The Communal life of a Gene.
Section 2: General Introduction.
In this chapter I will examine one the the curious facts about Genes. One of the ways that genes are conceived as existing at a meeting point of temporality and being public. One the one hand Genes are what escapes any particuliar time period(Dawkins 1976,1982). But it is also through long periods of time that genes are selected -leading to first adaptions and the speciation (Dawkins 1996). But they are also that which is shared across time.On the other hand, population is defined not by the presents or absence of certain genes, but merely by the abilty of set of genes to combine to form subsequent geneations ( Mayr and Provine 1980 , Bowler 199? - I ahve forgotten to right the bloody date down! . Species does not refer to any essential quality that a certain set of animals may of may not have - a view that some geneticians, and there philosophical allies attribute to Aristolte ( Mayr 1962# and Sterelny and Griffith1987-). But rather as Darwin suggested (Darwin 1859, see also Dobzhhansky 1934 in Jameson Davidson, Hutchingdon and Ross 1977,Ghiselin 19...,Jacob 1974 Mayr 1988, ) it is the case that speices are defined by genealogy. All members of the same species are ultiamelty all - however distantly realted to each other. Darwin effective transformed the way biology was done. It was not longer - as it had been for Geoffrey Saint-Hilare a matter of investigating morphologies - and morphological transformations nor even of discovering underlying typologies (Bolwer 199?), but of understanding animals in terms of their transformational history (Goodwin 1995,Jacob 1974).
Any attempt to understand what sort of thing a gene might must examine in detial must examine the nautre of this relationship. What after all does it mean to say that Genes are what we all share across time - and that we are citzens (or even just mechanies) in their eternal republic? What kind of sharing is being envisaged here? And what kind of time? And finally is it even possible to understand what is public in a temporal sense (is not time an inner sense)? Of course the basic problem of how and what endures across time, and individual existience is as old as religion itself. understanding how the gene effects us, is less a new question but a twist in a very old answer, namely materialism.
There is second aspect to gene. Ever since Medel’s famous experiements of the colour of peas flowers (and the hieght) the gene has been understood as something ‘descrete, and actual ( Lewontin 2000,and Rose 1998). A peas was either tall oe small, red or white, and Genes were eiother expressed or recessive. There was not room, for doubt. What was being inherited was not some ‘pageneis’ - a mixture of different qualties (as Darwn thought), but of descrete things. When inheritance appeared to be a matter of blending of traits (as Galthon, Darwin’s cousin argued) this was merely because many seperate Genes were acting together(Rose 1998 p.98-105)# . The challege of Mendel’s philsophy waw two fold. On the one hand it appeared that unit of differentiation had now to be thought of at things. There was A (certain and particualr) Gene - Was handed down the generations. On the other Gentic control was always a matter pf one decrete thing effecting matter- andd focring it to conform to its preconcieved ‘plan’.
Behind both of these two aspects of genes lies a third - that these two are, in part at least an answer to. That of what is an object? Does it have a substance in itself own right? Or is it composed of other things - and if this if the case what are thise other things? Smaller substances in their own right (be they atoms, protons or quarks) or just an infinte number of differences (be that infinty composed of simplest bodies (Spinoza 1985 axioms to book two), or Monad’s (Leibniz 1989 Monaodology -see also Deleuze 1994, p.201-215, and 1993, p. 85-98). Both Spinoza and Leibniz understood that to claim a thing is composed of a very great number of different parts (which are known through the differences they make on the whole) is to b locked in an infinfte regress. One cannever logically stop dividing these differences, until everything is reduced to the smallest ‘known’ particle - in modern time the Quark( Rose 1998. p80-82, Stewart 1987, p.357-382). The only way that logically stop this infinte regression is to change the rules. In modern Physics, the quark is not so much a ‘thing’ , but a sphere of influence within space. ‘ The existence of a quark in a given region of space...is the region having certain qualities (Bennet 1984 p.84). One no longer seeks simple substances -to which the differences no percives somehow belong, -but starts with the differences within itself (Deleuze 1994, Widder 2001).
Genetics therefore faces a dilemma . On the one hand what actualy matters about genes is always a question of difference. A difference that can either be understood on the level of phenotypic expression, be it the length of a giraffes necks, or a certain way to behave for example to swim upwards. Or difference can be understood in terms of the way the genotype sepeterates in the presence of certain bacteria (Hubbard 1999, p.39-56). But in either case a gene is a way of defining of a difference - of making things difference amonst all other diffferences the one that is different - that will matter (in someway). As Deleuze noted ‘difference is behind everythings, but behind difference there is nothing’ (1994 p.57). But difference in itself is blind. That is while gentic differnce does matter -is a ‘real’ difference, it does not -insofar as as if it differet become the difference which explains all others. It one claims that Genes are somehow substially different from all the other differences in the body, one potentially opens onself up to the problem of the the infinte regress of differences - a regrees that only stops then the rules change with the quark. Its only alternative other alternative would be to accept that there is no fundamental order between different set of differences . A Gene might make different protenies, but it does so only in the context of the different parts of the body within which it finds itself - and only (through that body). The exact different parts themselves only depending of the external physical environomenet the body finds itself (and so on in an infinte progress) ( Rose 1998 p.136-175)#
However, for a geneticain such as Dawkins there might be another way to escape the regress : If one changes the rules a little, and somehow singles out the Gene as being seperate, from all other differences in some way, it might be possible to make in the context of biology it, and only it matter. This superficially could be the case if the Gene could be demonstrated to actually exist in time in a way that would be very different to all other ‘things’ ( See Dawkins 1982 p.9-29). This arguement has its antecedance in Kant. He likewise claimed that object (as opposed to mere choatic perceptions) were created (by the understanding) through the way things moved in time. Differences that were only percievable if they were simulataneous to each other (for example two different stories in a building) formed object. While those that were percived through a necessary passage of time (a boat moving on a stream) were determined through causal connection (Kant 1929 B 218-265). A object (or a gene_) exist because it maintains a certain relationship between its varying parts. But (as Nietzsche pointed out Neitsche 1989 Beoynd Good and Evil section 11) this is hardly an expanation at all - and only amounts to saying things arew there because they are there! In the case of the gene its uniform identity is meant to be assured by the fact that realtively short peices of DNA are frequnlty transmitted together (Dawkins 1982, but see Sterelny and Griffith1987). while the individual genes are meant to be established as ‘things’, through th process of natural selection. That is it is not just the fact that they have a temporal unity that allows one to talk of genes as if they were things, it is alksi the way that this unity is establsihed. Before I go on to discuss exactly how natural selection defines how genes exist across time, briefly it is worth underlining exactly why this movement matters so much. This is perhaps most readily seen if the way that modern gentics’ seeks to establishes identities from difference, is compared with one of the other main practioneers o such an alchny -namely relgion.
The similarities of Gentics with Religion are apparent to all sides( Ansell-Pearson 1997, Dawkins 1987, 1997,Goodwin 1995, Lewontin 2000). Not only, does the seperation of genotype and phenotype mirriors the seperation of the soul from itself body . The fact that both the genotype and the soul are ‘judged’ according to their perfomance within bodies ( one accroding to an established Christian moraliy- the other by its simple abilty to survive): And both, If they are found wanting, face eternal oblivion. But also, Darwin allows the kind of telology associated with religion (where God creates for a pupose) a kind of scientific repute ( see Dawkin 1986, Mayr 1988 and Sober 2000). It might no longer be the case that God creates according to some divine plan - but natural selection acts as if it were a divinity. Like God it adapts creatures to enviroments - and thereby allows us to talk of the natural environement as if there was indeed a final and absolute end to complex behaviour. When Lewontin states that ‘Molecular biology is a new religion’ (Lewontin 2000, page 137), he is right , in that genetics has allowed scientist to take on much of the lanuage and concept ususally resevered for religion. Indeed could say that DNA, performs a miracle the miracle of Consubstantion. It is at once a mere molecule (albeit a very complex one) - and yet, at the same time the secret to life itself ; in the same way that Luther arguement the host once at once mere bead, but also the alctual body of Christ.
However , there remains a very important difference between any forms of religion and materialism. Any spiritualism involves, by its nature a seperation of the kind of time in which the body lives from the eternity which pertains to the soul - the materialism of the gentists allows them no such resources. In relgion all the differences which do not concord with the difference that really matter - that is the difference that are rooted in the soul, can be dismissed as the mere temptations of the flesh. The simple identity of which is beyond all testing, and is a simple qulaitve vertiy(). But genes must exist in the same time as bodies do. All they can differ in their exact way they actally exist in time. For a body time is a matter of actual existence. A Body exists at a certain time, and for a certain time or not at all. Time is - insofar as its simple existence is concerned simply a matter of limitation, one exists or not#. But genes do not exist in particualr times (or places). Time is not just a matter of limitation -but also of creation and colonalisation. Time will still limit a genes actions in the sense that it is a fundamental assumption of Darwinsim that most genes do not mange to reproduce (Darwin 1859, Dawkin 1976,1982). But Genes exist in time in two other ways. Firstly through creation. A creation that happens on two levels - firstly on the level of the genes thesemvles, and in the content of the four billion years, or so of Genetic ‘history’, and secondly in the context of how genes combine to form individual animals.
Change in the kinds of genes that exist happens in two ways, firstly directly through the mutation of individual nuleotide bases, the second is selection.. The chance of a mutation is one in hundred million per nucleotide base- or lower (Maynard-Smith 198? Gamesand sex And 1999 (with Szathmary# ) , the average Human Gene has ten thousand such bases while the whole genome has three billion (Lewontin 2000). So that in each generation there will be, on average 30 (or less) mutations .(Monod 1970), and therefore any significantt mututation in any one gene is very likely on take many generations (each gene only has a one in one hundred thousand chance of being mutated per generation, any signifcant change will almost certainly require more than one such mutation). The longer the period of time, therefore, the greater the amount of change that occurs within it ( the rate of change of a genes is used to date speciation (Sterelny 2001)). Periods of time are longer limits -or even just periods withj which a being creates, they are actually tied to the creation process itself - the more time there is, that more new things have come tinto existence (and is used to date, roughly, splits in genuses (Sterelny 2001)). Long periods of time are vital therefore to the creation and formation of new genes. Secondly long periods of time are also required for natural selection to function. Inspite of the existence of so called ‘hopeful monsters’, and their possible value in making a sudden leap fowards (Gould197, Maynard -Smith 198? (Sex and games)) - evolution requires great perods of time (Dawkins 1996,). Animals which might intially only have a slight advantage over there competitors. will gradually over many geneation come to dominate. Their particuliar advantage will become the norm, and also increasingly exaggerated. Though the axact length of time needed for speciation is on of the difficult point within Darwinism. Asd the kind of time perios envisage, is longer than can be observed with a huamn life span, but shorter that can be reliably found in the fossil record (Dawkins in Hull and Ruse 1998). For a gene, then long periods of time are vital for change and new forms to emerge.
But time has a secondary role - and particuliar role. It is in the particuliar time, of certain actually existing living bodies that each and every gene has to exist. Each obd will be a unique combination of genes - and can described as an perptual exiperiement (Monod 1970). A gene in order that is continues must be able to exist is each particuliar time (and context, with genetic and enviromenetal) it finds ‘itself’. So that while might be p[ossible to talk of genes as if they were seperate from bodies, in one sense, but that does not mean they actually are ever actually seperate. To at any point argue this is of course to cross over from materialism into stright spirtuality ( Gene as Soul). No Genes exist independent of the a body - and therefore one cannver at any point talk as if genes had a collective will - or could ‘intend’ anything - or effect anyhting other than the body that they actually exist in ( Dawkins 1982 and 1996) There simply cannot be any long term goal or intention to evolution, or genes. No ultimate final destiny as certain popular exp[onents of genetics appear to argue ( Kelly 1994,Schick and Toth 1993, for effective rebuttal see Ansel-Pearson 1997p. 148-149).
But given the relationship beteewn time and objects i Haveve already brifely noted, in realtion to Kant - it is by no means clealr that things that ‘exist in time’ in a different ways are simple cut and dried things. An object, if the word means anything at all, must involve a very simple relationship in time. A thing must exist (as a unity) or not; and be in a certain time, or simple not be at all# . It is clear that what is actually interesting about a gene -its abilty to transcend any particualr time, and the fact that its abilty to create new things is bound up with the manner of its existence aeons, do not conform it the the way that an object has to exist in time to be an object. A gene simply cannot be a thing, as it fails on the first critierior of thinghood - that of presence/absence in time. The challenge that any serious attempt to understand what a gene could be (let alone its possible effects) is to rethink what it means in time.
But before I turn to consider this relationship, I need to further qualify what a gene actualy is. I have already (see new plan) a gene can be neither anyhting like a Freudian unconscious nor yet a language, but it now needs to be estabslihed why it is that a gene cannot be, under any circumstance be thought of as a substance which contains difference (that is as a thing); and that with the gene the kind of difference that the gene involves needs in somesense to be thought of as existing without an object (Deluze 1994). It is therefore, important to establish this lack of thingenss for two reasons. Firstly as only when one has rid onself of the idea that a thing has anything of the object about it - is it possible to exact;ly how it realtes to time. And secondly, if one understanding of its non-objecthood will in itself clarifythe was that it could be through time, and exactly what kind of ‘differences’ through time it involves.
Section 2 Part 1
Introduction:
In this section I will examin three ways that genes ‘as object’, can be throught - and indicate exactly whay, in each case, the explanation is not adequate to describe what a gene is. The first of these methodologies is that of natural selection itself (as it is interpreted by modern neo-Darwinians such as Dawkins, and Hamilton). This attempts as it a quite literal ‘objectification’ of the gene. In which the myriad of potiential differences in the order of producing protiens ( that is every possible combination of the nucloetide base) is reduced to a realtively small number of genes(though one still in excess of of three hundred thousand). These gene then being the ones that are handed down the gene generations, and are colloquially refered to as being this or that. The second main methodology is an Aristitlian one. In book Zeta (part 12) of Metaphysics (Aristolte1998) Aristolte come the the conclusion that a genus is the same thing as differentia. And that the ‘last differentia will be the substance and defintion of the object’ (Ibid p. 213). Gene, which like Aristlte’s essences define form, could be seen as the last ‘real’ differeniator. Below then all differention ois a matter of chance (that is, are a consequence of the individual situation the gene ‘finds’ itself). There importance lies in this then - that they alone allow one to discover general differences. So that rather than thinking in terms of objects (and subjects), the ‘thingess of a gene demands we return the the older Aristoltian division of material and formal cause. The third methdology involves are return to amost ‘Durkhiemian’ persepctive, where facts (but genetic not social) can be defined in terms of stastics alone (a case made in both Cronin 1992, and the Sterelny and Kitcher article in Hell and Ruse 1998).
