An inclusional worldview
Nature ‘versus’ Nurture
The arguments over apportioning which of those aspects of a person derive from ‘nature’ (genetics) and which aspects derive from ‘nurture’ (environmental influence) is a bullshit argument (so, thank you very much, ‘sciences’ of ‘biology’ and ‘psychology’). Just because we can take a picture of a DNA string and define and label it, doesn’t endow it with local existence and life-creating powers in its own right. For christ’s sake, when you get right down to it, there isn’t any such thing as ‘local-material structure’, the ‘atomic particles’ that were the supposed ‘building blocks’ are now recognized to be resonances in the energy-field-flow. Space and matter have a wave structure. And, in any case, As Barry Commoner observes, ‘DNA didn’t create life, life created DNA!
In the energy-field-flow continuum of nature, the organism is the environment, the inhabitant is the habitat, there are no absolute ‘local existing objects’ and the relationship between energy-loaded space and the ‘illogic’ of what ‘APPEAR’ (Schroedinger’s ‘schaumkommen’) to be ‘LOCAL’ ‘material bodies’ is ‘explained away’ by Ernst Mach’s principle of space-matter relativity; “The dynamics of the habitat condition the dynamics of the inhabitant/s AT THE SAME TIME as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat’. That is, space-and-matter are a conjugate dynamic unity, … organism-and-environment are a conjugate dynamic unity, inhabitant-and-habitat are a conjugate dynamic unity. There is no ‘dual sourcing’ of what goes on with one purported source BEING INTERNAL ‘genetic building blocks’ and the other purported source BEING EXTERNAL ‘environmental influences’. This artificial ‘split’ in the sourcing of creative dynamics, which comes from the ‘idealisations’ that science imposes on nature’s dynamic, is where this bogus ‘nature versus nurture’ paradox comes from.
The invisible conjugate aspect of ‘self’ (the ‘soul’ of the ‘self’) is the continuously unfolding continuum of nature in which the material conjugate aspect of the ‘self’ is uniquely, situationally included. By ignoring the habitat-inhabitant conjugate unity and one-sidedly reducing our notion of ‘self’ to that of a local, independently-existing organism with its own ‘local, internally originating behaviour’ is to intellectually ‘exorcise’ the ‘soul’ aspect. So, would our educational institutes please stop brainwashing our children by treating this ‘nature versus nurture’ paradox as if it were ‘real’, and admit that it arises from our own over-simplified definitions? Where does one complain about this? Will the next cultural pandemic hatch out of the blogosphere? (;-}
DNA, like all forms, is the 'result' NOT 'source' of creative dynamics
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I remember the very first time I heard about the “Nature versus Nurture debate” and I thought at the time, “Well, duh, it’s both, obviously”.
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.
yes, i agree. meanwhile, the ‘confusion’ that propagates out of this notion of a ‘nature versus nurture’ paradox is, in my view, the tip of a mighty iceberg. the universities take it very seriously and as a student, you can take an entire course on it, and if you don’t take it seriously, you are going to be in trouble grades-wise. for example, you may be introduced to it with something like the following;
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.
i meant to comment on your comment;
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.