Dear All Learners,
Full Title is/was
Mendel, Complexity, Spirit, Man, Bateson, Einstein, Darwin, My Musical
Scanner, Uncle Tom Cobbley and All and All...
A position of simplicity relative to complexity;-), a perspective
Bateson notices,
A. Rats have an instinct for spacing themselves, and when this is thwarted
by overcrowding, complex confusions occur in their life processes, so that
they die of endocrine imbalance.
Or
B. Rats have an instinct for endocrine imbalance, which is touched off by
overcrowding. Failing such stimulation, the rats are forced into all the
complex business of living - the symptoms of thwarted instinct for death
by crowding.
Now, if I were an engineer, I would build rats on one or the other of
these two systems, according to what specifications I had to meet. But,
pace Darwin and the whole industrial revolution and Ockham, evolution is
not an engineer; and I do not believe that rats are built on either of
these principles. The engineer's question is: on which side of the fence
do you want to place the complexity? Is normal life simple and pathology
complex? Or vice versa? Now, we know from genetics that there are some
cases in which a single gene determines a definite (?single)
characteristic; and my namesake Gregor Mendel (my namesake is bigger than
yours, Dr. Skinner) was lucky enough or cunning enough to happen on some
of these. But, as genetic progresses, it becomes clearer and clearer that
the characteristics of animals are determined by complex, interacting,
overlapping and 'redundant' ( in the technical sense) constellations of
genes. And this probably is progressively more so as we approach more
'fundamental' characteristics (the great homologies, symmetry, etc.).
If this be true of physical characteristics, it is probably also true of
behavioral-physiological characteristics, and it then becomes nonsense to
ask the engineer's question, above.
***The complexity is on both sides.***
And I do know this, that the older an automobile gets and the further it
is from the engineer who designed it, the more complex it gets with
multiple 'pathologies' and the more it takes on characteristics of a
living thing - moods, caprice, etc. New cars are 'it' but an old car is
'she'.
(Andrew's note: well I'm b*******)
So - I personally avoid the word instinct because it suggests to the
reader a specific tag or gene or something which determines directly a
specific 'piece' of behavior. There may be such tags for the dancing mice,
but I doubt it for such constellations of behavior as are denoted by words
like territory. Norbert Wiener once described ants as 'cheap mass-produced
articles,' and it may be true that insects with their extremely economical
circuitry are constructed on the engineer's plan but even this I doubt.
Consider the lilies of the field - they are not racked by separable
purposes; and yet neither Darwin nor B. F. Skinner was ever arrayed like
one of these. The ****whole*** trouble (or a lot of it) results from the
instinctive (innate) vulgarity of scientists, which is derived from the
same 'instinct' as is the vulgarity of magic. (Even old Fraser knew that
magic and science were somehow one.)
The innate component of this vulgarity is relational. It is the relation
between mind and consciousness - a relation of partial separation. You and
I and Darwin and Skinner are all genotypically built upon a plan whereby
that small selection from mind which appears upon the 'screen' of
consciousness, is, for the most part, those bits and pieces which will
inform our purposes. (The conscious/unconscious barrier is surely both an
engineering necessity and genotypically determined. Whether the principles
governing the selection of items for the screen of consciousness are also
genotypically determined, I don't know. There is surely some learning and
habit formation in this business. That attention and the content of
consciousness are linked must be laid down deep in the genome. But, no
doubt, the directions of selective attention are part learned and part
instinctive. There are always difficulties of this sort whenever we ask
about components of an 'instinct'.)
And by way of an appendage on systemic principles from the word 'Go!' this
note...
Dear Phil: On the last chapter now - 'supererogation' - No - check this
word with Mrs. Malaprop - I have told you the story of the Creation. Here
is: 'The Garden of Eden'
-
The myth in biblical form is (as is so often the case) upside-down. Adam
and Eve ate the fruit of knowledge. An apple, high on the Tree. They had
to place one box on top of another in order to reach it. They then ate it
- the sweet reward of a successful short-sighted scheme consciously
planned. This, as you suggest, no doubt made them drunk, with partial
arrogance.
The arrogance was partial in the sense that what they were arrogant about
was that miniscule part of themselves which achieved the conscious plan.
(No arrogance is total.)
In this arrogance, they threw out all the rest of themselves - thus breaking
up the total systemic thing they called 'mind'.
I.e., They threw god out of the garden.
After that, the ecosystem of the garden got out of kilter - ****because
God is the inner and the outer systemic character of everything - mind and
garden.****
So they said: 'It's a vengeful god.'
After the loss of the rich topsoil, of course gardening became very hard
work, and Adam sweated (especially and the brow).
(This was before Cain had invented the combined tractor-plough-harvester,
and all farmers devoted the rest of their lives to buying the damn things
on the installment plan.)
Eve began to resent the processes of coition and reproduction, which
always somehow reminded her of that larger life, which Adam had sacrificed
in order to buy her a washing machine - which she had asked for. So she
experienced a good deal of pain in childbirth, and felt that the capacity
and need for love was God's curse on women, which was true in an
upside-down way.
Adam managed to get some vengeful satisfaction out of the game of Free
Enterprise - killing everything in sight.
But the customs of that benighted time did not permit Eve to do this.
So she joined a bridge club.
As to their children, I have already told you that story in the literal
unchanged biblical version - the 'Authorized'. (The newer versions,
specially retranslated for illiterate inhabitants of the suburbs, have
dropped the homosexual bit.)
Finally, god sent his only begotten sons, Wylie and Bateson, to try to
unravel the whole mess, and I'd hate to tell you what happened to them.
Gregory (Bateson)
Bateson was also rather enthralled at the speculations of St Augustine and
St Thomas Aquinas in a systemic way...to which matter or not as the case
may or may not be, I might return.
Love,
Andrew Campbell
Oxford
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