These three methodologies all same the same feature - that they effectively transform what was otherwise thought of as effets/feeatures into causes (which are them supported by an elabourate metaphysics). Neo-Darwinians, see a world of descrete features/behaviour traits - assume this worod simply is as it seems to be, and discover causes that are directly responsible for the effects they can see. All the subtle interplay of things in the world in therefore reduced to an indecent haste to find the cause for the effect. For Aristotle, the problem is more complex. On the one hand he wants to counter Plato’s idea of pefect forms, that is everything is the effect of a heavenly thing. On the other, he wishes to prove that there are substance, as such, and the that the world is not composed of pure difference; that is everything exists within the folow of differences (Widder 2001). If substance is form, then the most important fact in a thing is its ‘isness’ - that is its inner cause. A cause not reducible to heaven or the mere flow of differences. Finally Durkheim’s social fact is merely an embodiement of stastistical realtities, Faced with the stasticial realiyt that the sucide rate moves in totally predicatelbe ways, Durkhiems simply says there must be a thing - a social fact directly causing this move, and hopes that is expantion enough.
These three methidlogies all reprsent different ways to think-gene as he idrect (and simply cause or things). And the fact all stragedies are ultiamtely a failure, must effect how one understands genes.
The Objectification In natural selection
The creation of the thing selected.
Darwin’s theory of natrual seletcion is the way that neo-Darwinians attemt to answer this challenge. Put simply natural selection allows one to re-invent the object, that one has, theorectically at least dismissed. Objects, for the Darwinian, not eternals but the product of selective evoltions. Different creautres have different traits. Some which convey advantages, others that do not. So that given that there must always be a struggle in nature (a fact confirmed by the simple arithematic of Darwin’s elphant calculation ( Darwin 1859 p.)), only some, those who are best adapted survive. ‘ Traits’ can be treated in iscolation from the animals that are quite literally composed by them. New features emerge, then die off or proliferate; develope or merge, become recessive or remain dominat. Seen slightly simplistically Darwinsim allows one to reverse the relatiionship between predicates and subjects. The predicate is no longer the thing that the subject possess, the quality that it has, but rather it is a certain quality tthat certain predicates taken together can be said to possess (and possessfor a certain reason -(Dawkin 1982 p.250-264). But it is not quite as simple as that. As Hull argues (in Jensen and Harre1981) The theory of natural selection involves two logically seperate components. On the one hand there is what is expressed in the phenotype, in terms of physical structure or behaviour (which Hull calls the interactor), and secondly there is that is able be reproduce itself ( which Hull, following Dawkins calls the Replicator). The neo-darwinian assumption then being not only that these components match up, but that the former are product of the latter. Or to put it another way although darwinism has reversed the standard relationship of object and predicate, neo-darwinianism still assumes that object -as such must exist - as only object can, according to their materialist standpoint effect the world. Herditary provides an answer to things problem. ‘Things’ might not exist on the level of individuals within the world (that is no individual has an essence), but it might still be possible to look for essences in the way that traits are communicated across time. Mendelian gentics - with its emphasis of descrete genes, that endure across eternity, allows one, in effect to ressurrect the subject (in a way Pangensis would not), in the most classical of forms - as that which endures through change, the ‘unmoved mover’ (Aristotle 1996 256a-258b, see also Mayr 1988 p55-57). The entire ‘selish Gene’ theorem (Dawkins et nausam)is just this idea taken to its logical extenstion. For Dawkins genes really are the subject (and behave as if they were selfish), everything else is merely their numerous predicate - that is the was they can effect the world. The fate of each individual gene, and their predicates being then decided through natural selection. Those with predicates most suited to their envirnoments flourish, those with least die off.
underpinning this subjectificaion of the gene is a problem invlvong continuity and entropy. One the one hand, following Medel, what is inerited for Dawkins are ‘absolutes’. A pea is long (or short) eyes are blue, or brown# . And yet the laws of Medelian inheritancecannot produce produce genes that are consistent acoss many generations, unless those ghenes are hetrogenous (Lewontin 1974 p.24) If a gene only had ten hetrozygotic bases, then the chance that it would be passed on intact would be 1 in 1224. For Dawkins then the gene presents us with a uandary. On th one side - to be effective at all the a gene has to be greater than one nucleotide base ( Dawkns 1982 p.91, Lewontin1974 p.310); But at the same time, if it is greater than one nucleotide base, and is not homzygotic, it runs the risk of not suriving intact into the next generation Lewontin 1974 p.283-295). Dawkins’ suggests an almost Aristolian sollution to this problem. A Gene to be effective must be niether too long or too small. It must be long enough to have some sort of effect pof the world, and yet short enough so that its chances of surving into the next generation are high enough for it to survive before it achives dominace (that is before it is homozygotic - then of course it is, barring further mutation, immune from subseqeunt change). Given that they are likely to survive such small numbers of Nucleotide bases can be tightly correlated together (Lewontin 1974 p.312), and so make effective ‘genes’; That is gene hthat do things. Dawkins point blankly refuses to discuss the length of such a gene, which would anyay change according to the cicmstances it was in (Dawkins 1982 p.89). All it needs to be is long enough to efect the enivroement it is in i such a way that those withit are more likely to be selected than those without it ( and so be what Dawkins calls an ‘active replicator’ (ibid p.87).
Dawkins seeks to make up for the fact that Mendelian inheritance cannot produce gene-as object, by arguing that such objects can be produced incidently. If a gene is small enough, and effective enough, over a few generations, it will achieve dominance ; that is it will become homozygotic. The basic unit of change in DNA are these small units. The importance of these very small units - Dawkins suggests ( Dawkins1982 p.93), is in the difference they make, and not that they in themselves code for anything. He thereby hopes by his claim to counter, Rose’s critisim Rose ) that no gene can be seperated from any other gene (for example to this type of cirticism, in realtion to blood, see Hubbard and Wade 1999, p.52-53).It can only be a question of difference because all that matters to natural selection is that two genes are different, and that one is more effective that the other (Dawkins1982 p. 92) - so that the exact effect of any gene will always be a matter of difference.
However this answer fails in two main ways. Firstly there is an empirical problem problem which would limit the scope of evoklution. As NeitzscheBergson noted ( (Neitzsche will to power p.)Bergson creative evolution p.) and Darwin worreid at (Darwin 1859 p.) the problem of evolution is that it alwaysseems to develope organs in paareel. The small difference any particualr gene makes only makes sense once all the other genes, with their small differences are in place, and functioning. Dawkins attmepted to answer this problem by suggesting that all ‘jumps’ in evolution were very, very small. And that one jump in one part of the body, would then allow / encourage jumps in another part. Rather then one one organ developed (and hanging around for a million years or so) complex systems develope in tandem ( Dawkins 1997 particuliarly p,64-96)# . However, although small jumps certainly are a conceivable solution to this [problem, one if faced immediately with the problem - how small is small? For a small jump to be effective it is going to need many successive generations to achive its results . Only a great length of time can of set the far more powerful randon forced of the enviromenet (Lewontin 1974 p.22, see also Gould). And yet the longer the time before a specific gene acheive dominace (that is, is homozygotic on all its nucloetide bases) the greater the risk that this ‘useful’ gene in random breakup. For a jump to be effecive, its net effect in improving the over all chance of survival must be greater than the chance that the gene is lost in reproduction. And while of course such jumps will occur - this restriction must make them even more unlikely and difficult to predict (particualry as large random jumps are, as Dawkins says inheritntly less likely to produce succefful outcomes (Dawkins 1997 p.73).
Secondly, Dawkins never addresses the philsophical import of what he is claiming# . If he is really saying that an action of a genme is all about difference (somethings he explicitly accepts in the base of the single nucleotide base ( Dawkins 1982 p.92), then he firstly looses the right to ever say that individual genes (that is nuclotide bases that are indepenandt form the rest of the genome) can exist. If everything is about difference then inheritance would not be enough to lead to descrete ‘genes’. If the conenxt changes the exact meaning, and evoltuonary value of the gene will alter. This is after all what Lewontin implies when he says ‘the characteristic length is in some sense the unit of evolution since genes within it are highly correlated. The concept howver is a subtle one. It does not mean that the genome is broken up into descrete adjacent chunks of length l. Every Locus is the center of such a correlated sequience, and evolves in linkage with genes near it’ (lewontin 1974 p.312, a passage Dawkin quotes, in Dawkins 1982 p.89). That is every gene (and every nucleotide base) exists in relation to every other gene (and every other base). A change in one may effect a change in another - with that effect begin culmative. So that while changes in individual bases might have a miniscule effect, there overal effect over many bases, and many genes might be considerable. If the gene really is made of difference, then these differences must always threaten to ‘break up’ any gene as ‘unit’ of selection as new qays of correlating, new ways of differing are being constantly formed. Mere enduraance can offer no guarantess in the face of differences. So that natural selection cannot create anything that could be described as A Gene - let alone a gene for a thing. To use language in this way is not a matter of pragamatic, as Dawkins and other claim, as it necessarily calles something a ‘noun (a gene) tht clearly is no noun.
But there a three more problems with this simple equation of Genes are the what which matters. The first questions whether a gene as a ‘thing’ is acutally adequate to explain what a body is. The second problem returns to in what sense a gene is the sole unit of inheritance. Even given Dawkins arguement were right, would that lead to one form of inheritance to Gene dominating, or might their be a panoply of replicators ( certainly mpore than the meme Dawkins allows). And third prbelm return to this issue of exactly makes genes work the way they do. Given that different ‘genes’ are capabple of performing the same action, is it possible for them to form, through natural selection, the kind of identiyies Dawkins needs?
The three problems with Objectification
The first is simply a matter of body mechanics. Gene -lefty to themselvs do noting (Rose 1998). The are infact one of the most inert m,oelcules in the body (Lewontin 2000). It is only Genes in Bodies that make things (Goodwin1995 p.). In terms of biochensitrymakes no real sense then to pick out genes as somehose the key feature in the body - they are part albeit and very important part of a much larger process - all of which is required for life - and therefore for inheritance to be at all. ( Maturana and Warela 1972, see also Ho and Sauders 1984). The Weismann hypotheisis, that phenotype is seperate to genotype simply does not give th automatic right to say a genotoye alone matters. This is not justbecause te boundary is, under ever certain circumstances permiable ( see Goowin 1995, and in Ho and Saunder 1984, see also Ansell Pearson 1997, and Lewontoin 2000). But that it does not logically follow that because Genes have a great deal of longevity, that they, and they alone really matter (Dawkins 1982 p.23,Haldane1950). To absolute power with longevity is a relgious assumption. God’s power might rest of his longeivty, but a gene’s cannot - any more than any other element can# . What matters is not a things longevisty. But how that longevity is used in the body.Only once this is estblished is it possible to interpret exactly what the effect of the Wiesmann hypothesis is. until thaten that point other interpretations (which still conform to the biology) are always possible
For example, if one starts not with evolution, but with the autopoetic systems that are an actually living thing, it is possible to rethink exactly what DNA is. Starting as Goodwin does (Goodwin 1995 p.) from the fact that a certain algi, when its nucelus is removed will continue to have many of the feautures we associate with living things (it just will not be able to reproduce effectively), and will eventually die, one might be tempoted to say that DNA intervenes only at certain point is life’s process (Goodwin page see also Maturana and Warela 1972) . And it less a set of instruction, as maybe a record of an intial move in a process. Or again given that gentic modification is by no means a false safe procedure (rose notes that many of the onco-mice ‘desinged to deveople cancer, do not), one has to always allow for the effect of both other bodily processes and the wider enviromenet.
Perhaps one could go meven futher than this. Faced with the fact that most of the DNA in the human genome is useeless to us, we cpould have either of two responsies. One could agree Dawkins and claim that this is somehow outlaw DNA, which free-rides, as it were on the human geneome (Dawkins 1982 p.133-155). Or one might conjcture that maybe, just maybe it is because DNA - the molecule has not much to do with us, and left to itself simply does ‘DNAy’ things. It is, after all, a pretty good ‘replicator’. Not only is inert, but it is capablle of a of copying itself with a high degree of accuracy, and is very long. In the huamn geneomes three billion nucleotide sequence alomst every single imaginible protien protien length is possible. After all the exact matching of bases to amino acid dpoes not matter. The relationship is a metaphorical one. All that does is that the differences between the amino bases is the same, as the differences between amino acids in the desired protien (Maynard-Smith and Szathmary 2000). Perhaps one could as truthfully talk about ‘selfish bodies’ using DNA, and the other way around. That is the body uses the fact that DNA is a very long molecule, which is basically inert, and yet capable of reproducing itself, and RNA, to ‘solve’ the problem of how to pass down certain (physical features). To use the kind an analogy that Dawkins favours. If a book consitsted of three billion lettres (including spaces, and punctuation) and one could write a book by choosing only the lettres in this book (with out repeating) one could almost certainly write a very large number of short books, and quite possiblly even quite a long one, particualrly if lettres can, in certain cases be reused. The DNA molecule could therefore be merely the storehose of knwoedge the body uses. Such a storhepouse is never in itse;lf effect by what the bpody does (what is not its role) - so the genotype is distinct from the phenoype (though the exact knwolege accessed migh vary with climate). Finally, and most imprtantly, the ‘library’ is under certain circumsatnce considered by the body to be infallible (though again it has to be tressed only under certain circumstance). If the words are in the wroing oirder then th body has no means of changing that order and must adopt the new word come what may. And so it is the case Dobzhansky claimed ‘evolution is a change in genetic composition’ (Dobzhansky 1951). Of course such a ‘theory’ would run into probl;em about exactly how the auot-poetic process of life ‘came’ upon DNA - why should they have hit upon it as their library. How did they exist before it? But these questions are no more severe than the ones that face Dawkins. DNA left to itself simply will not produce ‘life’ as we understand it (Goodwin 1995). And he is faced with exactly the same dilemma. Namely how to account for the twin aspects of life- its abilty to evolve, and its abilty to live.
In short, therefore DNA is not enough to explain life. Its simple identity (and its relative durabilty) is not sufficent to explain what it is, and why it can act the way it does. In a Gene as simply a lump pf DNA it wpould remain ineffectual. What needs to be explained is not lumps of DNA, but how those ‘lumps’ are taken up into the body - were they not not exist as ‘llumps’ (that is things at all.
