Toward a Judeo-Marxist biology

[No Robots]

I thank you folks for your participation in this thread. The time has come to stop talking about my views on biology and to start applying them. My main field of praxis is myself: my health, my activities, my food and drink. I treat myself according to the following:

• zero sum calculation
• holism
• systems theory
• cybernetics
• self-organization
• self-similarity
• complexity theory

These scientific principles provide a sound basis for a rational biology. Their philosophic foundations can be found in the monism of Spinoza, Marx, Brunner, Waton and Macmurray, as well as Bible literature. Pursuit of this line of activity will bring us to an absolute science of man. An essential component of this science is the doctrine of election that recognizes the distinctions between people according to the qualities of their souls as manifested in their thoughts, words and deeds.

 

[lpetrich]

Karl Marx wasn't a researcher into biology. The Bible is very horrible about biology, and I'm judging it by what a careful observer back then would have concluded.

The most biology in the Bible is in Leviticus 11, which tries to use taxonomic criteria to identify which animals are OK to eat.

It starts off with chewing the cud and having split hooves, something that is actually good. But it soon goes downhill, stating that rabbits chew the cud. Is that from rabbits twitching their noses?

Then it states that one may only eat sea animals with fins and scales. No problem there.

Then it gets into birds, listing a lot of different kind of birds that one must not eat. At the end of this list is the bat. That's a very glaring flub, because bats look much more like mice than like most other birds. Here is another view of bats from antiquity: The Bat, Birds, and The Beasts - Fables of Aesop - about bats as fence-sitters, flying like birds, but having mammalian anatomy.

Then it mentions several insects as walking on four legs. This is a very naive extrapolation from larger animals with horizontal main body axes.

There are other oddities in the Bible, like Genesis 3:14, where we find that the snake in the Garden of Eden was ordered to crawl on its belly and eat dust. How was that snake moving around before then? Like a Q-Bert springing snake? Also, lizards and mice seem close to crawling on their bellies, so one ought to ask why snakes are legless.

I'm not going to speculate about the sea monster in the Book of Jonah. Calling it a "whale" or a "fish" seems too specific, and I think that it was some imaginary super animal. In any case, poor Jonah would have suffocated inside that animal.

In the Book of Job, Behemoth seems like some large herbivore: a hippopotamus or a rhinoceros or an elephant. Leviathan is more difficult to identify, and it seems to me to be some imaginary super animal, like the sea monster that swallowed Jonah.

 

[lpetrich]

I now turn to Karl Marx. He wasn't very interested in biology, as far as I know. His good friend Friedrich Engels had more interest, however, and he even wrote a book, "Dialectics of Nature".

He came up with these three laws of nature:

1. The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa;
2. The law of the interpenetration of opposites;
3. The law of the negation of the negation.

1883-Dialectics of Nature-Index - at marxists.org

Seems to me a lot of hand-waving.

 

[lpetrich]

Evolutionary biology is NOT a personality cult of Charles Darwin. I repeat, evolutionary biology is NOT a personality cult of Charles Darwin. He was important in the field, but I've read a LOT of research into evolutionary biology, and evolutionary biologists don't argue by quoting Origin of Species at each other.

 

[bilby]

bats look much more like mice than like most other birds.

Around here, bats look like small dogs (wearing leather capes).



These guys have a wingspan of around 1 metre. Their bodies are the size of a small terrier.

 

[Jarhyn]

Karl Marx wasn't a researcher into biology. The Bible is very horrible about biology, and I'm judging it by what a careful observer back then would have concluded.

The most biology in the Bible is in Leviticus 11, which tries to use taxonomic criteria to identify which animals are OK to eat.

It starts off with chewing the cud and having split hooves, something that is actually good. But it soon goes downhill, stating that rabbits chew the cud. Is that from rabbits twitching their noses?

Then it states that one may only eat sea animals with fins and scales. No problem there.

Then it gets into birds, listing a lot of different kind of birds that one must not eat. At the end of this list is the bat. That's a very glaring flub, because bats look much more like mice than like most other birds. Here is another view of bats from antiquity: The Bat, Birds, and The Beasts - Fables of Aesop - about bats as fence-sitters, flying like birds, but having mammalian anatomy.

Then it mentions several insects as walking on four legs. This is a very naive extrapolation from larger animals with horizontal main body axes.

There are other oddities in the Bible, like Genesis 3:14, where we find that the snake in the Garden of Eden was ordered to crawl on its belly and eat dust. How was that snake moving around before then? Like a Q-Bert springing snake? Also, lizards and mice seem close to crawling on their bellies, so one ought to ask why snakes are legless.

I'm not going to speculate about the sea monster in the Book of Jonah. Calling it a "whale" or a "fish" seems too specific, and I think that it was some imaginary super animal. In any case, poor Jonah would have suffocated inside that animal.

In the Book of Job, Behemoth seems like some large herbivore: a hippopotamus or a rhinoceros or an elephant. Leviathan is more difficult to identify, and it seems to me to be some imaginary super animal, like the sea monster that swallowed Jonah.

Thing is, just this year (or was it last?), some folks got taken into the mouth of a whale and spit out.

