When I saw the spine of this newly published book in the awesome Athenaeum bookshop in Amsterdam last summer, I decided to see if Rich6000 WORD REVIEW
When I saw the spine of this newly published book in the awesome Athenaeum bookshop in Amsterdam last summer, I decided to see if Richard Rorty could still teach me something. What Can We Hope For? Essays on Politics collects 19 essays that were written between 1995 and 2007 � 4 of which unpublished, and many lesser-known and hard to find pieces. It also has a 17 page introduction by editors W.P. Malecki and Chris Voparil.
I want to stress the collection is accessible to readers without any prior knowledge of Rorty.
Included is “Looking Backwards from the Year 2096�, a kind of science fictional essay that first appeared as “Fraternity Reigns� in the New York Times in 1996 and was also reprinted in Philosophy and Social Hope, a collection from 1999. Rorty imagines a future American history, looking back from 2096 to “our long, hesitant, painful; recovery, over the last five decades, from the breakdown of democratic institutions during the Dark Years (2014-2044)�, a recovery that “has changed our political vocabulary, as well as our sense of the relation between the moral order and the economic order�.
I highlight this here already, because political philosophy is clearly a matter of the imagination. In the remainder of this text I shall try to summarize some of Rorty’s main points, and also compare some of his ideas to those of Kim Stanley Robinson � another intellectual & writer, one who has thought about the future too, in the hope of bettering the world.
As such, this post can be read as a companion piece to my recent analysis of Antartica � KSR’s epistemological novel, in which Robinson ties together science, ethics, utopian praxis, imagination, ideologies and stories.
This post will be quote heavy, because I simply can’t say it any better than Rorty himself.
Another reason to feel old: reading Looking Awray: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan and a Plea for Intolerance somewhere in 2002. Slavoj Žižek is someAnother reason to feel old: reading Looking Awray: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan and a Plea for Intolerance somewhere in 2002. Slavoj Žižek is somewhat of a rockstar among philosophers, but that should not detract from what he has to say � nor should his incessant referring to Jacques Lacan, Marx and Hegel. When I heard him exclaim “the true dreamers are those who think the things can go on indefinitely the way they are� on YouTube in October 2011, I’ve always thought of him as someone that is able to pull away the curtain on certain things.
It has been over 20 years since I read something of the man, and this title caught my eye � especially after I read The Deluge. 2024 promises to be something of a year celebrating the existential crisis, so in search of denouement, I turned to Žižek again.
Too Late To Awaken has 163 pages, subdivided in 17 short chapters. It was written around the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The bulk of the book � the first 100 pages � mainly deal with Žižek’s thoughts on what this invasion means for global politics. The picture ain’t pretty: maybe we should stop worrying about the coming calamity, and admit we are already knee-deep in it. That future dystopia we all fear is already happening, right now. We might be well aware of that, but we choose to ignore it.
Žižek offers some thoughts on the culture wars as well, and his analysis is not that original, if well put: both sides of that war ignore economic foundations. Are we even aware how thoroughly our lives have changed the last few decades? Referring to Alenka Zupančič and Yanis Varoufakis, he ends with a chapter warning about the current form of neo-feudalism, as our most important commons today are privately owned.
He ends with the notion that markets move too slowly to solve the current environmental and political crisis. Remarkably, the book is a call to arms to switch to some kind of war economy, one that bypasses our failing democracies. “Our [only] hope today is the crisis.�
Vikernes self-published this short booklet of 150 pages via Amazon’s print-on-demand. It’s basically a long rant about how and why he ended up killingVikernes self-published this short booklet of 150 pages via Amazon’s print-on-demand. It’s basically a long rant about how and why he ended up killing Euronymous � founder of Mayhem, another seminal group, and Deathlike Silence Productions, an underground label based in Oslo.
Vikernes spent 16 years in the Norwegian prison system, and the book is interesting from a psychological perspective: Varg admits incarceration injured him spiritually, and that is clear from the obvious emotions displayed in this book about the events that led to his conviction.
To Hell & Back Again would have benefited from some heavy professional editing, but nonetheless it should be read by anyone with a genuine interest in the matter. Except for the title, there is no mention of a part 2, but I’d welcome more insight in the music and artistic proces of his albums, and the surrounding scene....more
'The Entangled Brain' is a well-written, smooth read - but that doesn't make it a good book. There are 3 issues that stand-out.
1) The subtitle is TOTA'The Entangled Brain' is a well-written, smooth read - but that doesn't make it a good book. There are 3 issues that stand-out.
1) The subtitle is TOTALLY misleading. This book hardly is about perception, cognition and emotion: Pessoa instead makes the case that the (distinct) brain areas that are generally considered to be responsible for perception, cognition and emotion are highly entangled, and that they cannot be "neatly disassembled into a set of independent parts". If you are looking for specific examples of how certain emotions influence perception, or vice versa, or how perception influences cognition, etc., look elsewhere. There hardly are any examples to be found in the book. What Pessoa provides is essentially a long list of nerve connections between the basal ganglia, the thalamus, the frontal lobe, the pallial amygdala, the ventral striatum, the superior collictulus, etc., etc.
By doing so, Pessoa does give a good overview of brain anatomy, and covers a bit of history of brain science too - with classical examples like Phineas Gage, Broca's Tan Tan, and a fair amount of others. I also have to stress he convincingly demonstrates his main thesis: the brain as an highly integrated organ, a very complex system with all kinds of loops, feedback and feedforward connections. If you want to know more about the specifics of that, this book might be for you.