Secondly it is is not the case that it is genes that alone endure across the generations. Dawkins himself recognised that the same arguement could be applied both to certain prases, and mannerism, that were communicated from one person (and generation) to another. He called these (Dawkins 1976, see also Blackmore 199 Dennet 1995? )# . But once one has singled out what endures through its being transmittiable as somehow significant, then allsort of extra ‘inheritotrs’ cannot be logically excluded. For example butterflies appear to lay their eggs by choice of the plants on which they eat as catepellars. And yet there is no physical reaspn for this - they can just as easily lay them on other leaves. Likewise some will birds learn their songs frm the parents, in way analagous to the way children pick up the traits of their parents (Griffith and Stirnly 1987( section 5.3). and Thorpe 1978 p.50), but also see Darwin descent of man, and critism of it antrhopomorphism...). Is such imative behaviour simply a mime (inspite of the fact that Blackmore wanted to exclude animals from miemtics- Blackmoor 199 p . )?And what about other ‘active replicators’, such as language (Dawkin 1982 p. 87, Blackmoore p,). And yet can one, as Blackmoore wishes to mere classify it as a meme? This is clearly hopelssly reductive. It would effectively means that anything that involved on the one hand the human mind, on the other ommative behaviour was mimetic. No matter that that both what the immative behaviour, and how it is stored in the brain is different - nor even that this difference was vital to the way it replicated. To reduce all things to these two facts is to lose sight of what they are- an identity that is vital to their continued existence. And anyway, even if one accepts part of the mimetic theory, langauge still could not be desribed through it. For while it is possibly true that langauge does inolve a genetic/phisacl element (Chomsky, and but see Bourdieu and ), which somehow gives the brain a ‘deep’ knowledge of grammar, and it it is also true that any langauge involves an immative elment. what is most characteristic about language is what exists between these two factors. that is exaclty how immatiton, through a fore-knowledge of ‘deep grammar’ is taken up, and become a particualr langauges grammar structure. It is after all, this rich langauge of everyday speach that Heidigger claimed was the house of being (Heidigger - that is, it Dawkins slightly less poetic langauge, it was langauge that is the prime replicator). Nor could one stop at language. Any emotional trait, which is communiatelbe down the generaltions (Freud et al) couild become a replicator -particulary if that psychological state are thoise quite common in psychoanalysitc literature ( Klien et al), for a desire to have children, running parralell with an inabilty to look after them. Dawkins defintion of replication, effectively open the door for many replicaotrs, each working in different ways, according to different agendas . Genes could not claim the kind of functional high ground Dawkins wishes to assert for them - and would be just one replicator amongst others# .
Perhaps, rather than talk about repication at all, one should follow Deleuze and talk of contagion ( Deleuze 1988p.239-243). What matters about replication is not that one particualr case of it (sexual/genetic) can be defined in terms of filation, and of hereditary, but that it cannot actually be bound - that it lacks all order, that is ‘replicates freely’. But exactly what replicates? Intially replication might seems synomus with contagion (once it is freed from the link to fialition). Genes make endless extra copies of themselvesupon the genome, or are transported (in virouses)across different species (Ansell-Pearson 1997) . The genome itself is less a blue-print of a body,as an analgum of different ‘contagions’, different possible bodies (have a tail, or not, have gills or not, have at extra fingure of not). None of which are removed, only supressed (or mutatuted), and all of which spread across the generation of genomes. But replication is not sophiscated enpugh an idea to understand how this replicate across different species 9are even within the same species). Relpication can only understand imiatiton, and never the far deeper level of contaigion - becoming. The student who imatates, quite unconsciously Wittenstien (Dawkins in Blackmore 199 ) is merely imatates, much a a parrot imates a human, or a human barks like a dog. But there is a far more sublte level of contagain - that of beocoming. a wasp does not imatate an orchid, nor an orchid a wasp, rather it becomes it. It takes up, and expresses through itself ‘waspishness’, andthe relatioship if extablkishes with the wasp for itself. Deleuze suggests (deleuze 1988 p.238) all symbotic relationships are relationships of becoming ; species do not imate another, do not ‘pretend’ to be another, rather they take up that other and become through it, and in them light of what it is. Becoming cannot be throught of as ‘replication’, but many so-called replications are becomings rather than imations. For example, mystical experiences are less a matter of memes (simply learnt, and re-enacted) a cannot cretae ‘identies’ - the replicator as such. One the one level, is cannot limit the sheer number of possiblitles for replacation. All anayslsis of any complex problem would collaspe into a concophony of different irreconcible replicator - that is differences. On the other replication is no subslte enough to understand all that happens in differnetiation. Replication is never simply a matter of replicating the same, if nothing else what repeats is always different, if only in the fact that it is a repeat (Deleuze 1995, quoting Levi-Straus quoting Plato). And what repeats may repeat in many different ways. The ‘Replicator’ which restricts itself to one simple model (based on filation), will never be able to grap anything more than a fraction of these repeating, and will be unable (in the guise of the meme) to move beyond these reption (if inded it is adquate to understand even these -see other section in this chaper). The Replicaotr can only the knid of idea its avoctes argue that it is, if it embraces difference, and attemot to think through how things replicate (return) as waht is different, not what is the same (Deleuze et all_).
The third problem with ‘genes’ as things which control returns again to the nature of their ‘control’, and how it realtes to there alledged ‘thinghood’. Sober has argued that genes by themselves are not enough to understand what happens in selection (Sober in Hull and Ruse 1998, and 2000).He does this at two different levels. firstly there is the case of hetrozygotic genes. Such genes cannot, by their very nature be passed from one generation to another in their hetrozygotic form, and yet may well in ‘fitter’ than the corresponding homzygotic genes are. Their advatangeous effect simply cannot be transferred directly by the genes (which only give their particualr trait), and therefore Sober concludes selection at this level cannot be at the level of the gene. In answering him, Sterelny and Kitchner argue (in Hull and Ruse 1998) that Sober misses the point here - and what is selveted is not particualr genes - but over all average effects. The gene pool will come to contain the ‘best’ possible balance of homozygotic and hetrozygotic genes. This ‘best’ possible does not represent a perfect solution, but merely the ‘pragamatic’ best that each gene - for its ‘perspective’ can achieve in the given circumstances. There is no difference then, for Stirenly and Kitchner between this case and case the case of the gene that maunfactures the golobin in the heamoglobin in the blood. Both requite other genes (in the latter case thousands of other genes) for survive, and so both limit their numbes accordingly.
However this arguement misses the point of what Sober’s critique. If a survial stratedgy is successul so that more creatures survive, it is obivous (in fact it is tautological) that the over all amount of DNA will increase (so will all the protiens). It is likewise obivouis that different suvival stratedgies, at different ‘levels’, will create different gene pools. What matters in not the genes themselves, but what produced that gene pool. Or to put it another way on exactly why this animal rather than that one survived - and how that relates to their abilty to pass of their genes. On the one hand one can have genes that directly effect the world in which they live (the kind of Genes enviaged by Dawkins); if these are passed on in their current form they always have the same (benefical) effect. In this case, accroding to Dawkin selection is directly ‘at the ;level of the gene’. It is the gene s that are judged - then passed on. What is selected is the same as what can be inheritied On the other one has hetrozygotic gene, where the fittest option can never be directly inherited. To claim, as Sterenly and Kitchner do that in fact where it really matters these arguments are the same - as every gene is always dependent upon its enviroment, is therefiore to loose site of Dawkin’s central dogma. Namely that genes be be thought of as seperate ‘things’ because natural selection operate directly upon them, and not on the body ( chioces, for Dawkins (Dawkins 1997, see also Monond 1971) is between different genes performing the same function). If one always this ‘choice’ to involve the enviroment these genes find themselves in (including other genes) - then where does one draw the bodundry as the the effects of these other genes? Surely one would have to include not only thise which immediately effct a genes performance, but those that effect the effectors of this effecrt, and soon, until one is again conisdiering the entire body.
Sober’s second arguement is more profund. Many genes, he notes (see also Dobzhansky in Lewis 1974 Beyod Chance and Necessity) have more than one effect. If a gene is involved in more than one factor (say to use Sober’s example quick running and disease - but their is absolutely no reason why it shpuld only be two such features) then it will be subject to all kinds of ‘selective pressure’, as at different time, and in diffrent places different traits become more of less important. The effect of such a gene is highly likely to be very fluid, and the exact mechanics of the balances it strikes over generations altars. But there are two ways the situation could be even more complex than this. Firstly there is noreason why one and only on protein structure/trait.behaviour pattern is the best, the fittest even in one circumstance (let alone ll circumstances). Natural selection can guranteed one best strategdy, only God can do that. Nor do these different strategies need to be absolutely compatible with each other. Some might always be- others never be, yet other be somewhere in the middle (with of average ten thousands potential points of difference per gene, and thousands of genes inviolved in complex traits, the amount of potential difference/recombination is simply varsed. Secondly following Rose’s suggestion (Rose 1998 p. ) that proteiens do not necessarily have exactly the same DNA coding (which in any case is arrbitary) it is at leat possiolbe that two genes which phenotypically perform the same function, could be genotypically quite distinct, and so may react quite differently to different mutations - lety alne partial comboinations. The effect a gene has no its environment is likely therefore to be fluid (Rose 1998 p.) and to evolve/ change with individual circumstance/ occassion.To think them as things - with one effect, is clearely to misunderstand what they are, and how they interact in the world. It is, Ansell-Pearson notes (in discussing Dawkins ally Dennet) to ‘evolution in terms of logical possiblity’, and therteby miss the fact that it is a ‘creative as well as a mechanic process ( Ansell-Pearson 2002 p. 82). But to argue that this matters is to collaspe one kind of infinty into another . The key point of Dennet’s library (Dennet 1995 page 143, Dawkin 1997 page. ) must be that it contains a theorectically contable infinity (there would not be more combinations, that there would be counting numbers). But the number of possible ways that these genes interact with the envirnoement (which is what actually matters when one is considering survival chances, will involve an infinty beyond the count of rational numbers (Cantor). To reduce te latter to the former is to see the latter only in terms of ‘logical possiblitly’, and therefore miss all that is important in its actual existence. What matters, in short about genes is not their logical possilbity, but there creativity’ - a creativity that simply cannot be thought of this kind of restricted thought experiment.
In answer to this Strirnler and Kitchner (let alone Dawkins) might emphaisze, on the one hand that the gene pool will represent the best ‘average’ that can be acived, and on the other that macro-climatic change will lead to changes in this average. But, as I will argue below (in Gene as Social Fact’) this is to confuse cause and effect. A statical pattern is a thing to be explained, not an explaination in itself). To hypothtisze soemthing (called the ‘gene-pool) that directly causes this pattern - is to miss the point. The pattern is a description of interaction that are different from it - that it merely desacribes/ catalogues( I suspect this arguement is Kauffman, but anyway I am sure Bergson uses it, and before him Kant). The challenge is to find that pattern. Therefore to understand what a gene is, it cannot be enough to simply combine a ‘gene’, with a statical correlation, and say that the one is the same as the other. What ‘matters for the gene in the world’, is not macro-stastics, but the micro-climate in which it operates, a Micro-climate that in itself prevents one thinking of the gene as solid thing.
The Limits of Natual selection.
Natural selection can only work on what is already there (Monod1987, Jacobs 1974p. ). But more than this natural selection can only work if there is an ordered environement for it to work within. It differentiates between things that already different. Dawkins is very clear on this point (Dawkins 1982 p. 93) and uses it to justify why it is that genes make objects. And this, as a mentioned before merely begs the question how it that genes become differentiated from each other? The answer to this question is very complex. On one level it has been answered. Monod discovered (Monod 1971, and Maynard-Smith and Szarthmary 1999) that one gene will effect whether another gene is activated on not, by forming creating an enyzme that binds itself with a specific DNA sequence at the start of a second gene, and thereby inhibits that gene from activating ( or it may, through its action turns the second gene on). Only an outside factor (in the case of the Ecoli studied by Monod lactose, but it could eaily be another protin manufactured by another gene) blocks this process (Seee also Gould 198 ). Althoug such an explanation may brillantly solve the problem as to how genes are temporally distinguished from each other (and therefore how differet organs are produced in different parts of the body) - it raises three furtherproblems , two scientific, and two philsophic. I will very breifly consider the former, before I examine the latter.
On the scientifc level Monod’s answer can only be a partial answer, as it leaves open he question of how a particular nuclotide bases (that are activated together) actually come to act together? Why is it that some genes need to be held back (will act it restriction is moved) while others need to be impelled foward ( will not act until made to)? It is clear that scientific point is that the problem of activiation is clearly going to be very important to evolution. As Gould changes in when/how genes are activated are likely to be a more potent force for change the the mere swapping/ or duplication of a few neucleotide bases (Gould 1983 p. ).
The second scientific problems return to the issue of the ‘selfish gene ‘ theorem, which is effectively trivalised by Monod’s work. As what differenitates a gene sequence, and makes in create this rather than that, is not the gene sequence itself, but the elbourate systems of control which regulate it. The kind of small ever imporoving pieces of DNA that Dawkins is advocating are the unit of evolution are inextricably tied to to the wider genome. And while imporovement in these small pieces may or may not lead to increased fitness - all such small changes can only be made in the context of the wider switch on swith off system. A gene that fails to fit in with this system (however theorietically wonderful it is at its job) but fail. Likewise, one cannot move from the fact that some nucleotide bases, in certain circumstances benefit from behavoing against the rest of the bodies interest, to the assertion that natural selection can only work on genes (that is ‘smallish’ section of the genome). It is certainly true that what aids the body are a whole (or a that matter a part of it) aids the gene within that body; and likewise that genes (or nucloetide bases) are the bases thing that can be benefitted. But these facts of trival. What matter is on what the natural selection operates. That is what are the factors that are crucial depenment and what unions of nulcotide bases are necessary to meet them. In short genes by themselves cannot explain there own cohesion, and must always look to other things (be it genes or the wider envirnmement), in order thatr they can act in the world.
My final point is philsophical the most important, and return to the problem of what it means genes to be activated. Monad found that the e-coli ‘lacoperon’ was activate by an outside influence - in this particuliar case lactose ( Manyard-Smith and Szathmary 1999 p.113). A genes action was conditioned by changes in the environment it found itself in. So that rather than thinking of genes as things, which act on the environement - rather one has to think of them (and their action) as a chemical response to another change in the enivroement. What makes this response specia; is firstly that it is at its arbiatary (ibid p.113) . There is no direct link between the gene and the chemical reaction it responds to . The lactose bonds with the ‘bocking’ agent at a different point from which that blocking agent bonds with the DNA (so effectively any blocker could be matched with any piece of DNA). And secondly the response of any particualr piece of DNA does not stand alone - any chemical reaction of which it is part will always be linked to numerous other reactions. The effect is that DNA operates as a kind of chemical junction box, which tranforms one chemical reaction into another, quite different one. Dawkins simply faith in Mendelianism on the one hand, and Darwinism on the other, makes him cofuse causes and effects. Because triats are inheritable, he thinks of inheritance as a thing (and therefore argues there must be a cause to cause that inheritance). But things are not so simple - the kind of cause that a gene is cannot be reduced to its effects (or can only be don so in the most trivual of manners). It the face of which Dawkins’ explanation dissolves into trivaillity (of course genes do well if bodiies do well...).
DNA at Time Juncture.#
Two important philsophical consequences arise form the failure of the selfish gene theorem. Both revolve around how we understand Genes existing through time. The first involves the ontology of this existence, and asks ‘what then is special about enes in time -what is it that makes them, different?’. The second return is natural selection, and tries to understand it as a process that occurs across time, and not merely as a way of stratify space. It thereby attempts to move Darwinism beyond the ‘geological model’, to begin to understand the actual role of time in the process# . In this chapter I will merely introduce these ideas, and their key aspects, as the next will involve a detailed analysis of them.
