“it irritates me when people do out-of-context experiments on human behaviour where they try to isolate and analyse specific variables that might affect their behaviour. And then do the experiments in laboratories instead of observing real-life settings”

yes, this is like measuring the effect of placing a straw on a camel’s back. in real life, the camel may have many straws on his back, at the same time, so that placing a straw on the camel’s back depends on the particular circumstances of the camel or ‘the condition of the terrain’. we should therefore do the experiment on many camels that represent many different ‘conditions of the terrain’, but then, ‘science’ (mainstream) is all about eliminating the ‘particular circumstances’ as associate with the ‘condition of the terrain’ so as to find a ‘most easy’ though not ‘most true’ view wherein we can impute the source of a change in a complex state of affairs, to a ‘causal agent’ as if this ‘causal agent’ is the original ‘source(eror’) of the ‘effect’ and would have the same effect on whatever different ‘states of affairs’ it might engage with. such over-simplification removes the innate ‘relativity’ between the receptive/resistive opening of spatial possibility and the blossoming of creative/productive potentiality.

when science synthetically removes the ‘female’ side of the conjugate ‘creative-potentiality’ – ‘opening of spatial possibility’ relation, by way of the notion of ‘causal agency’, the logic of science gives bogus results that falsely attribute great powers to the notional ‘causal agent’;

1. it was the little ‘straw’ that broke the camel’s huge back
2. it was the little cigarette butt that caused the raging fire.
3. it was the little sperm that caused the storm of cell production.
4. it was the little butterfly that caused the horrific hurricane
5. it was little old grouch hitler that caused the apocalyptic WWII.
6. it was the ambitious little CEO that caused a billion in profits

the fertile woman is like an avalanche ready and waiting to ‘rock and roll’ and the particular ‘causal agent’ (‘trigger’) is incidental to the unfolding. the ‘causal pride’ in having triggered the storm of cell production is like the pride of a boy who claims ‘he’ filled the sky with birds’ by throwing a rock at a landed flock of them. the notion of a ‘selfish gene’ that runs around exercising its ‘causal agency’ is, similarly, an inverted, if not perverted, delusion.

the proliferation of male DNA is the result of the condition of the terrain rather than the cause of it, just as pasteur and bechamp contend that the proliferation of microbes is the result of the condition of the body’s terrain, rather than the result of it.

all of these ‘over-inflated’ views of the role of ‘causal agency’ are the result of denying the primary role of the ‘condition of the terrain’. ‘le terrain est tout’ – pasteur.

“The debate on the relative importance of nature (genetics) and nurture (environment) in determining human traits has been prolonged and often acrimonious. Great minds have engaged in it over the last 300 years, including philosophers John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, and scientists Stephen Gould, Richard Lewontin, and Edward Wilson. The problem is that most of the debate has proceeded on the basis of either a simplistically dichotomous view of the question, or with a dearth of relevant empirical evidence. The controversy has in fact largely been solved when it comes to plants and non-human animals. Unfortunately, most philosophers are not aware of such progress, which has taken place within the arcane discipline of evolutionary ecology. On the other hand, most scientists keep focusing on the special case of humans which – while obviously the most interesting – has demonstrated to be the most recalcitrant to empirical analysis and the most open to philosophical inquiry. “

so, after hearing all this stern stuff, what is a student likely to ‘get back’ if he/she says something like; ” … ‘genetics’ is an intellectual model based on mechanical concepts rather than a reality, while the dynamical space of nature that brought us here and which orchestrates our behaviour (night, day, seasons, weather, landscape etc.) is an organic reality’.

to utter such a statement in ‘well informed ‘academic’ circles’ is to invite ridicule, not because truth is lacking but because the ‘belief-based investments’ in the intellectual concepts are huge. it is like the amerindian saying that the US and Canada do not really exist (i.e. they are just intellectual concepts that the rest of nature, rivers, winds, animals, birds are not ‘fooled by’). practically speaking, it doesn’t matter that the amerindian has ‘truth on his side’, within the social dynamic, the power is held by the ‘believers’ in the intellectual concept. The issue of whether ‘nature versus nurture’ is a legitimate question is determined (in a social setting) not by the inherent natural truth or lack thereof in the intellectual underpinnings, but by the relative social power of the ‘believers’ in those intellectual concepts of ‘organisation’ (e.g. ‘genetics’).

as an afterthought to this blog-post, i added a blog-post on ‘organisation : what is it?’ … to try to point out the difference between purely intellectual concepts of organisation (e.g. ‘genetics’) and the organic organisation available to our natural experience.

This is why it irritates me when people do out-of-context experiments on human behaviour where they try to isolate and analyse specific variables that might affect their behaviour. And then do the experiments in laboratories instead of observing real-life settings.