2) It is unclear who he argues against. Pessoa often writes about neuroscientists that look at the brain as if it consists of fairly separate building blocks, with one area responsible for language, another for emotion, another for memory, etc. But he never names any recent papers or books that do so - he only refers to the New York Times archive twice, to show how a certain part of the brain is (was?) used in a newspaper. I'm just an amateur science lover, having read a couple of books about brains and the likes - check out my list of reviewed non-fiction to find out which - but from what I can gather, the opinion of Pessoa isn't really contested, and the fact that the brain is a complex neural network is pretty standard fare - even in the New York Times. I could be wrong here, but either way it would have been better if Pessoa had added specific sources.
3) Pessoa tries to argue against reductionism and the brain as a mere causal input-output organ. But he fails twice.
As for reductionism, he argues that a functioning brain can't be reduced to smaller components. I agree: you need all the components of the brain to have a healthy, functioning brain. BUT that does not make reductionism as a philosophical undertaking invalid: it just shows that to understand certain complex systems, you don't need to reduce things totally to its lowest possible level. Maybe that's why some reductionist tend to speak of 'mechanism' instead, and Pessoa admits the brain functions in a "mechanistic" way, "in the sense that all parts function according to the standard rules of chemistry and physics."
Because, what is often at stake in these debates is the principle of causality, as some scientists want to uphold the idea that the human brain (and so humans too) can somehow escape causality - like Pessoa in a way tries with the notion of "emergent" behavior. 'Emergence' refers to properties that are not present at the lower levels - but that's not what reductionist try to argue: no-one claims every property is found at every lower level. For if we can escape causality, we are free, but if we can't, the freedom of the will becomes a problematic notion. Pessoa never talks about free will in this book, but does try to stress the human brain as a flexible organ, responsible for flexible behavior, behavior that's "emergent" & "complex" - yet no-one that argues against free will claims that our behavior is not complex, or not situationally flexible, or not emergent from our protein brain.
When Pessoa tries to show that behavior is emergent and complex, and not just the result of input-output causality, this is where he fails too. He admits the brain can be thought of as a circuit in between sensory and motory cells. But his notion of input is misguided. Consider this crucial passage on page 153-154, under the telling heading "Decoupling Sensory Signals from Motor Responses":
"In chapter 3, we discussed a circuit involved in both defensive and appetitive behaviors centered on the optic tectum/superior collicus of the mid-brain. This system is extremely important across vertebrates. In rodents, it helps the animal decide if it should flee when movement is detected overhead or possibly approach and explore further if the movement is in the lower visual field. But the animal's behavior is flexible and not fixed by the input - the context in which it occurs, encompassing both external and internal worlds, is critical."
The problem with this part is that the context obviously is part of the input too. You cannot argue for the brain to be an entangled system, and then consider the input to the optic tectum to be only some visual input. The body's internal state (all kinds of sensors measuring appetite, hormone levels, pain, fatigue, etc.) offers constant, diverse inputs into the brain as a system, influencing how its subsystems operate. The same goes for the context, the "external" world: obviously the input is not limited to vision of some movement in the lower visual field. There's the other visual input, but simultaneously also input of all other senses (sound, temperature, tactile, smell, taste,...). On top of that, the brain is a system that evolves over time, something Pessoa does admit, coincidentally on the next page: the system learns. So also input (of whatever kind) received in the past, should be considered as well.
All that makes a sentence like "the animal's behavior is flexible and not fixed by the input" highly misleading. Pessoa here talks about one specific form of input (vision in the lower field) but the gist of his argument gets him to the "decoupling of sensory signals from motor responses", as if the brain somehow overcomes causality.
On page 218 he even goes as far as suggesting there might not be a close link between brain and behavior: "Now, when researches study the rat's brain under such conditions, a close relationship between brain and behavior is established. But as Paré and Quirk warn, the tight link might be apparent insofar as it would not hold under more general conditions. Neuroscience is experiencing a methodological renaissance."
In the final chapter, we get the following, a bit baffling statement on page 221: "In considering the benefits of such ubiquitous mixing of sensory and motor information, the investigators [Stringer et al. 2019] ventured that behaving effectively depends on the combination of sensory data, ongoing motor actions, and internal-state variables."
To which I would say: no shit, Sherlock. Notice again that ongoing motor actions and internal-state variables are decoupled from sensory data, while I would argue that also motor action and internal-state variables are very much part of our sensory data. In trying to (justifiably) break down the walls between brain regions, Pessoa keeps up some other walls that are conceptually just as problematic.
Let's consider a final passage, on page 212, in a chapter about unlearning fear:
"The decision to take flight is not just triggered by threat detection and involves computations that rely on multiple external and internal variables. Together, escape behaviors are far from simple stimulus-driven, stereotypical reactions. The mechanisms involved engage specialized circuits refined by eons of evolutionary times."
I get it, behaviorism and conditioning are a bit creepy. Scientists want to get away from Watson and Thorndike. But why even add the words "stimilus-driven" in the above part? True: real life rat or mice behavior is complex, not-stereotypical, not the same as in a 40 x 40 x 40 cm white laboratory box. But are "multiple external and internal variables" really no part of the brain's input? Aren't those variables stimuli too? Yes they are. Again, Pessea singles out on specific stimulus (predator detection), points at the fact that stuff is more complex, and then uses that cast doubt on the entire idea of "stimulus-driven" input behavior, as if the additional complexity isn't part of the input/stimulus.
“How do you know what to say before you know how to say it?�
I’ve read most of Harrison’s 21st century output, and loved it all � aside from Empty Spac“How do you know what to say before you know how to say it?�
I’ve read most of Harrison’s 21st century output, and loved it all � aside from Empty Space, which I DNFed at 60%, and resulted in a fairly lengthy analysis that might interest you if you’re interested in theorizing about literature, genre, deconstruction and science fiction.
I always mean to read something of his 20th century work � his debut appeared in 1971 � but he keeps on publishing new titles. This new book is new indeed: formally inventive. Part memoir, part short fiction, part poetics � with a focus on the latter.