It is a truism to that if one is going to understand what is different about DNA - and the way it exists across times, one needs to understand, to some degree what it is differing from. One needs to understand both ‘how do object exist across time’, but also ‘what is it that is special about life’s extistence through time?’. There are, of coursew as many answers to this question, as their are philsophers. I will here concentrate on one answer - that of Bergson. I will concentrate on his answer, not only because it is very sublte and sophisticated one; but more particuliarly because he never leaves of considering these two questions - and so it peculiarly useful in trying to grasp what it is that might make DNA different and significant.
In the first chapter of Matter and Memory (Bergson 1999), Bergson suggests that perception does not differnt in kind from perception . The suggests ‘matter has no occult or unknowable power and coincides in esentials with p[ure perectpion...The Nervous system...(is) only (a) channel through for the transmission of movement which received in the form of stimulation, are transmitted in the form of action’ ( page 73). Perception will involve firstly a sense organ, such as the eye, which concentrates light waves (in the lens), and then converts those light rays (in the retina) to nerve implulses. These impuses are then sent down he optic nerve for various parts of the brain, and ‘these centres sometimes transmit themn into motor mechanisms, and somethimes proviusionally arrest them’ (page42). the Brain itself is ‘no more than a telepnoe exchange : Its office is to allow communication, or delay it. It adds nothing to what it recieves ..The office of the brain is sometimes to conduct the movement received to a chosen organ of reaction, and sometimes to open to this movement to the totality of the motor tracts’ (page 30). There is ‘for images a difference of degree,not kind between between being and being consciuosly perceived only a matter ‘ (page 37). Perception ivloves therefore the translation of one form of energy (say light), into another (electrical charge), finally into yet another (motor movement). There is no gap beween these forms of enegy - one follows on from the other.
This mechanism Bergson them contrasts with memory. As any movement takes time, it is subject to a very different way of understanding - that of memory. The role of memory is to prolong each senstion into the other ‘so as to grasp them as a single initituition’ (page 69). These two mechanisms being different in kind. One being pure movement - the other being pure retention. The power of this hypotheis Deleuze suggests (Deleuze 1989 page 25-43) lies it’s power to examine how time progresses. For a moment to pass the must be a sense where it has already moved first into a future , and secondly into a pasted thaty it conterminus with it. Time is (at the moement ‘splits into two similar jets, one of which makes the present past, while the other preserves the past’ (page 81). What consitutes the present-which-moves-into-the -futrues is on thing, what-constitutes-the-present-of-the-past in another. For time to be at all it needs to different registers. The one that only differes in degree from the things perceives and that knows only movement towards the future; the other, which diffes in kind (chronos is not the same as Cronos), gathers up this intutions, through being able to directly inscribe in itself change. The challenge that the past presents us is how through it can one think of a pure past (a pure passing that is also a retention) not merely as a psycholoigcal pheneomenia but as the unpersonal (and unconscious) relativity through which the self becomes ( Ansell-Pearson 2002 pages 180-185, and page.195, Delueze 1988 page 54-62 1989 page 82.).
Bergson thereby effectively answers a problem left by Kant. Kant was to unite the twin aspects of time (apprehension and recollection), only through assuming that something other (the thing in itself) musr force one to move from one p[erception to another. Large objects cannot be perceives in a glance, time is needed (at this a unficoiation of experience) so which which all the different times that I see a thing are gathered into one sinlge intuition (Kant 1929 A99-103). And yet, as Neitzsche noted (Neitsche will-to-power) is saying this Kant has already assumed that object already are things (which are big, and so need time to perceive them) - and yet this is just what he is not allowed to do, as he has not yet proved that objects actually exist. This comes only after the third sythesis (that of the concept - A 103). Bergson transforms this problem by making it the very defining feature of the mind. Apprehension is only different in degree from what it apprehends; Its ceasless movement is at one with the force that move. It is rention, our abulty to have a past (and thereby thin-time not as movement, as as actually what it is in itself) that is different. Time is not an inner perception which we create but something that creates us: ‘The self is in time, but its subjectivity is never simply its’ (Ansell Peasron 2002 p. 185)
For Bergson the the division that really matters to our understanding is that between perception, that is at one with what it is perceiving, and memeory which is different in kind from it, and is what renders a thing conscious(Bergson 1999 p.73). DNA will likewise will involve differnce is degree and kind ; though as Jacobs’ notes (Jacobs 1974, and Butler fails to understand (Butler 1922), its actions, being chemical, are different in kind from those of perception/memory. The Monod/Jacobs model involves two sets of difference - first;y a difference between chemicals, and secondly a difference in times, both of which have an element of different in kind and difference in degree. I will exmanine the case of chemeicals first.
On the one hand , is clearly a differiatior is kind. The presence/absence of one one chemical reastion leads directly to an utterly different series of chmeical reactions. Not only do these second reaction involve totally different chemicals, but they exist in the context of, and their result depend upon, yet other reactions. That is other parts of the genome, which have likwsie been ‘activated’ by totally different set of chemeicals. With the result, that the ultiamte end - the protiens of the body, is utterly different from the reaction than prompted the DNA itself to act. If one concertrates on the chemicals involved, the sequence through which DNA acts clearly involves a succession of difference in kind. From this persepctive the gene is something clear, distinct, and of vital importance. Ity is, in effect the eternal differiator in kind. That which must exist so that living things, at all stages of their developement can respondare capable of translating one chemicalm situation into a totally different one. From this perspective, the gene is the pivot to all chemical reactions, and no protein - the product of this pivot can effect it.
On the other hand, although there is certainly a difference in kind in terms of chemicals - it is never (as it is for Bergson differences in kind) that the different chemicals are unable to realte to each other. On the contrary the entire process is about creating differences that do relate to each other, however indirectly . The ecoli bacteria example above involves a direct interaction between enviroment and DNA. An enzyme s manufactures to digest the lactose, and so remove it from the envirnoment. In the case of mult-cell organism, the entire process is infintely more complex. But will always - at some point invovle the action/reaction of creature and enviromenet (Goodwin page )# , at some level - albeit one very far removed from the gene that is being simply turned of and on. Body chemistry (and its realtion to the world), from a different perspective, forms a whole, which differs only in degree - and though endless interaction. So that while the chemicals within the body must be viewed as different in kind one from another - the process behind those chemicals (which ultimately articualte the enitre body) differ only in degree.
However the problem is even more complex when one considers the effect of DNA on the kind of upon the temporality of chemeical reactions. In itself, a chemical reaction cannot be described as having ‘a time’ (Bergson 1999 p.69). It is merely a series of movements and asscoicated transformations, of atoms, electorns, protons whatever; Micro-transformations that are then measured through their over all effect across time. Perception - for Bergson, being merely a apart of this process. To have a time as such, for Bergson, as much as for Heidegger is to ‘have an ‘interest’ or share an entity which is in each instance to be’ (Heidegger 1992 page152-153). For Hedigger, as for Kant, time arises though this the self constituting this awareness.(Heidegger 1989 pages 123-142). Therefore ‘ the Self is not ‘in time’, it is time as auto-affection ( Ansel- Pearson 2002 page 185) . Although Heidegger, follows Kant in thinking that movement is a product of Being, and not, as Bergson thinks somethign quite distinct# . For both Bergson and Heidegger (not to mention Kant) time can only exist if there is something more than matter - be it memory (Bergson N.D), Being, or the transcendental self. From such a view point the very srting assumnpotion of genetics is wrong-headed. It is simply not possible that a moeclule could exist that could, through itself (or evenwith a few molecular allies) synthesize time. Time and matter are clear different things.
And yet to leave it at that to ignore two ways in which DNA does actually alter the kind of way a molecule exists through time (even if it does not actually create an conscious existence in time). Firstly DNA (Along with RNA and the actual sights of protein construction) effectively (through translating them into different forms), articulates differences. Thereby changing mere different into differentiation (for the importance of this distcntion see Ansell-Pearson 2002 page 105-113)). This is true not only in a chemical sense ( in the differences between different amino-acids, different proteins / forms are created) but even more temporally. This is true in various different sense. Firstly there is the matter of ontogeny ( Bolwer 199.) The exact shape of a creature is of course the product of the growth rate of its parts, in particualr when it is very young embryo ( Gould ). The turtles shell is merely a rib that grows so quickly (when the turtle is an embryo) that is pushes the rib through the hip and shoulder (Bakker p.56); while the difference between Humans and chimpazees are more a matter of growth rate than genetics (Gould ). Secondly there is the case of brain waves. While it may be true that certain activities are assoicated with the firing of certain neurones, and certain brain wave there is no hard and fast rule about the exact nuroens that fire. Indeed , the continuenece of an activity will change (via ioniszation of the synapes) the exact neurons activated ( in Maturana and Warela 1972,). Time itself becomes part of the differiating process. Thirdly the entire process of energy production involves the lining up of numerous small chemical reactions (aerobic and Anaeobic), and articulating their difference (and rates of change/energy production) to produce an over all effect (). In all these process it is less a matter of Autopoeisis (tha is a self regulating system (Maturana and Warela 1972, see also Rose 1998 ), as a way of artiulating ifferences one to another -life being the over all result ( Ansell-Pearson 1997 p.140-142). In all of this the role of DNA as the ultimate translittarator of difference, is that it (like memory) allows difference to register As Difference. And therefore to ‘think’ DNA is to think difference - what it means for difference to be juxtaposed one to the other.
The second way that DNA somehow must be interlinked to time - is through its role in heridarty. Put quite simply DNA is what allows one time to spill into another. Not only is DNA vital to the way in which traits exist across time, but also it has the ptetial for many different times within it. Some of which will be actiavted in developement (such as human gills), while others remain as mere potentials (such as whales legs - example from Bakker page). Hubbard suggests that one of the reasons Human DNA contains so much DNA that is not revelant to actual human developement, is that DNA has no mechanisms of removing useless genes. Either they mutate into something else, or they are suppressed (or a mixture of the two). DNA functions rather like Spinoza’s conception of a memeory. Memories for Spinoza are the result of a physical process - and quite literally involve an inscription, on the ‘sfter parts of the barin’, of certain moivements ( Spinoza 1985 parts 2 prop 17 note). Once a thing is inscribed it cannot be deleted. And to forget it the mind must think of another thing which somehow preculdes its existence (part 3 prop 18). But images in memoery are by on means constant ( part 4 defintion 6) - as the insciptions are endlessly being added to, and changed# . To try to think why DNA matters is to try to think how it how it confuses time, through an endless project, supression, mutation of physical ‘pasts’. An act that has to be thought of as distinct from conscious memory (Jacobs 1974 , see also Ansell-Pearson 2002 p. 138 ). A topic that will be returned to in he next chapter.
The second philsophical consideration retrn to the issue of exactly what natural selection is / does - and the kind of bodies it actually organises., and more particlualry how one thinks about it The real problem is that natural selection is in its essence doubly teleological - and it is too easy to confuse two quite different ‘ends’. The first ‘end’ of involves genetic advantage. The first teleogy involves the mismatch between the difficulites a creature faces, and actual solution found to these difficulties. The ancestor of the giraffe was not faced with the Lamarckian problem ‘how do I make my neck longer’, but the far more general problem of maxamising the amount of food it as a tree eating, for legged antelope could eat. Even given phyiscal constraints, which relate to its starting postion) there are a very great number of possible solutions ( eat a little more varied food, develope better fat sotrag capacity, or the abilty to each twigs). Difficulties arew therefore always general things. Solution, on the other hand are specific (and actually define the problem to which they are soltuion to). Either mutation, or peculairly aposit gene combination leads to a way of increasing food imput. One neck grows just a little, or one stomache becomes that little bit more effecient. Thus ‘adaption’, then sets up new difficutles, which await new possible solutions (subject to the new constaints on those solutions. Darwian evoltuion is telelogical in the sense that before a mutation of generalised problems exist - after it there are specific solutions - and specifc problems solved through thse soltuions. The final goal, only once it is achieved actually defines what the exact problem was in the first place.
The enitre problem of the level of evolution (speices individual, gees) missed the point. Gneralised difficulties do not have levels (what ios difficult for the genes is difficult for the individual). While the ‘solution’ itself will define the way it acts. Any solution to a higly complex difficultiy is likely to invovle many different parts, operating across many different levels (some of which are direct agents others are indirect ones). It is then these sucessful solutions that are ‘selected’. Having said this Dawkins is right firstly in suggesting only solutions that are good for the entire body are going to work (Dawkins 1982). Neither is the body restricted to one, and only one ‘solution’ - on the contrary there are liekely to e very many soltiuons, to very many difficulties, each interact with the other (and thereby creating new problems). There is, with respect to evolution, no need no need to think the body in terms of an autopoetic system (Ansell Pearson 1997 page )Secondly there is no absoltue need for successful solution to involve the body at all. The virus - DNA for itself, soltion is a perfectly viable one, in certain circumstances. But that does not make it the sole and exclusive genetic master. Only one possible ‘solution’ (the break up the body solution) to a generalised problem. I short then, there are sensibly no ‘levle of selction problem, only certain solutions which in most cases draw on many different levels - although in extreme cases may operate at restricted levels. The body consists of ; a sum of obsticales avioded’ (Bergon 1998 page 93)- that is a sum of different (and interelating) solution, to difficulties that otherwise remain generalised# .
The second form of teleology arrives with hindsight. Form a perspective in the future one can see which solutions suceded - which failed . All solution can them be assessed in the light of more distant solution - the eventual sucess or failure of the scheme. The distoring effect of the future leads to three main distorations. The first main distortion is the often remarked on of the effects of hindsight (effects that are always seens as more prevalent in the past). We know - from our perspective that Dinosaurs died out. the temptation is, as Bakker argues (Bakker 198 page ) to understand everything about them in terms of this extinction. Becuase mammals did become the dominate soecies after dinosaurs, we tend to asume that mammls must somehow of been a ‘better designed’ species - thereby ignoring the fact tha true mamams, and dinosaurs evolved at the same time (130 million years ago) and that the latter supressed the former for the first 65 million years of their existence.
Secondly there is a tendanecy for the difficulties, problems and constraints merge. A solution is seen as being a response to a certain set problems. A response described in terms of hydraulics (evoltuonoary ‘pressure’ or adaption. Th essential open nature of evoltion is thereby lost . Evoltion simply becomes a matter of waiting long enough for the ‘right’ solutions. This is the importance of Gould’s remark that if one re-ran the history of the earth one would propblalby get quite a different result.Metaphirs - such as’ Mount improbable’ (Dawkins 1997) are somewhat misleading. This mountai only exists as an aposteri mountain, never an apriori one. That is it is possible from its higher slopes to view the ‘land’ below, as Dawkins wishes, but it is never posible to simply ‘climb the mountain’. Dawkins is right to insist that evoltion can involve ‘going down’ the mountain (that is no solutions can lead to an exasperation of the problem), but that does not mean that there is only one soltion -one path to follow up the mountain -one possible solution. This is true even on ‘the higher slopes’ of th mouintain, where the number of constraints upon soltions are very high - . The point of evoltuion (what makes in special (Dawkind in Hull and Ruse 1998) is its randomness. that is - that there are no one path - that connection (solutions) not directly linked to the intial difficulty (and constraints) could intervene and create an unexpected soltion to the problem.
