :: No Comments »

How does one take experience myth, feeling, and subjective “reality,” while still practicing science in a way that does not deny the significance of these experiences? I am strong sense this is possible to do, and I wish that E.O. Wilson had given more effort to resolving this problem in the chapter. I think that “The Natural Sciences” got people so riled up in class discussion because it can seem that E.O. Wilson’s declaration that creation myths have been “…wrong. Always wrong,” might seem to invalidate our complicated feelings and eclectically formed personal belief systems. I agree with many points brought up that Wilson would do well to appreciate more of the complexities of some of the issues he brings up, instead of taking a more, well, reductionist approach. But, let’s put that matter aside for a second and say that Wilson is just doing his job as a scientist by taking a reductionist approach, and it’s our jobs as readers, post-structuralists, English majors, citizens, or maybe even artists, to synthesize new ideas using what the scientific process has offered us. Not all parts of the human experience can be explained by science — yet — and I suspicion that they may never be explainable by science. So our experiences and our culture, while maybe not interpretable at face value through the lens of science, they are nonetheless important clues.

aaron :: Nov.14.2005 :: Inscape / Landscape class :: No Comments »