Wish I Was Here contains lucid thoughts about the nature of writing, our culture at large and the function of speculative fiction; but also sharp ruminations on life, growing older and memory, amongst other things. It’s a wonderfully mixed and varied reading experience that frustrated me at times, but which is always imbued with a depth that seems bottomless, steeped in the experience of a life both centered and at the edge of things.
Harrison’s prose is not always easy, but whenever I reread a part I did not get at first, it turned out that I was to blame: there’s nothing in these pages that concentration can’t handle. Moreover, in each case, it turned out that Harrison had found an elegant combination of words to tentatively express something which is hard to express to begin with. Part of Wish I Was Here is about the ineffable � the mystery of life and existence � but not the ineffable as some storified narrative, not the miracle as some event in a causal chain.
So � I’m not ashamed to admit I didn’t get everything, but that doesn’t seem necessary, and I don’t mean this in the way some readers still enjoy certain poems while they don’t get them either. I think that would be the easy way out: approach parts of Wish I Was Here as prose poems. That’s not it. Harrison chiseled his latest from the tremendous amount of notes he made during his life, and it is obvious that some of these notes are private and as such incomprehensible to others � it does not make them poems, even though they are just as composed, contain metaphors too and sound A-okay when read out loud.
All and all, when I turned the final pages, the book had floored me � even though I hadn’t been aware that there was a fight going on. Not that Harrison is a boxer, a chess player or an existential wrestler. But it is about getting grip � grip while you sit, breathe and read, grip on a bunch of words that signal something.
More crucial is the fact that Auerbach doesn’t really deliver on the promise of his subtitle: he hardly provides an explicit exploration of how t(...)
More crucial is the fact that Auerbach doesn’t really deliver on the promise of his subtitle: he hardly provides an explicit exploration of how the current form of the internet shapes our inner realities, and also much of its influence on our daily lives is only implicitly described. So do not expect a psychological or sociological study, let alone a scientific one.
A sentence like “With every passing day we intuitively sense a loss of control over our daily lives, society, culture, and politics, even as it becomes more difficult to extricate ourselves from our hypernetworked fabric.� is never quantified or backed up with research or data. I can easily give an anecdotal, equally intuitive counterexample: I for one do not feel a loss of control over my daily live, not at all, and I’ve been an active meganet user as long as these meganets have existed.
Likewise, consider this passage:
“Modern society has so long been accustomed to national or international figures (politicians, celebrities) who speak to silent millions that we still have yet to come to grips with the very unsettling fact that it is now amorphous groups who lead and the celebrities and influencers who follow. The most successful cybercelebrities are, in fact, those who either happen to represent an existing trend or those skilled at going with the flow on which they are carried.�
It is presented without backing from any scientific source. I’m not saying there has been no shift, but I’m not so sure about it, and even if such shift did occur: how big is it? Could you really frame it like Auerbach does here? I can easily imagine that Martin Luther, Lenin, Martin Luther King or Tatcher also tapped into already existing sentiments among the amorphous population. Moreover, consumers, voters and religious believers have always been amorphous groups with significant influence on society � for consumers & religious tribes that even has been the case before the onset of modern society and democracy.
Instead of a scientific study, much of Auerbach’s text is a history and analysis of the aspects of the current internet that are relevant to ‘meganets�, most importantly the spectacular rise of recorded data, the exceptional exponential scaling of computer technology, Facebook & the metaverse, Google’s search engine and its business model of monetizing it, cryptocurrencies, MMORPGs like World of Warcarft, the effects of somebody like Elon Musk on Twitter, a chapter on China’s Social Credit System and India’s Aadhaar, and one about why AI won’t help taming these meganets, but will make them even more uncontrollable.
I have to say his basic analysis � on the reasons why these meganets have become impossible to control � is well argued, in a detailed, clear and utterly convincing manner, and so I do feel I have a much better grasp on why the things described in the blurb are indeed the case.
Excellent, clear book full of useful, detailed advice, covering the full spectrum of what you can do with a kamado. As far as I can tell it's the onlyExcellent, clear book full of useful, detailed advice, covering the full spectrum of what you can do with a kamado. As far as I can tell it's the only kamado reference book on the market that is so thorough.
I thought developmental and comparative psychology professor Michael Tomasello's 2019 book 'Becoming Human: A Theory of Human Ontogeny' was brilliant I thought developmental and comparative psychology professor Michael Tomasello's 2019 book 'Becoming Human: A Theory of Human Ontogeny' was brilliant and rigorously argued. Imagine my surprise to find the first three chapters of this short work (164 pages) practically insulting because of sloppy writing and terminological vagueness.
As a result, I decided to call it a day - even though, admittedly, the remaining chapters (about the agency of apes and humans) might play more into Tomasello's strengths. My loss, maybe, but I cannot but operate using inference if I read scientific books: if your base is brittle, I'm not going to risk dwelling in a superstructure that seems solid. It's a form a prejudice, yes, but my time is limited, and there's way too much else to read & learn.
A few examples/thoughts:
1. It starts with an unclear conception of 'agency' itself:
"Agency is thus not about all of the many and varied things that organisms do - from building anthills to caching nuts - but rather about how' they do them. Individuals acting as agents direct and control their won actions, whatever those actions may be specifically. The scientific challenge is to identify the underlying psychological organization that makes such individual direction and control possible."
It seems to me that the real scientific challenge is to identify the underlying neural pathways that guide our muscles to perform specific behavior. Tomasello is not clear at all about what "psychological" entails, and how that ties into neurology, biology & evolution. I would advice him to read 2019's 'The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness' of Simona Ginsburg & Eva Jablonka for an example of how a true scientific account of the evolution of agency could be written. It also struck me that Tomasello often names learning as crucial in his early chapters - thus confirming at least a part of Ginsburg & Jablonka's thesis - but not once does he engage in the biological pathways of learning, nor how these neural pathways might have evolved.