Finally there is the enitire issue of eventual purpose/design. From our perspective, in the future it is possible to ask the question - out of all this process - who / what is it that really gain most. Is it God, making man through indirect means? or consciousness itself struggling to emerge? Or the hidden forces of evolution /progress in itself/ Or just the genes themselves? But to enquire ‘who benefits’ is to miss the point of the process. What benefits are specific solutions to specific to generalised (though associated constraints) difficulties. Any attemot to generalise will necessrily trivialise - as real problems become mere abstractions.
To begin to really understand evolution, one must keep seperate in ones mind these two very different teleogy. What matters is a ‘blind’ teleolgy. A teleolgy whoise exact porlbme only becomes known once the soltion exists. Such a teleology can never be absolutlely contricted (though successful solution will be subject to constraints- to things that will not work). To think this teleogy one needs to think of differences (in themselves) that differentiate creatures across times. It is to think of a blind teleology, that differiates through its jumps. This is the teleolgy of the naked monad - that blindly strives towards goals (appetities) it can never reach - and yet without which it could never impless itself from one perception to another, thereby creating both change, and time (Leibniz 1989 page 215- I will return to this Liebinz in the next chapter. This teleology is then constrast with anpother quite different teleogy - that which understands everythign in terms of eventual (known) ends. Such a teleology will attmept to understand differences (potential solutions) in terms of known problems, and final answers. If the first teleogy is tied to idfferences, and through that to time, this second is deeply spatail and geleological (Ansell-Pearson 2002 page ). Times are ogranised in epoch - classified according to changes had, and in the light of changes to come. Change becomes mere part of a story (be it God, or the gentel slopes of moiunt improbale) : Its disruptive potential within history. But this capture is only possible through loosing sight of exactly what it is.
Genes as simple things, lthough it has commerical viablity (Lewonton 2000) has no ontological value. As soon as one invesitgates exactly what it might mean, the problem anishes into inconsistency, and other far more interesting problems. Put simply, natural selection (which deals only in differences) cannot in itself establish genes as things. All it can esablsuh (and then only by an elbourate interplay of gentic and enivromenetal fectos) is that cerain genes manufacture certain protiens - that are then jioned to other portiens. Genes are never therefore ‘for’ a simple thing, so much as that whithout which a thing cannot happen (Rose 1998). Even more importantly to simply talk of it in this way is to muss what is really significant about it - that is the way that genes interact across tims. The challenge of genes, is not the challenge of accpeting that they, somehow are in the driving seat, and we are their machines. But rather to face up to abilty to transofrm how molcelules operate across time - and thereby quite literally to sysntehsize new and distinct times.
Section 2: The Essence of Aristolte and the Gene.
Aristolte - seen in the light of the Christain conception of the souls appears, to have nothing to say of value about genetics. What defines a thing is simply ‘what-it-was-to-be-that-thing# , and there was nothing more to it. The Darwin conception that things might gradually, over time change one one species into another was thereofre unthinkable ( Mayr 1962, and Sterenly and Griffith 1987). Darwin’s great revolution happens when he realizes that the difference between individuals and species in a difference of degree not kind ( he calls this the ‘most beatuiful part of his theory’ Darwin 1838, paragraph 71), and that it was therefore theorectically possible to go from one species to another through natural transformations. It is worh noting that it is the scond part of this theory that makes it revolutionary. That humans have within them animal essence would be far from revolutionary, Leibniz would have said just of much (see for instance Monadology secton 63-64(Ariew and Garber 1989))as indeed would the Nuer peoples of Sudan (Evans Pritchard 1956)). Nor would just the fact that boilogial change occur Lamarck had argued that in 1809 (and Hegel on 1806 (Hegel, Lamarck 1984 also see Bowler (199?)). What was truely revolutionary was that simple differece in and of itself drove further differentiation, rather than conscenousness . Change could not be inspired by what was essential. And infact essence (and with is species) is an illusion. All that exist is traits, and the abilty to reproduce (that is share those traits). ‘species’ being defined by the abilty to do the latter, and not by a sharing of the former ( Jacob 1974 Mayr 1988 and (with Provine) 1980. Sober 1980) . Form this perspctive Sterenely and Griffith are simply content to say that Aristole is wrong that ‘there is no good reason with Biologists should try to repair Aristolte’s idea’ (Sterenly and Griffith p.8).
However, as Mayr says, such a view is somewhat simplistic (May 1988 p.55-57, and p.60-61# ). And while Aristole’s conception of the essence and the soul is, as it must be, very different from ‘modern geneitcs#’, both share two very basic methodological assumptions. Firstly there is a shared assumption about the power of divsion to expalin the essence of things, and the secondly one about the role as causes in explaining: Each of these needs to be exmained in turn. In both thse section the same basic point will be made. Namely that there are two possible ways to thinks of genetic change. Either one can think of it in terms of what the change is itsel, in which case it is elusive, yet powerful. oir one can think of it in terms of the results of that change (and create an identity based on those results). in which case it is simple to undertnd, yet impotenet. Both of these arguements (in differing degrees) being found in Aristolte.
The ‘What-it-was-to-be of identity.
, that in order to discover what a thing is, all one has to do, is to carry on diving up the forms with a certain genus until one reaches a division beyond which all further divsion of form is accidental ( Metaphysics 1038a). This last meaningful division represents the what-it-was-to-be-of-that-thing, namely its species/essence# ( 1029b). If one defines man through his means of locomotion, then he is defined as a two-footed bipedal animal. Divisions beyond this last one are in some way dependent upon it, to have meaning : As a snub nose is d.ependent upon nosedom (1031 a) . There also can be as many logical sub-divisions of the species as there are creatures within it ( 1038a).
On cursory glancesuch a defintion is clearly very removed from genetics. It is logical rather than boilogical ( P. Pellegrim, in Gotthelf 1985?), and at the supra-individual level, rather than the intr-individual level. At yet, both Aristole and Dawkins are making the same basic claim (though at different levels). Namely that there is a level (an identity) which transforms difference: And ultimately through which all difference must be comprehend. Above that level, whether it is the collection of genes, or genus, difference is clearly a matter of combining this ‘basic’ level. Below it, all further difference is defined through it. And for both Aristotle and genetics form (as opposed to matter) is key in defining why this level must exist. Aristolte will (in metaphysics) show that form is eternal in exactly the same way that essences are , and by implcation they are the same thing (Metaphysics 1033b) (a point he will confirm in de amina, where he says that there are only three types of substances, matter, form, and composite ( 412 a6); So given that in metaphysics he rules out both matter and compoosties being tre substance, form alone can be it). Essence, for Aristolte are therefore defined throgh formal causes (for a full discussion of causes see below). In short one can say that for bopth genetics, and Aristolte what matters are forms (that is abilities to create certain shapes) - and everything else is understood (and selected) in relation to these shape(r)s. The link between Aristolte and Genetics goes beyond a mere assertion of the priority of formers, and includes the way that both try to distinguish different sorts or parts (and wholes), involved within the human body. Aristolte suggests that there are two sorts of parts and wholes: those parts that exist before the whole, and those which can be understood only in terms of it. For example, letters must come before sylables (and syllables before words), but the segements of a circle can only be understood in terms a circle (which actually exists). Likewise the human soul (and its parts) will be prior to the human body (and constitute it) - as they can only be understood in terms of there function. While the parts of the body will only be understandable in terms of the human soul(Metphysics 1035a - b ). The Parts of the soul must come first, for Aristote, as the body can only be defined through its function/use (which Aristolte describes as the Soul, De Anima 412 b 17). The gentics of Dawkin will take at face value this basic distinction, and then apply it in a different way. The parts of the body are, in themselves, were the expression of a deeper set of unities, that are defined through function (and improvements in function). But, unlike Arsisolte who will leave function (his ‘soul’) as the key point, the Genetican will need to find spme sort of embodiement of this function- namely dNa, which is capabple to transmitting the function across generations# .
However here it can easily be objected, that inspite these apparent similairites Arsitloe, and Genetics do indeed widely diverge as to the matter of the importance of form, and the possiblitly of change ((Matthew in Nussbum and Rorty 1992). After all Aristolte does argue that forms ( or their special subset souls) create bodies; And that accidents are merely the resitance of matter to this creation (that therefore of no importance in themselves) (Physics 200 b26-31). While Dawinism is based on the assumptions that accidents do matter, and do tranform species., But to argue this, on the one hand is to understate Aristotle’s case, while of the other it is to ignore the actual problems that its implict Aristltianism creates for the Genetic Reductionsim of Dawkins, a problem, that it, perhaps ironically shares with Aristolte. For Aristotle, it is certainly true, in the case of non-living objects, matter is always purely passive. It is what is changed, not what changes. ‘Change is the actality of that which is potenital, when tha which is [potential is active not as itself, but as something which is capabple of change’. So that the ‘bronze in a statue is potheaitally a statute, but actuality of bronze as bronze does not change’ (Physics 201 a 27). At best matter can resist or preclude change, never cause it# . But things are not quite so clear cut with natural bodies. In De Genera further complicates the issue. On the one hand, Aristotle wants to make the very simple equation between men providing the form, and women the material, of any new born child (De Genera 766 a). But he knows full well that women are just as equally of handing on the characteristics as men, and that characteriscs from distant ancestors (including non-humanss) (De Genera767a-773b). Matter can effectively resists formation, and can through its resistance create, not only anarchy, but other distinct (though less perfect) forms. Aristolte is therefore quite aware that the simple matter - form division is made infiniftely more complex within living creatures; So much more complex that matter is able (when form fails) to operate as a self contained population principle - holding within it a record of many possible forms# . The form the father passes on, therefore is always to risk from a cacophony of potential other forms contained within matter. In the case of the creation of animals (is it also is when one considers the infinite - Widder 1992 p.70), form in itself cannot close of all possible options. matter can always re-assert itself, and open the way to an archy of other possible life forms.
A very simalir dilemma underpinns Dawkins attempots to define what is the unit pof evolution. One the one hand he wishes to find a ‘thing’(whather it might be) for which evolution is good for (Dawkins 1982 p.81-82), his answer being the replicator, on the other he wants to distance this relicator from any forces (including ironica;lly evolution), that would disrupt it (Dawkins p.86, the 82). The active replicator is a portain of DNA (or arbitary length) which is able to effect its own chances of surval, realtve to other portions the same length. Such arbitray portions, are, Dawkins argues the key to understanding evolution (Dawkin 1982 p.90) . This idea of ‘arbitary portion’, attempts to overcome the problem of how one can keep the lanaguge of identity (a gene for a thing), and yet admit the possiblitlty of population thinking (where that for can change). Genes (that is random portions of DNA) can comparative to other length, be more effective (and said therefore to have an identity as a better replicator), and yet still be composed of arbitary units ( Dawkin makes a point if saying that portion of DNA in itself does not have to be for anything so long as it is better at reproducing - Dawkins 1982 p83-88). The optimium size for a gene being neither too big (in which cse it will not survive mitosis, or too small, in which case it has no power)# . It simply cannot make sense to fix identities in this manner.Thus is mean most clearly in the fact that Dawkins’ claim to have asserted the subtlty of the replication theory over the ‘bead-on-a-string’ caracture of it, is flawed (page 90). The interestig thing about evoluion is that actually leads to the selection of something. Which is how it leads to the ‘differential survial’ amongst ‘alternative replicators’ (Dawkins 1978). ‘Aribatry length’ of DNA can say nothing about the nature of this selection process - and therefore noting about the role of Genes within it. Are they acting as a unit (in which case Dawkins is saying something, but that something is merely the erroneous ‘beads of a string’ theorem (see Ho and Saunders 1984). If they are not - what then? This is of course a scientific question, but one that will take one very far from Dawkins model (and might well involve the interlinking and very many genes and the enviromenet in which they are in -as I discussed above). Or is Dawkins merely asserting arbitary length of DNA to replicate (but then where do the lengths begin?). If he is then he is effectviely saying nothing.
Dawkins example (p.92), which he claims will illustrate his theory, merely shows up the problem within it. He claims that the muation of the pepered moth in the industrial revolution from from lighter to darker, proves that single gene mutations are the driving force of evolution, inspite of freely confessing that the wing colouartion involves a very great many other genes. Evolution though, he is driven by differences between different genotypes (and their phenpotypic expression), and if it does not differ, then one can ignore it. But firstly, to argue this way is celarly to imply that genetic’s is merely a matter of ‘beads on a string’. It Genes role, ultimately, is defined through evolution, and evolution by single genetic change, then one it dealing with single things. And Dawkins careful distancing of himself the the ‘beads on strin’ analolgy is disegnious - the logic of his arguement would take him right back to it. But Secondly, and even more importantly, as Goodwin notes (Goodwin 1989), to argue as Dawkins does is to miss all that is actually interesting in evolution, and what is so disruptive to any gene-as-identity hypothesis( see above). Dawkins could of course (and in a sense does) allow for this fact in his arguement. But then the fact that evolution was good for certain gene would be of no interest. So what, one would be tempted to ask? I want to find why it is good for me - that is how genes interact with me. Dawkins hypothesis therefore to have any actual value must to evoltuon must assert the efficay of the gene (and thing, as bead on string), and yet is unable to demonstrate hwy evolution works this way (and indeed will even boast of this failure - Dawkin 1982, chpt 2).
This dilemma is fundamentally the same as the one Aristolte faced when he attempted to understand what we would call genetics. Namely where does identity begin, and difference end - how can you find a species, a last possible category, one that transforms all others (or at least sets them into context) . And in particuliar how can one ensure that this last possbible generaity from either having too much meaning or too little (in either case it will lose all explainatory power). Both seek to answer this question in the same basic way - by atemoting to distinguish between forms, and the matter, that they somehow contain. Although of course the exact mechanics of this explanatios does widely differ . Aristolte cannot do. Aristolte attempts to solve the problem in one go - and say that what unifes in in form (and orgianates in the males) - what divides is in matter, and therefore exists in quite a different sense . Dawkins attempts to link form with reproduction (the replicator), and thereby seperate (theorectically) from any function that it might have (which allows him to argue that genes, by themselves are what evolution is ‘good for’). But for each the balance proves an impossible (or at least one that can only be possibel by re-working much of ones thought). But the way they cope wit this fact is then, agaiun very differnt. Aristole attempts some sort of new synthesis. He realises that he cannot explain how forms can be inherited for the female line, without working potential (in this context) so as to allow that the resistance of matter (matter abilty to resist the action of the form), can actually lead to actual forms (namely characteristics from the maternal line) (De Genera 767a-767b). While Dawkins attempts to leave the matteropen, an unreconciled. On the one hand genes are just active replicators (but then they are irelevant), or they must after all be like beads on a string (inspite of the fact he knows this is wrong).