One of them managed to film it.

I'm guessing a story got exaggerated there.

The leviathan could have been anything, as you mentioned. I expect it was an interpretation of seeing the back of a whale and thinking it was longer than it was, having only seen one or two, and people agreeing with whatever inaccuracies.

It's not like people in antiquity spent a lot of time near or seeing whales when the original stories were written, and boats sucked ass.

Looking at how Romans thought dolphins looked is kind of revealing there.

 

[lpetrich]

Friedrich Engels wrote about biology not only in "Dialectics of Nature" but also in "Anti-Dühring"

• Marxism and Natural Science
• Marx and Engels on Science and Mathematics
• 1877: Anti-Duhring - Engels
• The Part Played by Labor in the Transition From Ape to Man - Engels
• 1883-Dialectics of Nature-Index - Engels
• Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts 1881
• Letters of Marx and Engels on Natural Science and Mathematics

 

[lpetrich]

 History of evolutionary thought - speculations about descent with modification go back a long way, and they competed with:

• Miraculous creation of ancestral populations - being poofed into existence by some superbeing(s) or mysterious force(s)
• Species of organisms always existing
• Spontaneous generation of species members

Spontaneous generation? It was taken for granted that while some organisms are only produced by other ones, some other ones emerge from nonliving matter all the time. Like this: Arcana Microcosmi, II:10 - Alexander Ross (1652) Arcana Microcosmi, Book II, Chapter 10, pp. 151-156.

He doubts whether mice can be procreated of putrifaction. So he may doubt whether in cheese and timber worms are generated; Or if Betels and wasps in cowes dung; Or if butterflies, locusts, grashoppers, shel-fish, snails, eeles, and such like, be procreated of putrified matter, which is apt to receive the form of that creature to which it is by the formative power disposed. To question this, is to question Reason, Sense, and Experience: If he doubts of this, let him go to Ægypt, and there he will finde the fields swarming with mice begot of the mud of Nylus, to the great calamity of the Inhabitants.

He doubts that mice can be produced by rotting material. So he may doubt that worms can be produced by cheese and timber, or beetles and wasps by cow dung, or butterflies, locusts, grasshoppers, shellfish, snails, eels, and the like by rotting material, material which is capable of receiving the forms of these creatures. To question this is to question reason, sense, and experience. If one doubts this, one should go to Egypt, and one will find the fields overrun by mice that came from the mud of the Nile River, to the great calamity of the Inhabitants.

I also note Jan-Baptista van Helmont's recipe for mice. Put some wheat and dirty underwear into a pot, and in 21 days, mice will appear -- mice just like other mice, and able to breed in the usual way.

The beginning of the end was with Francesco Redi's 1668 experiments on the spontaneous generation of flies from rotting meat. He noticed that flies produced by rotting meat are the same kind of flies that are attracted to rotting meat. So were these flies making the meat make more flies?

He did some experiments which are a classic example of experimental design. Anyone who thinks that the science is nothing more than bull sessions should look at those experiments. FR reasoned that if meat makes flies without being visited by flies, then one should see what happens if one keeps flies away from meat. Will it still make flies? He tried that, and he found that it didn't. He also did an experiment where he tested whether such isolated meat can attract flies. He put some meat in a jar and put gauze on top of it. The meat's smell attracted flies, and some of the flies laid eggs on the gauze.

FR thus showed that rotting meat does not make flies on its own.

FR's experiments were easy to extend to other species, and by the mid 19th cy. spontaneous generation was thoroughly discredited. It took that long because while the SG of macroscopic organisms was fairly easy to discredit, it was much more difficult for microscopic ones.

 

[lpetrich]

In the mid 18th cy., Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon proposed that there was not one place of miraculous poofing, but several "centers of creation". That would explain the limited ranges of many species. Why do rattlesnakes live only in North America? Kangaroos only in Australia? Etc.

Around 1800, George Cuvier looked at bones of mammoths, and he concluded that they were a species of elephant, but one distinct from the two present ones. He concluded that here was a species that had gone extinct. It was often believed back then that God would not allow any of his creations to go extinct, but here was a clear case of that happening.

This led to a common belief in the early 19th cy., species being separately created over geological time. Poof poof poof poof poof ...

Also around 1800, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed descent by modification. But he seems to have thought that different species represent separate lineages. He is best known for believing in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, but his major mechanism of evolution was orthogenesis, evolution driven by internal forces.

A similar mechanism often proposed was direct induction by the environment. That would explain why camouflaged animals look much like their environments.

Charles Darwin not only made a very convincing case for evolution, he pretty much founded evolutionary biology. Without him, the scientific community would have retraced his reasoning and accepted evolution by the late 19th century.

 

[No Robots]

Hello, lpetrich. Always glad to hear from you.

I freely acknowledge that there has been a process, call it evolution, wherein life has produced multicellular organisms from unicellular organisms. We know that we ourselves as individuals started as unicelluar organisms. However, we also know that the progress of an individual from unicellular to multicellular organism is not random, but determined. It is my contention that the progress of the biosphere as a whole is likewise not random, but determined. Following this same line of thought, just as it is useless to say that one organ of our body is derived from another, so is it useless to say that one life-form is derived from another. What is important is that each organ and each life-form has unique properties the understanding of which is the purpose of science.