A bit later in the book agency turns out to be about the capability of "choosing to act or not to act, or among multiple possible actions, according to its continuous perceptual assessment of the situation as it unfolds over time (sometimes employing executive processes such as inhibition, as a further control process, during action execution)." This is equated with behaving in "psychologically agentive ways".
2. The book is full of modifiers like 'mostly' and 'to some degree', but then fails to conceptually zoom in on what this actually means for the theory at hand. E.g., page 6:
"Tomesello and Call (1997) explicitly stated that things such as spiders building spiderwebs are interesting and complex phenomena, but they are not psychological, precisely because they are mostly not under the individual spider's flexible control. The concept of agency thus, in a sense, represents the dividing line between biological and psychological approaches to behavior; it is the distinction between complex behaviors designed and controlled by Nature, as it were, versus those designed and controlled, at least to some degree, by the individual psychological agent."
Note the words & phrases "mostly", "in a sense", "at least to some degree" and "as it were". Tomesello never specifies these further. Surely it is conceptually very important in which way the individual spider does flexibly control its weaving, as is implied by the use of the word "mostly"? Again, the dividing line between biology and psychology might be clear to Tomesello himself, but he doesn't manage to make it clear to the reader. At one hand, it seems to be something binary, a dichotomy ("a dividing line") but at the same time it isn't (a matter of "degree").
Another example of this page, on the wormlike C. elegans, page 29: "However, it is unlikely that there is also a comparison with some kind of internal goal to create direction: their locomotion is mostly random or stimulus driven. And these organisms do not seem to exhibit anything that we would want to call behavioral control: they do not inhibit or otherwise control action execution, and what they learn is simply the location toward which to direct their hardwired movements."
For starters, again, "mostly"? I would like to know more on that. Second, if they learn to direct themselves to food, at least part of their movements is not "hardwired" anymore, but goal directed, I would say. Tomasello never goes into the nuts and bolts of the distinction between goal-directed behavior, and stimulus driven behavior. It seems to me an internal goal (possibly accompanied by a conscious mental representation, as sometimes in humans) is a stimulus too. The fact that it is a stimulus originating from the neural systems inside the body does not feel so conceptually different from a neural stimulus that originates outside the body, as it only matters for the onset of the stimulus, not the resulting neural paths inside the body, i.e. not for the processing of the signal. Again, as for stimuli and different kinds of learning, I'd rather read another tome that has the same rigorousness as Ginsburg & Jablonka, than this short, breezy book.
When Tomasello also admits that this worm also knows how to avoid noxious chemicals, doesn't it have some kind of "inhibition" too, and thus forms of action control? What's the difference with the "feedback control organization" he talks about on the next page?
By the way, is the phrase "we would want to call" (my italics) a telltale?
3. Tomasello seems to think that "psychologically agentive species" somehow escape mechanic (neurological) pathways. He seems to forget that everything that happens in the brain, the neural system and the body is the result of molecular movement & energetic signals. Is he a closet Vitalist?
4. It seems to me that behavioral flexibility has not so much to do with agency, as Tomasello has it, but with the capacity for learning. Again, see Ginsburg & Jablonka.
5. On lizards, Tomasello introduces the concept of "go-no-go decisions", p. 39:
"Nevertheless, despite functioning as flexible decision-makers, goal-directed agents can make only simple decisions. They do not survey and choose among multiple behavioral possibilities simultaneously but rather move sequentially from one go-no-go decision to the next. This is to be expected of an organism whose behavior emanates exclusively from the single psychological tier of perception and action, rather than from, in addition, an executive tier of decision-making and cognitive control that formulates multiple action plans and then decides among them before acting, as do more complex agents."
My question here is what happens when a lizard perceives two fat insects slowly hovering in place within reach at about the same distance at the same time?
In the same chapter part of Tomasello's reasoning hinges on the fact that lizards might learn to eat a new insect because of "behavioral agency". It seems to me this kind of behavior has not a lot to do with agency at all. Why do lizards try to eat new insects? Simply because they resemble other insects. They have about the same size, they buzz, they have wings, they have six legs, etc. It seems to me that eating a new kind of insect is not new behavior at all, just the same behavior that operates on a slightly different kind of real world input (an hitherto unmet insect presents itself to the lizard), of which the slight difference does not matter to the lizard's internal decision process, more so, the lizard might not even register that slight difference. It's like certain geese that have been observed to roll back beer cans to their nests because they think the can is one of their eggs. Behavioral agency!
Because of examples like this, I decided to abandon the book 25% in. A go-no-go decision, or a form of inhibitory control? Either way, I'm pretty sure it wasn't a form agency: the decision kinda forced itself through my eyes into my brain.
'The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness' is a mammoth: 482 pages of text, 62 pages of notes, 72 pages of bibli'The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness' is a mammoth: 482 pages of text, 62 pages of notes, 72 pages of bibliography and an index of 28 pages. It took a decade to write.
Eva Jablonka is a microbiologist & evolutionary theorist with a Ph.D in genetics. She is especially known for her interest in epigenetic inheritance, and she co-authored the landmark Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life with Marion Lamb. That book was published in 2006 by MIT Press, and on the strength of this book I’ve added it to my TBR. Simona Ginsburg is a chemist with a Ph.D. in physiology.