The attempt to find the ‘last’ meainingful level of difference, an entriprise shared by Aristolte and Dawkins, in a profoundly probmalmatic one( Deleuze 1994 p. 30 and 61-62, Derrida 182 p. 39 Widder 1992 p,62). These last possible difference end up being unsupportable - and either have to immediately and fundamentally qualified# , or is liable to collaspe into the differences which it attempots to order. For example, Widder clearly demonstrates (see Widder 1992, p 69-70) that Aristotles denial that absolute place exists (and his instistance that place is merely a matter of containement (Physics 210b32-212 a 31), leads to an unreconcialbe paradox. That that the universe itself (by the logic of this arguement) can have no place - and yet is the place where other are; But neither can it be infinite, for in that case ’ the whole world would be unlimited’ (Widder p.69).
Underpinning both Aristotle’s and Dawkins’ conception of identity is what Deleuze identifies and the real - a pairing he contrasts with that between the virtual and the actual (Deleuze 1994a p.211-214, see also Deleuze 1994b p,156, and Simundon 1992). The relaitionship between the real and the possible is always a matter of whether a thing exist, or whether or is merely a possiblity for future possible existence. What matters is are therefore forms (which exist) - with being that which contains potneital forms which do not yet exist ( Dawkins Museum of all possible forms (Dawkins 1997), and Dennets (Dennet 1995) Mendelian Library are perfectt example of this type of arguement - for a critque of latter see Ansell-Pearson 2002). The problem that exponents of the real/possible dyad face always face, is exactly how the real is realised. As Deleuze says:
‘ what difference can there be between the existent and the non-existencet if the non-existenct is always possible, already ready to be included in the concept and having all the characteristics that the concept confers upon it as possible? Existance is the same, as but outside the concept. Existence is therefore supposed to occur in space and time, but these are understood a indifferent mileux instead of production of existence occurring in the characteristic space and time.’
That is if Kant is right (Critique of Pure Reason 1929 B 628), and ‘is’ adds nothing to a concept - then that concept can only be realised by other concepts, and they by others and so on (Spinoza 1985 part 1 prop 28). While this might be an adequate explanation for things that are not self movers - the very point of Dawkins’ theory is that Gene, though replication (and interaction) cause themselves (or at least cause subsequent generation of thsemselves); while Aristotle’s form is likewise the actual cause of its shape ( Physics 194 b26). So that Dawkins has difficulty in accounting for the nature of this ‘is’. If he continues to follow Kant, and seperarte his ‘is’ , that is replicators’, from ‘interactors’, then the is becomes utterly irrelvant. If he attempts to intergrate the ‘is’ with the the interactors, then he produces something far too certain: Genes become definte ‘beads-on-string’, each with their own absolute, alienable function. It is only if the ‘is’, is actually understood as part of the process through which things are made, is it possible to move beyond this problem., and beyond the real/possib;e to the virtuual/actual. Actualising, is not a matter of a simple realisation of a possible (that was always there), but an act of actual creation - of genuinely actual-ising, and existend only as virtual. The ‘actual terms never resemble the singularities they incarante’ (Deleuze 1994a p.212),rather any more than the differcial point on a curve actually resemble that curve. Singualirites rather are what opens up, by implells, what differenets, and what thereby creates. Deleuze would therefore agree (to a certain exten at least) with Goodwin (Goodwin 1995, see also Dure 2002), genes are about the first moves, the intial impulsion of the system. Impulsion without which the system would not be what it is - and yet to which as no point, and no level the system can be reduced. It cannot simply Be the Gene, any more tha realitiy can just Be the form, and that is that. To adequately thinkof what a gene is, is to understand it not as a order (or even a line in a recipee book), but as part of a process of differication, of opening up, and of creation.
The Form of Cause.
In the last chapter (17) of book zeta of Metaphysics, Aristolte stars from totally afresh is his discussino of what a susbstance is. ‘A Substance is a princile and kind of cause’ (1041a). Real inquireis are, Aristotle suggests, causal enquiries. Such enquiries might produce the answer that things are as they are because their essence makes them so. One might, ask for instance ‘why are these things houses?’. The answer Aristotle suggests ‘it is beacsue ‘whay it is to be a house in present in them’ (1041b). This shows, Aristole claims, that the object of the enquiry is ‘ that by virtue of which is in the state that it is in. And this cause is form, and form substance’. Formal causes are therefore confrim as essence, He backs this arguement but with a second one. Flesh, for example, he says is directly composed of fire and earth, but rather of these two things belned togther to create a new thing. Thing blending he suggests is ‘the substance of the thing, and the primary cause of being for it’ (Metaphysics 1041b). Aristolte clearly things that thig being must be thought of it terms of formal cause. Which corresponds to the ‘nature’ of each thing. And yet there must be a tension between this second exaple and the first. As what actually belnds fire and earth togther in logical distinct from the evenutal form that they take. Flesh, the material is capabple of taking many different forms (and Aristolte often uses ths fact) - raising the question as to exactly what form is imposing itself on fire and earth? One could perhaps follow Leibniz (Leibniz ) and suggest some intermediate ‘cause’ of flesh, wheich somethow expresses the union of fire and earth, and which get expressed in turn by bodies. But to do that woul be to effectively view Aristolte from post Cartesian perspectives (see Sorabji in Barnes, Sorabji et al 1979). And it is very clear that this is not what Aristotle means. He clearly actually means that flesh is causesd as flesh as it is formed in the form that flesh takes. This raises a question about the nature of form itself. In what sense should a ‘from’ which is capbple of creatuing that which forms it be understood. Can it be just a formal cause - that is the reality of the thing-as-shape. Or is another cause, a cause that ce
creates form as it unites ire and earth, have to be envisaged. And if this is so, what is the relationship between ths cause, and the form and material that create the composite body? Finally how can this cause be udnerstood in terms of both identieis, and genes, the modern version of Aristotle’s theory.
Aristotle directly addresses these qustion in De anima . Here he suggest that the soul is the formal, efficent and teleogical cause of the living body.: ‘for it is the cause as that from which the movement itself airses, and that for whose sake of it it, and a the formal substance of the ensouled bodies’ (415b). The soul is at once that the form of life itself, the reason why a body acts the way it does (the sake for which it acts), and finally he cause of all motions within the body. The body being then the living bodies material cause. The body ‘potenial has life’, the soul is the ‘actuality of such a body’ (412a). Such an asymmetry of causes raises the immediate problem of exactly how how should understand this potentiallity of the body for life. Firstly on the level of fotms, and how one understand the relationship fporm and matter.There is clearly some sort of difference between the poteniality of bronze to be a statue, and a body to be alive.Bronze, as matter, must contain the abilty to be formed into a statue. As Bronze it must must apriori contain the potneital to make a statue of the certain size. But there is one reason why it has to be statue (that is have a certain form) to be bronze: Any of its potential forms will do. And if it were the case that bronze, the matter was somehow identicalk to the potneital forms it could take, Aristolte suggests that its nature would be that of change (Physics 201 a27-3) . This is latter case, while not relevnt for bronze, clearly is for bodies. A body without a soul shares only the name of body wihout a soul. Aristolote claims that the none is as different from the other as an eye is from a painted eye (412b). To be the matter of a living thing, involves that living thing necessarily existing; A body without a soul is merely a corpse, and no body at all. To have a soul, is to be able to construct flesh from constitutent parts (contain in food), in a certain way. The most basic princple of ‘having a soul’, is nutritaion. The most basic soul, involves the ability (of both plants and animals) to build an maintain a body. St. Aquinas is right therefroe to claim, that for Aristole, a thing is living, when it contians within itself its own cause existence (Aquinas Commetaries). What it is to think about the matter of the body is quite different from what it is to think biut the matter of bronze. The latter exists indenependantly of any form. The former is defined by one form only (the soul). Such potntialities as it contains will therefore not be its properties, independant of forms, but rather will be given to it, through the context that that which form it is.
Secondly there is the issue of change, and how it relates to efficent causes. If, it is true that if a things forms is the same as its matter, then to be that thing is to change, how does one understand that change? Change in itself, is described by Aristotle as an elusive concept (Physics 201b). Itis clear enough how to think it, as long as one sticks to material, formal and teleological causes. The real problem will come on how one understands effiecent causes. It is easy enough to see that in any change thre is an enduring substance (matter - for example bicks; there is what changes (form - from shapelessness, to a house); that the is the reason for which it is changed (the purpose - the aim of building a house). But how does one actually understand the actuality process of change itself? Can it have an actuality, or is it, as Aristotle claims his precessors thought, merely an incompltete actuality (and therefore defined in terms of privation (Physics 201 b16-202a).If (as Aristolte wants to argue) this is not the case, what sought of reality can change have. He defines change as being ‘ is the actuality of that which exists potentially, in so far as it is potentially this actuality’ (Physics 201a9). He then goes on to suggest various examples of such acutalities. ‘The actualisation of the potential for alteration, is actual aleration’. Or’the actuality of a something that is constructable is when it is being constructed’ (Physics 201 a9-a19).
Behind these apparently tautological examples (Barnes ) is a profund poiut about the nature of change.Firslty, a thing only changes it it is caapable of having the ‘same proterty both potntially and actually, but not at the same time’ (201 a 19). Change will involve the transfer from the potntial to the actual. If something is in a state of constant change, it must already by changing both back into a potential again, and at the same time, be actualising another thing. Aristole will emphasize therefore, that anything that changes will in the same moement that it changes another will be changed ( 201 a24, 202 a3,). He will go so far as to claim that ‘the actuality of what is capable of causing a change, and what is capabple of being change are the same’, as a change is only exists in terms of what it in turn changes (Aristolte says, that ‘the agents capacity for causing a change that it has the potenail for acusing a change, and thanks to its actual activity that is causes a change, but what is actualized is something capbple of being changed (2101 a 13-21). Effectively change is immanent in changer, and changed. It causes something to exist, in the same sense as it itself exists. Something that changes is something that is ‘simulataneously capable of being acting, and being acted upon’ (210 a 19). Aristole is distinguishing two sets of potentialites and actualities within change. On the one hand there are those potentialities/actualties which relate to to the things that is chaging (matter and the forms it takes): matter is constant: Form is constanly changing from one thing to another. Secondly there is change itself, whgich has its own actualitiy (the abilty to change), and its own potentialily ( that such a change could happen). To understand change not as a lack of thing (merely failure/privation) is to understand the latter type of actuality ( that which is real through changing and being changed), and not confuse this reality with the second.
It is worth brefly comparing this treatment of change with Aristole’s treatement of time ( see Derrida 1982). The main poblem with time is that we do precisely that. we confuse the actuality of thing, with the actuality of change when we wonder whether time exists at all (217 b 32 ). The four ‘paradoxes’ of time (214 b 32 - 215 a 30), involve a similar confusion . They revolve around the fact that If time is to seen to be a thing (and not a change) then it becomes impossible to udnerstand how it could have parts that were real (and not always in the future or the past); Or even what those parts were (for the now cannot in itself be a part of time). Or even how time passes at all, and one thing (one now) would have to pass before the next thing )(the now) came - and thing change cannot occur either in the thing that exist nor in the thing to come; That is, if time was like things that were, then all change would be impossible, as things must exist and not exist at different times (a thing cannot change as it changes). Nor finally if time as to be thought of like a thing, would it be possible to understnqad at what time that thing (the now) existed. If time is genuinely continual, and successive, then even the smallest unit of time would have to have time within it, or all times would be simulataneoius.
Time cannot be about things at all therefore, is must be merwely an aspect of change (219 a 9). But the question then arises ‘exactly what aspect?’. Time will be what will allow us to move between actuallity understood in terms of things, and the actuality of change. It is that which allows us to apply number to change (219 b 2 ), by allowing us to think of it as if it were a ‘thing’ - whose reality was defined in terms of th before and after. This arguement has several stages. Firstly Aristolte securely fastenes change within magnitude (and therefore matter). a move which securs him against the more corrasive elements of his thesis (see below). He then change will follow magintude, and time will follow change. Secondly, Aristoltewill seperate what it is to change, from what it is that undergoes that change. ‘In the province of change, what is before, and after is change...but what is to be before and after is different is different from what it is to be a change’ (219 a 21, my italics). So thirdly, by thinking time, one seperates out the before and after of change, and understands it in terms of beings ; That is from the perspective of things, some will have a different being before and atfer a change. Time, that is the measure of before and the after,, is therefore change, understood not as change, but in terms of things which in themselves are, or are not (Derrida 1982). Time is what allows us to understand change as if it were a thing (which is known through the before and after). But Aristolte is perfectly aware that this in turn might be said to apply that time was just a mental construct (223 a 21 -29). The ‘now’, which both is, and is not part of time, is the extension of ‘thing’ thought into change. The now, or at least the conception of it in book four, is the ultimate consequence of applying though about things, to change. If one starts with things, then one does actually see change, only its consequence (the now both divides and unifies time, 220 a 4). In book six, Aristolte returns to the issue on the now, and tries to sort out which aspects of change can be thought of in terms of thingdo, and which can not. For example, he will suggest, there will be a first moment a change stops, but the cannot be a first moment in which it began (as that can only be thought of in terms of change235 b 6 -2323 a 26)# .
One of the function of this time within Aristlte’s arguement, will be as one of the ways he can limit change, for if change was not is some way contiained is potentially very corrosive to both formal and teleogical causes. If everything was change (as Aristolte though Heraclitus argued), then formal causes would loose their potency. A formal cause (a shape), could never be fixed as a thing at all. And likewsie, one would not be able to tell apart teaching from learning (or even going in one direction from another - Physics 202 a 13- 202 b30)# (See Widder 2002 p.62-72) . Aristole has therefore to contain change. He has three basic stragedies to do this, with time consting of the third. Firstly he can emphaisze that change is contained within matter ( Aristolte makes the equation between matter and effienct causation explict in Physics ). And does because this it how it response. Change is therefore the ‘actuality of that which is potential when that which is potential is actually active not as itself but as something that is capable of being changed’ (Physics 201 a 27), and ‘change is the actuality of the changeble qua changeble (Physuics 202 a 7). Finally change can only occur when two bodies touch (somethign that necessarily confines it to matter alone- physics 202 a 3 -a 13). Change is merely somethign matter can does. Secondly that matter only itself changes in response to a telogical cause, which is seeking to create a new form from it. Changes occur becauses stautes are made and houses built (hence the importance he asings to the example of the house - in Physics 201b5-16, an example that is claimed will show us exactly what change is). Likewise after demonstratijhg that change and changed involve the same reality (and therefore the road from Athens to Thebes in th same as the road from thebes to Athens 202 a13-21) Aristole immedaitely feels the need to qualify, and limit how this arguement is understood. while it might be the case that change and changed are the same, with regards to effective causation, this does not mean they are actually the same with regard to teleogical causes. the road from Athens to Thebes might be the same as the raod from Thebes to Athens, but that does not mean to travel along that road in one direction is the same as to travel along it along another. The seperation from ‘here to there is not one and the same as from there to here’ (physics 202 b 18 ). The rights of telogical causes are therefore asserted.’There is a differnce between acting on another, and acting by another’ (202 b 22 ). A teacher, to teaches an arguement knowing where that arguement will end up, and fo a purpose, is, as an agent, distinct from the pupil who merely learns it.