The whole of reality is a process of self-expression. Reality itself has intention, and that intention is to reveal itself to itself in infinite forms. It is the human mind that provides reality with that power of knowing itself in infinite forms. That is what Marx means when he talks about man as being the Gattungswesen: it is man that perceives reality as infinite forms. This understanding of reality as infinite forms is the basis of the Bible's teaching. It is also present in philosophy, as with Plato's doctrine of forms.

Evolution is the process through which life attains to self-understanding as infinite forms. In this sense, man is the object and objective of evolution. The problem with our science today is that it discards the idea of infinite forms in favour of infinite flux, wherein reality is understood as random and without any object or objective. This results in a state of radical unknowing, of creative stupidity. That's fine for the vast majority of people. It satisfies their desire to escape determinism and live out their fantasies of wealth, power and pleasure. For the serious-minded, however, for those who are compelled to seek out the rational, the intuitive and the intellectual, another approach is required. Luckily it is ready at hand in the works that I have mentioned.

 

[pood]

Evolution is the process through which life attains to self-understanding as infinite forms. In this sense, man is the object and objective of evolution.

Any evidence for this?

 

[No Robots]

Evolution is the process through which life attains to self-understanding as infinite forms. In this sense, man is the object and objective of evolution.

Any evidence for this?

Call it an extrapolation from incomplete evidence. Call it intuition. Call it a reasoned surmise. Call it a working premise. Call it a time-honoured approach. It's what I believe, it's what I live. I am at home with those who share this outlook, and I view those who reject it as opponents. Some of these opponents are worthy and seek only to further science. However, others are science fascists who seek to exterminate any view but their own.

 

[pood]

OK, so no evidence, got it. And of course, there is a mountain of evidence that goes the other way — evolution is a stoachastic process with no end in mind, no telos. Humans are just one among a vast number of extant branches, and humans will one day go extinct as 99 percent of species have gone extinct.

 

[No Robots]

OK, so no evidence, got it. And of course, there is a mountain of evidence that goes the other way — evolution is a stoachastic process with no end in mind, no telos. Humans are just one among a vast number of extant branches, and humans will one day go extinct as 99 percent of species have gone extinct.

That is your faith. Well and good. Just leave me to operate on the basis of mine.

 

[pood]

I don’t have a faith. I have evidence. You have none, as you just admitted.

 

[No Robots]

Your faith in stochastics is risible.

 

[pood]

The evidence shows that it’s a stochstic process. This has nothing to do with faith. “Evidence” in this context is pretty much the opposite of “faith.”

 

[pood]

To be precise, “stotachistic” does not mean that evolution is random. “Stochastic” and “random” are not exaclty the same thing. A stochastic process is inherently unpredictable and has elements of randomness. In evolution, those elements are mutations and genetic drift. Natural selection in tandem with random mutation is not a random process but it is not a directed process either. Evolution has no mind or intent. Ergo humans cannot be its object or objective.

 

[Elixir]

Evolutionary biology is NOT a personality cult of Charles Darwin. I repeat, evolutionary biology is NOT a personality cult of Charles Darwin. He was important in the field, but I've read a LOT of research into evolutionary biology, and evolutionary biologists don't argue by quoting Origin of Species at each other.

^ That.

I am not an evolutionary biologist but have read enough of it to know this:

* Evolution is not some paradigm existing in a vacuum to compete with biblical superstitions, Lysenkoism, Lamarckism or any other hypothetical, philosophical or pseudoscientific framework. It is a utilitarian construct that is both explanatory and predictive, and has never been seriously challenged in either role.
* Evolution refers to an observable process undergone by EVERY population of imperfect self-replicators in dynamic fitness landscapes, without exception.
* Evolutionary biology is the study of that process. It may include studying dead ends, or partial dead ends like lamarckian causes of genetic modification, but the process persists regardless of which avenues of study do or do not pan out.

NR has failed to provide any principle - or even example - that would indicate that his "j-m biology" exceeds evolutionary biology in either explanatory or predictive power.
So my question would be "what good is it"? I am not assuming that NR's ideas should be automatically consigned to the circular file just because I don't see any reason for it. Just hoping maybe NR can give reason to think this "J-M biology" deserves continued consideration.

 

[bilby]

Evolution is the process through which life attains to self-understanding as infinite forms. In this sense, man is the object and objective of evolution.

Any evidence for this?

Call it an extrapolation from incomplete evidence. Call it intuition. Call it a reasoned surmise. Call it a working premise. Call it a time-honoured approach.

I prefer to call it opinionated self-centred ignorance.

It's what I believe, it's what I live. I am at home with those who share this outlook, and I view those who reject it as opponents. Some of these opponents are worthy and seek only to further science.

Your abject lack of qualification or ability to judge who is or is not seeking to further science is no bar to your opinionated self-centred ignorance at all, is it?

However, others are science fascists who seek to exterminate any view but their own.

Nor does it cause you to resile from pre-emptive logical fallacies, I notice.