The title is a bit misleading in the sense that the moniker ‘sensitive soul� might sound New Age-ish, but make no mistake: this is as scientific as non-fiction can get. Jablonka & Ginsburg use the term ‘soul� as an hommage to Aristotle, and the next two quotes elaborate a bit on that, and at the same time set the stage:
"The Aristotelian soul is the dynamic embodied form (organization) that makes an entity teleological in the intrinsic sense � having internal goals that are not externally designed for it but that are dynamically constructed by it."
&
"From an evolutionary point of view, understanding the transitions that resulted in the three Aristotelian goal-directed systems is enormously challenging. The first problem, understanding the transition to the first living system, to the nutritive (/reproductive) soul, is still not fully solved, although great strides have been made in this domain. Very little is known about the second, understanding the transition to subjective experiencing, the evolutionary origin of the sensitive soul. The third, understanding the transition to rationalizing, symbolizing animals, to the rational (human) soul, is one of the hottest topic in present-day evolutionary-cognitive biology, and progress is being made. All of these goal-directed systems are the products of chemical and biological evolution, and there is an evolutionary continuity between them."
The book has two distinct parts: the first a history of the biological conceptions of ‘consciousness� and some of its philosophical foundations � from Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin and William James, via Pavlov and Skinner to contemporary neuroscience. The second part looks more closely at major (neuro)biological transitions in the evolution of the mind, and basically sketches the evolution of neural systems and how learning ties into that. It should be stressed that most of the book is about minimal animal consciousness, not about human consciousness.
Instead of trying to summarize the book in more detail, I’ll quote some of the praise I found on the MIT website � and I can say after having read it, none of it is hyperbole.
(...)
Last year I read 'Contingency and Convergence: Toward a Cosmic Biology of Body and Mind' by Russell Powell, a true intellectual feast. Ginsburg & Jablonka’s book touches on many of the same themes, but frames them differently. Powell’s book is about the nature of evolution, minds, and the possible implications for astrobiology, Ginsburg & Jablonka focus on learning and the evolutionary history of neural systems, including a chapter on jellyfish and the likes that was more informative than Jellyfish by Lisa-Ann Gershwin.
For a wee bit of critique: I would have liked a bit more sections on (the neurology of) mental representation. To me it felt as if Ginsberg & Jablonka don’t fully engage with this part of the consciousness problem, especially as I’ve read Alex Rosenberg’s 'How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories' � a book specifically about that. I would have liked to read the authors� take on what Rosenberg wrote.
Anyhow, what makes this book a joy to read is its enormous scope, and what makes it truly amazing is its attention to detail on nearly everything it touches: this is no quick pop-science overview of the latest research, no, this is the real deal: interdisciplinary scholarly work of the highest order.
The book is clear and self-contained, and requires no previous knowledge, but at times it is tough reading nonetheless � especially parts of chapter 8 were beyond my level of interest of understanding. This will be different for different kind of readers, but this is obviously an academic book, so your mileage may vary.
Jonathan Birch’s 7-page critical essay on the book in Acta Biotheoretica is well-worth reading, he summarizes it in just two sentences: “Ginsburg and Jablonka’s thesis, in short, is that second-order conditioning involving novel, compound stimuli is a signature of consciousness. This kind of learning cannot happen, they claim, if the stimuli are not consciously experienced.�
If the subject matter interests you, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Together with 'How Molecular Forces and Rotating Planets Create Life: The Emergence and Evolution of Prokaryotic Cells' by Jan Spitzer � coincidentally about the first Aristotelian transition � it is the best book I’ve read all year.
I’ll leave you with a whole lot of quotes and insights I wish to preserve for myself.
That takes me to the second reason: it simply is nice to read about a guy being passionate and joyful, the whole affair has something uplifting, (...)
That takes me to the second reason: it simply is nice to read about a guy being passionate and joyful, the whole affair has something uplifting, all the more because Robinson manages to convey a cosmic sense: being amazed about our planet, deep time and human life. Rapture is real. It also has a certain radicalness to it that is inspring: his love borders obsession, and there is something radical about the praxis too � who would slice Proust’s The Captive in two to save weight?
I thought I understood a thing or two about biology, and, more specifically, its genetic and general molecular side as well. I’ve read a couple of intI thought I understood a thing or two about biology, and, more specifically, its genetic and general molecular side as well. I’ve read a couple of introductory level university course textbooks, like Biology, Evolution and Human Nature by Goldsmith & Zimmerman (2001), which was already pretty heavy on chemistry for somebody without an academic background in hard sciences, and a few more specific books, like the excellent The Flexible Phenotype by Piersma & Van Gils (2011) and Alex Rosenberg’s brilliant, rigorous Darwinian Reductionism, Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology (2006).
I also thought I had a bit of grasp on origin of life theory, since I read Nick Lane’s excellent The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution and the Origins of Complex Life (2015), a book I can’t say I understood completely, but enough so to enjoy it a lot.
Last year, I was absolutely gobsmacked by Contingency and Convergence: Towards a Cosmic Biology of Body and Mind by Russell Powell, a 2020 publication in the Vienna Series of Theoretical Biology, and so when I checked what else was published in that series, I didn’t hesitate to buy How Molecular Forces and Rotating Planets Create Life: The Emergence and Evolution of Prokaryotic Cells by Jan Spitzer � I was intrigued by the subject matter because of Lane’s book, and if I’d survived that, how hard could it be?
Well, it turns out this was harder, much harder, yet I probably enjoyed it even more. Part of that enjoyment is witnessing other people’s genius, but the main reason I enjoyed it so much was because it provided entirely new and much more detailed insight in the miracle that is our existence.
Before I get to a more detailed discussion of the book, please consider the following drawing � a typical representation of a bacterial cell I found somewhere on the public domain.
[image]
This is the way most people are taught about cells. We tend to think we *understand* cells this way � at least, if we study some more of these drawings � including ones that zoom in a bit � and the accompanying chapters on cell biology carefully.