Time functions as a final stop gap, in the capturing of change. aristolte wants to claim (as i mentioned above) that change follows maginitude, and time follows change. The before or after of time follow on from the before and after of magnitude and place; indeed time can only be said to be continual because space it. ( 219 a 10 - 220. however this arguement is simply not convincing. On the one hand as part of his arguement (a 1, and see above) he says that change does not really have before and after - and so it cannot be restricted, in itself, as change, by them. That it creates them is accidental to it. Secondly part of the point of his analysis of change (as that which changes and is changes at the same time) so to shopw how continual quanities could exist. He cannot then claim that change in itself is limited but these quanities! But this is not all. even if it could be argued that he can maintain his limitation of change through time, with respect to simple, objects, it is very clear that this limit cannot be made to hold when those objects are no longer simple things-in-soace, but concern the soul, which united formal, effective, and teleogical causes.
Firstly, as I argued above, the body cannot operate as a substrate independant of form and change. What matters about the soul is that it contains within itself its own principle of motion and rest (412b). If the body was seperated from that principle (say at a momement, whith would deny change) it would merely be a corspe. The soul is therefore the actuality of some body, the body is not the actualiy of some soul (414a). it is not the body that makes the soul real at any (or all) momements; it is rather the soul that makes actualy the body, across different moements. The physical substrate that is the body, is not that which can endure, but that which can change in a certain way# , and which if not constantly changed (fed) will cease to be (415b, and see434 a - 43 4 b). The ensouled bidy livws in a different order of time to things. While things just are, and can think of time as change understood in terms of what just is. The body, at no point just is, and can only think of time in terms of change.
Aristlotle attemts to contain this change by argung tha the soul includes at each and every moment all possible wyas a thing can live. The soul, he says is like knowlegde it remains within us, whether wewe are thinking about it or not; To sleep is like to not thing, to wake, is like to be thinking(412a). The soul is thereby expand to ibn its form (and this discussion is about the form of the soul) contains in its acutality, what Aristolte might at other times described in terms of potentiality. And Aristolte thereby implies, at least o some level a conscious- subconscious division. But (as with Freud), the question immediately then becomes what exactly is contained in the actual non-actualised soul? Aristole attempts to answer this prolem with respect to pereception. Perception he suggests is clearly a kind of alteration (416b); and as such iy contains both an actusal element (when one perceives, and a potential. Aristolte likens the potntail to a conbustible thing, without which a fire would not burn (417a). He then asks how should one understand this potntial? is it like learning (or the creation of a new creature, or is it more like konwing grammer, an then applying, in given circumstance that knowledge ( 417 a -417 b and 418 a). Aristlte at first aceepts that any change will b an act of destuction, but then immediately that it is an act of preservation, and that does not really inlve a change in what perceieves at all, anymore than cometplation changes knowledge. It cannot be right therefore to claim that understanding involves a change in state, anymore than a builder changes when he builds( 417b).But this answer is unconvincing. Its aim is to contain moivement, and to show that movement, even the movement of perception, is somehow already cotnain within the form (if not the matter) of the soul. But such a conclusion simply does not follow on from his intial assumptions. If perception (and memory 428b), are as Arsotlte intially describes them, as alteration with ignites / changes a potential. Then that potential is clearly different in kind from that which moves/ destrys it (Aristole explictly accepts this in 417 a). But such a defintion of perception is too radical (as it gives too much power to change), so Aristotle immediately needs to qualify it, a presents a totally different version of what movement is involved. It is not after all like the movement of an igniting fire, merely like the movement of a liberian around a liberary, finding the correct ingredients which are then cobbled togther to make a perception. Change is thereby utterly contained. Not only does this second arguement simply not follow from the first, but it is in itself problamatic. As it is clear that the kind of change involved in perception is different from the kin of change involved in using arithamtic/grammar, or making buildings. Aristolte makes a point. in the metaphysics of stressing the difference between those things that are made up of their parts (he gives the example of letters, but the same is true of grammar and numbers), and those things whose parts can only be understood in terms of the whole (for example the semi-circle -1035 a and b). So if all perceptio was really like the application of words (or the action of a builder building brick by brick), then there would be an absolute limit to its divisiblity, which of course Arsistlte denies. The problem the problem Aristolte is facing is not just ‘how does change happen’ - but ‘how does change happen in such a way that there are no least parts to it’.Only f the contituents parts of knowledge were infintely small (and effectively differentials, Deleuze 1994, Widder 2002), could Aristotle contain change in this way. His attempt to expand the soul (and perception) operate (in the absence of matter) as a break on all possible change fails. Either Aristolte has to accept that continual change cannot be contained, of that to contain on needs to talk about infintely small parts (that are not really parts any longer). Either way, Aristolte’s methodly will fail.
All Arsitltoe could define apriori, in th conditions of possible perception. But such conditions (in the context of de Amina), are not philosophical, but physoligoical ones: He does not define the ancitpations of perception (as Kant does - Kant 1929), so much as the set of possible ways in which the materials that make the body (not the body) can interact, and remain intact (with the same organs on the same place). But this set of possible perceptions does not constitute a true potential of possible perceptions, merey a set of physical contraints upon perceptions themselves.What defines the actual form of a lving body (that is the movements thatconsitute that body) remain quite undefined by this set of conditions - conditions which it will share with a corspe#.
His own defintion of change effectively undermines Aristolte’s project in ‘De Anima’. He cannot establish a simple identity of the soul, because that the change on which he needs to base the soul, precludes that simple identity existing . The parrallel with genetics is clear. If a gene is about change, then it cannot be an identity (cannot be directly for a thing). It is not about change, then it is, like a now impassive (the now, the identity happend after a change has occured, not during/before Physics 236 a 7 ), and therefore impotent. The same basic dualism is found in Aristotle’s discussion of teleology in De anima. On the one hand the principle of the soul appears quite simple. The Soul is that for the sake of which the body acts the way it does. It is both the bodies purpose, and the thing for which it as it it is ( De amina 415b). The Soul being defined by a function, and function by an end. So the is an eye had a soul, that soul would be it actually abilty to see, which is the purpose of the eye (412b). But there is a significant differce between the teleogy of the soul, and that of other things. iIn other teleologies. in most case that causes a the final cause is disint from that which it causes. A Builder build a house, a sculpture makes a staute, a doctor treat a patient so that they will be healthy (Physics 194 a3-26).
However in a soul telelogical and effective causes are united, and therefore this model is not open. Aristolte attempts to solve this problem in the first chapter of De Amina by asserting that the soul is the form of life - but this form is then revealed to be merely a function (412 a and b), and secondly that the soul contains all possible ways it could live (but that as argued above merely leads to another problem). This failure to adquately will effectively rob Aristotle of one of his favoured moves to justify the supremacy of telelogy, and form over matter and efficent causes. If there is no clear form, then any teleogy will have to be grounded on efficent causes - which will change our understanding of in what that teleology consitsts. This becomes immediately clar in chapter two, of De Anima. Chapter two starts again, and suggests that for a thing to be alive it must have at least be able to nourish itself (all animals can do more than thing -413a-b). The principle of nourishement is the ‘faculty that preserves that which has it of the kind that it is’ (416b). However, as life cannot be defined strictly as having a form only a set of processess which move according to efficent causation, the entire idea of the ‘kind that it is’ is problamatic, as it raises the problem of exactly what kind it is. If live is defined only by function (as chapter two argues), then either teleogy is merely describing what is already there - defing as it were a fubction that already exists.In which case if is easy to define, yet trival. For the body, which the aim is keeping already exists as that which mainats itself (this was after all its defintion in chapter two). The teleogy is merely describing what is already there. Or Teleogy is genuinely causative, but then its cause has to start operating before the ‘function’ existed and in someway remain disitinct from it.
Teleology (without form) cannot provide unity, unless that unity is already there. That is, unless efficent causes already produce a function - sight - then the aim, seeing cannot exist. Likewise unless the geneome is already, i some sense unified within itself, and the body, then individual genes cannot be said to be the cause of anything. The problemstaring here at the end, are fourfoldm either an explanation could kjust invent a homunulous - a faculty to explain the identity, or the explination collapses into an absolute (and fictional) infinity of possible cause, o one creates an arbitray stoppong point, a this is what must for a thing or finally one lets the identity dissolve into mystery# . In corder to aviod the second option (and also the final one), Aristolte will invoke the first and third. One the one hand the faculty of perception in the soul somehow, in itself contains all possible changes. All that needs to happen is these possible changes are somehow invoked. Idneities are thereby saved because something (a homunculi cotains all possible ones). On the other hand, the function is what the soul is - it is the simple what it is to be a thing, and can be treated as if it were a form (and ultiamtely an end). But, as I have attempted to show niether of their strategy is particualry effective.
The genteitcs of Dawkins, in its questino to find answers - genes for endswill adopt (and adapt) both of these strategies. The very opening assumpotion of the arguement is that genes are faculties . Once one says -there is a genetic element - then it can be left at that. Merely saying this creates the idenity for the thing.It has to be contained within the genes. But Aristolote clearly (although somewhat willing) shows that change simply does not work like that. It is wrong to start from the premise that change is merely like things (if one does one will merely understand things as nows). Change - and living things can only be defined from change for both Aristolte and Dawkins), demands a very different kind of thinking. It is again axiomatic within genetics that the function defnies (at least the effect) of the thing. A Gene is known through its function. But again Aristolte shows that function (effective causation) cannot be that simple. One cannot simply infer from function an end (as this assumes to much about functions (that they are identities). Genetic changes may change functions, but that tells one nothing actual about the nature of the gene, or the functions .
This problem is not at all solved by Dawkin’s insistences (Dawkins 1982 - see also Cronoin 1991, and Sterenly and Kiychner in Hull 1998)), that he merely implies identity in a pragamatic way. That he says a Gene is for a thing, no because that gene directly auses it, but because if that gene mutates, then the thing it is for will change. Idneity is not an absolute, but merely a ay of describing the effects of one genetic mutation . However, athis entire methodlogy merely re-invents, at a lightly ifferent level strict identies. Firstly on the level of function (a set of traits, physical or behvioural) is see as being the product of a certain genetic shift (and therefore seen as a unity, a soul). Secondly genetic shifts are seen as ‘being’ something that causes. Both of which reamin firmly withn the Aristoltian perspective. All in fact Dawkins’ pragamatism can achieve is to reveal the disjucntion between on the one hand two sets of telelogical causes (functions and genes-as-things), and secondly, and far more importantly between things and the changs that create those things. To create a teleological langauge based on effects of genetic shifts (a language of the for), is not to describe genes (and the way they operate) at all. One shift in one gene, in the context of the genome might have one effect (and be for something)m but a subsequent shift oin the same genome might have quite a different effect (and be for something else). The ‘for’, the end has nothing directly to do with the gene, and not abilty to help one to understand exactly what it is The langauge of Dawkins is synomous with the lanagauge of the now. It is an attempt to move back from the world of things (with its myriad of genetic influences) to the first moment these things were created (and thereby bypass the world of change). A thing is, ultimately seen as composing of an infintiy of smaller ‘things’ - whose status is both absolute (gene have to be the sight of evolution, and genetic change), and yet problamatic (there is no fixed length of DNA, only singles nucleotide basis are ‘’immortal’)# . It effectively sets up a lanagauge that is at distinct from what it is describing as the now is from the change. A language of ends - of differences only understood in terms of ends (and therefore only understood in terms of everything else that already exists), and not one that can addess the world of change (that is actually what a gene is doing as it constructs RNA and protiens).
Dawkins’ , unlike Aristlte appears not aware of the ambiguity of the word ‘for’ (or in Aristoltes’s case ‘for the sake of’). ‘For’ means both the purpose for a thing; And the for whose sake it exists’. The purpose of the eye is sight, and sight is that for which the eye exists as it does. On one level this distinction could be seen as trival. The puopse is defined by the thing, the thing known through the purpose. But then all pretenese at actually understanding how a thing works, and what it is doing when it works is abandonned. All causes in the body would be telelogical ( almost Augustinian#). Once one had found the gene then everything that needed to be known of the thing would be known. But, no one, certainly not Dawkins’ except such a simplisitic model (Dawkins 1976, 1982,see also Cronin 1991, and Sterenely and Kitchner in Hull 1998). If ‘purpose; is going to mean anyhting more than vaccous unbity with eventual function, then one is dealking with blind micro-purpose: With all the slight slight, and changes through which evolution works (see Dawkins 1997). These ‘purposes’ are distinct for there eventual ends (the sake of which in the present). And can only be united with them at the cost of losing sight of what they are, and how they function. Effectively one simply cannot move from an evolution based on ,mcro-purpose, and endless tiny shifts, to a description based on macro-purpose, and genes for the sake of which (any more than Aristolte can move between efficent causes, where the purpose is defined, and final end).
In the context of genes such a move involves two unsupportable assumptions. Firstly, there are those that arise from mutations in the current genetic structure. if a gene mutautes, and produces dyslexia, then Dawins labels that gene as someeone ‘for’ reading (Stereleny and Kitchnner in Hull 1998). Or is a gene causes Bad teeth, which lead to altruistic behaviour, then that gene could be said to be ‘for’ altruism (Cronin 1991). But to malke this move is to reduce the micro-purposes of the gene to ;that for whose sake’ they operate. And yet this cannopt be right for two reasons. On the one hand random mutation is a gene, indicate noting about how that gene evolved and nothing about how it operates. It merely foisters upon the gene an eventual goal. On the other hand, there one cannot simply move from a gene for a negatiuve (dysleixa) to a gene for he postive (Reading). All that one proves is that somehow the gene that goes wrong is bound up to reading,; and is such that its malfunction would lead to a failure to read. But, to move from that to a gene for reading is to confuse micro and macro purooses. Dawkins therefore (in a very Aristltian way) needs to invent a middle-lagnauge. His causes are someghow inbetween micro and macra causes (as his gene is somwehere between the geneomne and the nucleotide base). But as with Aristolte, this ‘middle cause, this for that is both macro and micro, cause is unsupportable, and devolves either into vapid assertion of the right s of the soul (and macro cause), or is lost within the maze of micro-causes.