Now consider this fragment from Jan Spitzer’s book, and, for starters, compare the way the cytoplasm is represented in the generic textbook drawing with what Spitzer writes about it.
"From a purely chemical point of view, a bacterial cell is exceedingly complicated. The cytoplasm contains in round numbers ~2,500,000 protein molecules of ~1,000 different kinds, ~200,000 transfer RNAs of ~50 kinds, ~1,500 short-lived messenger RNAs of ~400 kinds. (�) The number of ribosomes can vary between 2,000 for a slow-growing population and 70,000 in a fast-growing population. These biomacromolecules are hydrated by a relatively concentrated (~4%) electrolyte � a multicomponent buffered solution of simple ions, particularly potassium ions and phosphate, and other low-molecular weight metabolites from biochemical pathways (�). All this chemistry of long DNA double helices (partly condensed or coacervated by cationic proteins and amines), RNAs, and their protein complexes, all in their correct three-dimensional conformations, and all exhibiting their molecular motions � from bond rotations to large conformational motions and rotational and translational Brownian diffusion, taking place on timescales of many orders of magnitude, from femtosecond infrared motions to physiological motions at milliseconds, seconds, and hours � all this molecular motion is crowded and enclosed within the hydrophobic cell envelope. The cell envelope contains a lipid bilayer membrane, studded with a large number of integral hydrophobic proteins that sense the physicochemical state of both the external nutrient environment and the internal cytoplasmic side of the membrane and adjust the molecular and ionic traffic across the membrane accordingly. (�) The overall chemical system is in cyclic disequilibrium, where cells approximately double in size and then divide on the physiological timescale of seconds to hours."
Additionally, in all this, also the positions of all those different molecules matter, as there is no “bulk aqueous reservoir where chemical potentials (concentrations) are independent of position�, and so the cell system is “thus vectorial�, with aqueous nano-channels and nano-pools of dissolved ions and molecules.
It is yet another example of the huge gap that exists between what people � even highly educated people � think they know, and how the world actually is. It makes books like Spitzer’s humbling and full of wonder � even if that wonder is abstract, dry, and highly complex. Do we truly appreciate the wonder of life enough?
There’s one important caveat: however detailed that quote might seem, it only scratches the surface too. Or, to quote Spitzer again: “Today the molecular crowdedness of a living cell is an uncontroversial and well-appreciated fact, but its overall spatiotemporal complexity remains poorly understood.�
Just to be clear: I’m not the target audience for Spitzer’s book. Certain parts � when he got into the nuts and bolts of detailed chemical stuff � were way too advanced for me. I’d say about 1/3rd of the text was too technical for my current brain. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t understand Spitzer’s general message � it only meant that I could not contradict him on the technicalities. The fact that the main text is only 170 pages, but about 1/3rd of the full volume is academic credentials (20 pages of notes, 26 pages of references, a 5 page index) is indicative of its intellectual rigorousness.
I think one of the reasons that makes this book successful is that he approached it as a hobby. He has had no academic career in biology, but he is a physical chemist (PhD) and a chemical engineer (MS) with expertise in thermodynamics and aqueous colloids, who worked as a industrial R&D manager, on synthetic latexes and emulsion polymerization processes. The fact that he is retired and has no skin in the game allowed him to write freely and thoroughly. More information on Jan Spitzer and his ideas can be found here.
In the remainder of this text, I will try to summarize Spitzer’s main points, and conclude with a list of quotes & fragments of knowledge that struck me and that I wish to keep record of. Most of those should also be worthwhile to readers with an advanced interest in science, but you might need a dictionary depending on your prior knowledge � I know I needed one. As a coda, there’s a shortened version of a reading list Spitzer himself provides in his introduction.
For a review by someone with an academic background in these matters, I refer you to the Small Things Considered blog. It has a good, fairly detailed outline of the book. It is the only review of the book I found online, so I hope I contribute a bit to Spitzer’s dissemination with my own review � especially for those that are looking for more information about it without easy access to academic libraries.
Do I recommend it? I loved it, but if you’re not academically trained in these matters ymmv, so much is clear � if you’re adventurous, like a serious challenge, and want to keep your mind limber, go for it, I’d say. It’s also crystal clear that this is mandatory reading for anybody with a serious academic interest in the matter.
Muddled volume that lacks an overall definition of what 'information' actually is. Certain essays claim information to be physical, other not so. I muMuddled volume that lacks an overall definition of what 'information' actually is. Certain essays claim information to be physical, other not so. I must admit I haven't read all the essays, but I gave up after I read the introduction, the first essay, and six more that interested me the most first. I'm not saying there is nothing of worth here, but overall, it reeks of physical antireductionism.
The first essay 'The "hard problem" of Life' by Walker and Davies can't seem to come to grips with the hard reality of causality and the mystery surrounding the origin of our universe. They basically state that because things are too complex and will never be fully grasped, reductionism as a principle can't be true. As a solution, they propose another mystery, some as yet unnamed & undescribed 'new principle' or new set of natural laws that have to do with information, and which amounts to a variation of vitalism.
It also can't come to grips with the fact that our current physical laws are temporal, and possibly subject to change. They might not have existed as they do now before the Big Bang, or during the very first moments of our universe, so why insist that this is just a fringe opinion?
Lots of stuff is posed as 'established', but upon closer inspection hardly anything is. Just some examples: - "In the case of consciousness, it seems evident that certain aspects will ultimately defy reductionist explanation, the most important being the phenomenon of qualia - (...)" - "Our phenomenal experiences are the only aspect of consciousness that appears as though they cannot, even in principle, be reduced to known physical principles." - "A real living system is neither deterministic nor closed, so an attempt to attribute life and mind to special initial conditions would necessarily involve fixing the entire cosmological initial state to arbitrarily high precision, even supposing it were classical." [This is especially baffling as the authors admit that defining life is hard, and they do not provide a definition of life.]
I also found anthropomorphic talk (biological cells are "autonomous agents"), and too much computer analogies (always a tell of muddled thinking, as if the stuff happening in cells is something more than just chemistry).
Basically a set of essentialist thinking. Consider this quote: "Even if we do succeed in eventually uncovering a complete mechanistic understanding of the wiring and firing of every neuron in our brain, it might tell us nothing about thoughts, feelings, and what it is like to experience something."
Well, uncovering the complete mechanistic understanding of a certain chemical reaction also tells us nothing about what that reaction experiences. Or uncovering the complete mechanistic blueprint of an iPhone also tells us nothing about what it is like to be an iPhone. It is not because consciousness is a hard problem, that reductionism/mechanism is to be discarded.
Doesn't seem to grasp the chemistry of the cell, even though they admit it is highly complex:
"An example from genomics is an experiment performed at the Craig Venter Institute, where the genome from one species was transplanted to another and "booted up" to convert the host species to the foreign DNA's phenotype - quite literally reprogramming one species into another. Here it seems clear that it is the information content of the genome - the sequence of bits - and not the chemical nature of DNA as such that is (at least in part) "calling the shots.""
My questions are these: are these so called 'bits' anything else than molecules in their environmental context? Is the physical process happening with these molecules anything else than biochemistry? What is this "(at least in part)" piece in the quote? What do they actually mean? The authors reduce questions such as mine to "promissory reductionism" because they say "there is no realistic prospect of ever attaining such a complete material narrative". So when I insist that there is probably (very likely) a material narrative (based on the tremendous descriptive & predictive scientific successes in cell biology, chemistry, physics of the last century) that such is in principle wrong because we as humans aren't smart enough to provide that narrative fully; 100%??
The baffling nature of Walker & Davies reasoning is to be seen in this final quote:
"Expressed more succinctly, if one insists on attributing the pathway from mundane chemistry to life as the outcome of fixed dynamical laws, then (our analysis suggests) those laws must be selected with extraordinary care and precision, which is tantamount to intelligent design: it states that "life" is "written into" the laws of physics ab initio. There is no evidence at all that the actual known laws of physics possess this almost miraculous property. The way to escape from this conundrum - that "you can't get anywhere from here" is clear: we must abandon the notion of fixed laws when it comes to living and conscious systems."
Because our existence is hard to grasp/miraculous, other laws than the ones we know now must be in play? So, non-fixed laws would somehow be non-miraculous? Might it just be possible that extreme coincidence is a factor? No evidence? It's like on Wren's tomb: Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice. Granted, physics hasn't come up with a unified theory yet, but that doesn't mean we should resort to vitalism or discard currently fixed laws or mechanism out of hand. What is a fixed dynamical law by the way? Is it non-dynamical because it is fixed?
And moreover: what ‘laws� are they talking about? Physical & chemical laws? Because it is clear that biology has no fixed laws � aside the principle of evolution � so if they are talking about biological laws, the last part of statement would amount to stating the obvious and arguing against something hardly any serious biologist argues.
I would advice the authors of the book to read Jan Spitzer's 2021s '' for a better grasp of chemistry and the origin of life question, Alex Rosenberg's 2006s '' for a better grasp of reductionism and the reason why laws (except evolution) are absent in biology and Russell Powells 2020s '' for a better grasp of evolution and astrobiological notions of consciousness and life. As for agency & vitalism, there's the 2010 essay 'The Lucration Swerve' by Anthony Cashmore.
Not that easy to review. While I liked the basic premises (an accessible, non-academic account about the economy to a 15-year old daughter) and agree Not that easy to review. While I liked the basic premises (an accessible, non-academic account about the economy to a 15-year old daughter) and agree with much of what Varoufakis writes, I was a bit disappointed - I had expected to learn a bit more, or at least, had expected it to be tightly argued throughout, but some chapters weren't as strong as the ones purely on economics: I think that Varoufakis fails when he tries to philosophize - in a typical dialectical fashion - about "authentic happiness" or the essence of humans. All and all, that is a minor blemish. Also his analysis of technology is superficial - but then again, his booklet is not intended as a thorough examination of those things.
The bulk of the book is on economics, and overall this is a strong, accessible short text that explains in simple terms the creation of land and labor markets (which weren't commodities before the advent of global trade), the transition from a society with markets to a market society, the intimate relation between debt and profit (there is no profit without debt, as debt fuels innovation, lower wages, etc. for a higher profit), the difference between greed and the profit motive, the reasons why markets are bad at regulating the job & money market, and the problem with central banks not being controlled by parliaments.
Obviously, like all economists, Varoufakis is not without ideology, but he is clear about his viewpoints, and he argues them well. More orthodox economists tend to forget or dismiss billions of people living in abject poverty - both in the West as in the rest of the world.
The review to check out is that of Kevin, who summarizes it thoroughly, and adds further reading and some discussion points.
There's just too much troubling signals surrounding this book's methodology/treatment of sources for me to continue reading it. I'm sure there is muchThere's just too much troubling signals surrounding this book's methodology/treatment of sources for me to continue reading it. I'm sure there is much to learn about archeology in the book, but as social science / evolutionary ecology it seems muddled at best.
(admittedly that text also makes a mistake viz. Steckley, see the comments)
& Appiah's reply to Graeber's reply to his original critique:
& also Immerwahr spotted them gravely misrepresenting a source:
In the rest of the review, some thoughts on the book, an intermezzo on the supposed power of literature, and, as usual in my non-fiction reviews,(...)
In the rest of the review, some thoughts on the book, an intermezzo on the supposed power of literature, and, as usual in my non-fiction reviews, I’ll end with a collection of interesting information tidbits I want to keep an account of.
What maybe needs addressing first is the mention of the world ‘liberal� above. Let me quote Hopster:
“In taking this stance they rely on substantive ethical assumptions, of a broadly liberal moral outlook. This might make for some queasy among readers who do not share the same moral outlook. However, these readers can still appreciate what I take to be the book’s key contribution: to analyse and explain under which conditions a move towards more or less inclusivism is likely to occur.�
What is meant by a “broadly liberal moral outlook�? Basically just the idea that the authors think that the abolishing of slavery, advances in women’s rights, rights of disabled people, general human rights, protection against cruel punishment, animal rights, etc. are all instances of moral progress. Mind you, they don’t try to argue the philosophical foundations of such a statement, they “do not offer a normative ethical theory�. But they are not moral nihilists either: they just assume these advances as good, and it’s hard to deny these societal developments of the last 250 years have decreased human suffering. While this all may sound as truisms to many people, some conservative readers might be of the conviction our modern Western society is in a state of moral degeneration or moral regression. Buchanan and Powell spend quite a few tightly argued pages wherein they point at faults in the reasoning of such thinkers, most notably Alastair MacIntyre.
To me this approach was quite refreshing. Instead of spending too much time on trying to build up a theoretical definition of what constitutes ‘moral progress�, ‘good� or ‘bad�, the authors start from the idea that advancements in equal rights and inclusion is moral progress. What the authors do not claim is that this progress is universal and set in stone. They very much acknowledge such progress is local and not evenly distributed across the planet, and an important part of the book is devoted to trying to understand why regressions of inclusivity occur � for instance during World War 2. “Exclusivist moral response is a conditionally expressed trait that develops only when cues that were in the past reliably correlated with outgroup predation, exploitation, competition for resources, and disease transmission are detected.� Crucial to understand demagogues is that these cues don’t need to be cues to real threats � if people believe or are made to believe threatening cues exists that belief is enough for exclusivist tendencies to gain hold again.
A summary of Rosenberg's much longer 'Darwinian Reductionism; Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology ' from 2006, with a final chapter ofA summary of Rosenberg's much longer 'Darwinian Reductionism; Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology ' from 2006, with a final chapter of new stuff, namely on the relationship between reductionism & mechanism.
Not as engaging as Darwinian Reductionism because of its much shorter form (only 75 pages), but as rigorous....more
Basically, the writing style was off, so I DNFed at 30%.
As Dawn wrote on ŷ: "a combination of extremely dense biology, a pat on the back for Basically, the writing style was off, so I DNFed at 30%.
As Dawn wrote on ŷ: "a combination of extremely dense biology, a pat on the back for the research the author has done, and hero worship and name dropping of the author's colleagues." Annoyingly, it started with an extremely basic overview - too basic for a book like this - of how nerves work, but Mason lost that clarity when he got to his own field.
The problem was Masland's prose wasn't up to the task, and combined with his lack of focus, I couldn't really get into the parts of the book that did interest me. It felt like reading 4 pages of an old man rambling about his Harvard days, and another 3 pages of stuff I already knew, to finally get to 1 interesting paragraph, and so on.
I'm sure there were quite some interesting nuggets buried in this volume, but I couldn't bring myself to dig them out.
The book consists mainly of a 115 page interview with Éliane Radigue, in which she talks about her work, inspiration and thinking in detail, chronologThe book consists mainly of a 115 page interview with Éliane Radigue, in which she talks about her work, inspiration and thinking in detail, chronologically revisiting the various phases in her life & work, resulting in a kind of artistic autobiography.
There's also an introduction, a catalogue of works, a discography, a fair bit of illustrations and photos, and Radigue's programmatic text on The Mysterious Power of the Infinitesimal.
The book has both the original French interview as the English translation.
For Radigue enthusiasts it is a rewarding read, albeit often familiar.
The first part starts with a chapter on the need for biotheoretical input in matters of cosmic astrobiology because of observer selection biases,(...)
The first part starts with a chapter on the need for biotheoretical input in matters of cosmic astrobiology because of observer selection biases, and afterwards examines Gouldian concepts of convergent & contingent evolution in the broad sense, focusing on the evolution of bodies. Powell does what everybody that takes science seriously should do: he examines & tries to define the meaning of the concepts � something that is sadly too easily glossed over time and time again. As such this first half is also part critical reading of Stephen Jay Gould and other evolutionary theorists.
The second part zooms in on minds, and starts with an extremely interesting investigation of sensory modalities in various animals, as sensing your surroundings is crucial to develop a mind. It continues with a discussion of how animals perceive their surroundings and themselves in those surroundings, and what that means for the possible emergence of minds. The last two chapters then look at possible evidence on how minds � other than the minds in the brains of terrestrial vertebrates � could emerge from neuroanatomy and the convergent evolution of bilateral brains and other types of neural clusters, and at evidence from behavior � from cephalods and arthropods, as I referred to above.
The stunning coda makes the jump from minds to full fledged human-like culture, and offers a few cents on the Fermi paradox � a paradox well-known to the scifi readers of this blog.
Although Powell dares to make numerous pretty definitive claims, he also shows a lot of humility and restraint: “when all is said and done, most of the landscape will remain uncharted, and the mystery of mind will remain.�
(...)
I will leave you with some of the nuggets I’ve learned while reading Contingency and Convergence : Toward a Cosmic Biology of Body and Mind. The usual caveats apply: these nuggets are not a summary at all, and are not intended as a representative sample of the actual content of the book. They are just here as a reminder for myself, and maybe some of them will delight you too. They might, however, show a wee bit of the rich, broad scope of Powell’s book � that is, if you factor in this reader’s selection bias.
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