Secondly, as I examine above, Dawkins and his followers frequently urge that gene are understood as difference makers, rather than as agents. Cronin says, (Cronin 1991 page 60) likens genes to the differences that make up a recipe. Each word (each difference) does not have meaning - meaning comes only when the entire recipe is combined#. But if this is so, (as I discussed in the previous chapter# ) then genes can be no more for a thing, than words (or more probalby phonemes) are. And dawkins is simply guilty of confusing structural with hermeneutic reading of genetics. If genes are to be significant it must be that the micro purpose- the blind ‘for’, and directly operates on matter (as an efficent cause) somheow add more to the creation of the thing than a phoneme does. But the neo-Aristotlaian Dawkibns has no tools to grasp exactly what that thing might be.
But in De anima Aristolte hints, at least, at a totally different way to understand telelogy (417b). One that might, keep Aristotle’s insitance that telological causes come before essential, and of formed through them. The aim of the soul, Aristole says, might be to generate something ‘like itself’. but it does this as a hand steers a boat. It is a purpose that is moving as well as moved. That is one that acts, at the same moement as it is acted upon. If on pursues this boat anaolgy a little further, one might say that as it is vital that the hands motion is opposite to the tiller, and is in a plane at right angles to the motion of the boat, so the point about teleology is that it is disticnt from that which it moves. it is not so much a purpose that infuses each and every part of a present, as a sudden pull towards an unkown (which become known through its habitation). An end is like Leibniz’s smallest appetities thqat move one on from smallest perception to smallest perection withiut ever being realised (or even directly felt - Leibniz 1989). It is what breaks into the present, disrupt it, and forces it to form anew (Deleuze et all, Foucault et all). It hemselves they are therefore blind, and disitnct from any essential cause. essenctial causes can expand to meet the change of the telogical and can (in the now) give it sight only in terms of that explanation. But this is not of course to directly see the nature of this change - merely to account for the effect that change had upon it. A gene if not therefore an ideneity - not for a thing, strictly speaking not about a thing at all. It is rather an intensity (Delkeuze 1994) an implusion to change, seperate from tthe change itsdelf. I will return to this arguement in the next chapter.
Section three: The General in the Particuliar,; Genes and Idea.
The third and final way to think of genes an identity, refers the methodology of the previous method. rather than attemptomng to define genes as the middle between two extreme, perhjaps genes are a way of describing extremes themselves, and excluding the middle all together. But in this case the middke s any individual organism, or set of circumstances, while the extremes are genes on the one side, and over all statisical effects on the otherside. Natural selection, the arguement runs (see Sterelny and Kitcher in Hull 1998, and Sterelny and Griffith section 4.2) is concerned not with exceptional individuals, or exceptionl gene combinations, but rather how over many generations, and many genetic cominations. Survival of genes will depended not on any one combination (where they might be disasterous, or benifecal) but how they effect chances of survival throughout a population, and across all effects of the gene. All that matters for a gene to survive is that, on average, it leads to an increased chance for copies of itself to be handed down to the next generation. No matter what is acual effect is in any one individual.
This methodology will allow Dawkins and his followers to explain both the presence of certain genetic disorders, and secondly ‘atruism’. Dawkins speculates (Dawkins 1987) that many gentic diseases in the present are the result of genetic mutation in previous epochs that, is recessive form, conveyed som ort of advantage to hunter-gatherer people. While Sterelny and Kitchner discuss a modern less specualtive example the case of sickle cell anemia in Africian populations. A gene than in homozygitic form will produce sickle cell anemia, will in hetrozygotic form will give a greater resitance to malaria. The numbers of the anemia ‘causing’ gene relative to normal gene will be subject to a very delicate balance. Too many of them will increase the chancwe of sickle cell anemia (and therefore of those genes not passing themselves on) too few will increase the chance of maliara (and the exitinct of the ‘normal’ type of genes). With in end a dynamic equibrium being reached between these risks. While altriusm is explained by Hamilton and other (Hamilton see also Cronin 1991 and Dawkins 1982) in terms of the over all chances of a certain set of genes surviving. If killijng oneself increases the chance that ones clone# , then it makes sense genetically at least to do so. Therefore is makes perfect genetic sense for a honey bee to kill itself in protecting the hive (whichj is full of its sisters). Atrusim in the animal world, might be the disinterested sacrifce of the individual. But at the same time, it is prevelent when the net gentic effect of the sacrfice is to increase the total number of genes of the the sacrificee.
This methodolgy completely displaces the individual from evolution. Not only is evolution not about individuals. Genes do not evolve to increase the chance of individual existence; but over all genetic existence. The aim is not adaption in any one body, but the net effect of adaptions across all bodies. Genes are therefore in themselves inscribed ‘mean’ adaptions, within a particuliar set adaption: It is, perhaps uniquely a general that in enclosed within (and only realised through) a particuliar. However three different qualification have to be made about this view point. Firstly, although no doubt it exands the apllicablity of Darwian evolution, it can only do, if at some level the genetic supports it. That is there is some underlying molecular unity to any gentic effect. And this, as I have disussed in the two previous sections is highly problamatic. And therefore nothing more will be said on this issue. Secondly if the forces that create the gene operate in the context of what in general aids survial across all different genomes, then not only is the phenotype created by the genotype ( and therefore for Dawkins ‘belongs’ to it), but also the genes in particualr exist (or not) in the light of their generalised effect (that is their effect in many different genomes). The enitire process is therefore driven by something, averages, that is by defintion external to the entire process, and to which (in the Dawkin sense of the word) we must all belong. And this by itself is enough to challenge how one concieves of genes effecting us as individuals. Thirdly it is by no means clear that the kind of ‘generalised-truth, enclosed within the particular’ is logically consistent.
. I will deal with these second two points in turn.
To argue, as Sterenly does, that it is the generalised gene that evolves, and that it is these generalised genes that control all of the chemistry of life, is divide three different levels in our understanding of life. The first level, there exists the averaged out generalities themselves. This is where selection ‘acts’, as the averager out of net gains and loses of particular types. What survives being always that which scores average score across different possiblities. The second level is that of genes in themselvees. These are what mutate, and reproduce, and provide the first level with the inputs to reckon up. The third and final level is that of the phenotype, which simply follows the programme given it in the genotype, with some (though insignificant) variation. At one level, one might take very seriously Dawkins’ (and Dennet’s) suggestion that all bodies are merely parts of a gigantic algorythm, hich reckons up the survial chances of each and every gentic type (Dawkins 1997, Dennet 1995). But if one accepts this arguement, then one faced with the immediately problem about how we as individuals should understand ourselves as a part of this ‘algorythm’# . If genes no longer adapt for one body, but always for the species in general (and given it is they that call the tune in any one body) then, a body (insofar as it is an expression of a gene) will cease, in any meaningful sense to be a unity. The genome will of course be particualr. But the effects of each of its genes will not be spefic to the genome. Therefore the bodies that are caused by the genes will contain not only other poential bodies (that is othe recessive genes) but also features that are more appropriate and more developed developed in other genomes. A body will not just be ‘what it is’, but will have within it somethings that it should not be, somethings that it is not fully, somethings that exist is trace form, and somethings it merely potentially is. A body is an union in one present, of many different presents, many potential times.
A body therefore ceases to be a thing in its own right. It becomes merely an affect of another thing (Genes), and that thing is in turn defined by its relation to all other things like it. In terms of Leibinz, it is no longer the case (as one might assume) the gene was the monad of the body.That is an indivisible substance that expresses most clearly one particuliar feature of the body (Leibniz 1989 p.213-225). Rather the gene is itself merely an expression (and therefore the body) of a bigger reality - genes-in-that-body-in-general. In realtion to this meta-genetic reality, our our body only exists as a rainbow exist as an affect of rain. It is exists only as an accident in another thing# .
However all of this assumes that these ‘powers’ and even the worlds in which these trhee levels exist are directly comparable. So that one can move from genes (as an idea produced within statutics) to genes (the concept of what makes one particuliar trait evolve) to the traits - as observed themselves. But, in fact these three levels represent no so much three three different ways of degrees of generality in understanding the same phenomena, as three very different ways of thinking. Genes, as they are understood by Dawkins or Sterenly are clearly a metaphysical idea ( Jensen and Harre 1981), in terms of Kant it is clearly an Ideas (muh as God, the world and the self) is an Idea. While genes the stretch of DNA which is associated with this or that physical change will involve two different species of concept : Namely gene, as DNA sequencen assoicated with one trait (gene in itself/ in in Hulls terinology the interactor (Hull) in Jensen and Harre 1981) and gene the replicator (which is the concept that the idea of genes uses ). And finally the traits themsevles are synomous with intutions (at least from the ‘genes’ persepctive), which can only be defined through the appropriate concept 9whether interactor or replicator).
This is perhaps most clearly seen when one considers the different sought of time the three ways to think genes exist in time. From the persepctive of the ideal-gene (or meta-gene), the time of genes, is some sort other ‘outer sense’# which gathers up all the different geens, and forces them to respond to each other. The ideal gene itself then thinks through the implication of this gatheing (that is ‘thinks through the totalities of conditions’ which are gathered Kant B 379) and creates ideas capabple of spanning it . So for the individal gene (from the ideal perspective) time is the field within which they encounter both different differences (be they different combination of the gene sequence, or different version of themsleves), and respond to different version of themselves . And it is through these interactions across time, that individual differences are ‘run through and held together ( Kant A99), that is species are formed. This occurs as different versions of the same gene are differiated over long periods of time with respect to there abilty to manufacture different version of themeselves, and how they then relate to these different versions (compete or aid them). The ‘ideal-gene’ is what reason creates to comprehend the effects of all these gatherings, across time. The Ideal-gene belonging not to one body (and having features that anyways appeal to other bodies, other times, other genes), and never being tied to any time, or any particular set of genes. It is rather what thinks the gene in terms of the totalitiy of its conidtions, and independantly of any one time.
Time (as I discussed above) exists in a very different way for the concept of the gene in itself (the interactor). Not only must the gene exist at a certain sapce and in a certain time, but also its affects are defined through firstly through its ability to be activated at a certain time, and then its ability to manipulate matter across time. It is at least as much the abilty to the same set of genes to operate at different times that defines the difference between species, as it is the difference in genes, which is ofen miniscule (Gould 1983). Time, for gene as interactor to at in. Finally for the traits themselves time is what they exoist within, and what they move across (whether they are seen as concept in heir own right, or only as concepts through their interaction with gene or ideal-genes). Time is, for them the sapce through which they exist#.
One simply cannot naively compare these different forms of existence, as Stirleny and Kitcher seek to do. Ideas, by their very nature will always appear the best of explanations. It is only they that can transcend all particulairs, and all generailties, and think the universal, and it is only them that allow one to actually think how a thing miught be a cause of itself, but this does not then mean that one can make the mistake of treating them as things in themselves (Kant B620-B631), inspite of the temptation to do so. Such a mistake is common not only in religion but in any pardigm that is too over enthusatic in its attemots to exaplain. I have breifly considered the examplke of Freud, but Durkhiem also surfices# . So confident was Durkihem in the existence of the social fact (which is meany way ressembles the gene, and even more them meme), that he thought he could use it to explain how the Kantian Apriori intuiton of Space and time originated from (Durkhiem 1915 p.439-447.) Space and time, he claims are social facts created through ritual. This may or may not be true of the idea of space (as seperate from the thing itself), but clearly cannot be true of the intution (for, according to Kant without the apriori category of space, one would not be able to percieve the ritual in the first place( Gelner 1989)). In his enthusam Durkhieme hoplessly confuses ideas with intuions, and attempts to directly reduce the latter to the former, insipite of the fact that to have the former at all, one already needs the latter.
The meta-gene, or the social fact cannot be treated as ‘things’ that can be directly applied to the world. An idea is not a thing in intution (a particuluar), not a concept (the general idea of a thing) but a universal (Kant B379, but see Deleuze 1994 p.171). An idea is no thing, it ‘has no corresponding object in given sense experience ( Kant B 383), but a regulatory principle ( Kant B672) . ‘The sysematic unity )(as mere idea) is however only a projected unity to be regarded not as a given in itself but as a problem only’ (Kant B675, my Italics). An idea is not a thing but a way to unifiy the concepts of understanding, and give them maxium unity. Without this abilty concepts would remain ‘entangled in its seperate and divided procedures, a prisoner of partial empirical enquiries in seperate and divided procedures’ (Deleuze 1994 p.168). It is idea that breaks this prison, that move concepts on, that inspire then to examine new things, to attempt to prove new hypothesis. To treat any idea as if actually existed is to be guilty of an error or reason, whether that error invovles the Self, the World, God, the Social Fact or the Meta-Gene# . That is it is to mistake a regualtary principle, a way of unifying concepts, away of thinking about the change in concepts for an actual thing it th world. Such a ‘truth’ is Kant says beguiling, it is in a sense necessary ,given that one must have ideas in order to impell concepts onward, but it remains an error nonetheless.
Idea wereof course widely rejected by the post-Kantains. Ideas, like so much the rest of Kantain philosophy were seen to rest on the spurious division between things-in-themselves, and sense. Hegel, for example, pointed out, that the thing-in-itself can influence perception in two ways. Either as a general principle, in which there must be something more than this thing in order to account for individual perception. Or it accounts for each specific individuation, but then is is inditisnguishible from the forces that create perception ( Hegel, Widder 2002). Or as Deleuze puts it Kant ‘ Held fast to the point of view of conditing without attaining gensis’ and therebe commits the mistake of empiricsm, namely ‘ to leave external what is seperated’. So that rather having ideas which are determinable ‘only through objects of expereince’, ideas must must ‘interioised’ the fracture between the transcednetal I, and time. An Interiorisation what is ‘neither identification, nor confusion within the idea, but rather an internal problamatic objectuve unity of the underdetermined, the determainable, and determination ( Deleuze 1994 p.170). Ideas (in Deleuze’s reading of Kant’) are quite literaly problamatic or promblamatisung. The Kantian I is fractured, the transcendental ‘ I am’, is split from time, the empirical perception of this existence. The latter can never give direct experience of the former, and but must assume the former so that time (and consciousness) can exist at all ( Kant - Parralogism of reason). An idea does not ‘ fill that which cannot be filled (the fracture)’, but ‘ contain(s) their dismembered momements’, and thereby allows one to grasp both the impossiblility of the unity of the transcedantal with the empircal, and yet at the same time how the empirical seems to imply the transcendental (and can only be throught through it).
Ideas, be they ideas of the nature of differentials or genes (or anything else for that matter) , always attempt to capture the paradoxical nature of changing: In what sense does a thing change as it changes? In what sense does it cease to be ‘an it’ as it changes, and becomes rather a differenital - a moment of in change itself. The ‘point’ of this meta-gene is that it (any more than species can) refer to an individal, it is not that sort of idea. Rather it is a differential, the way of differing, that moves beyond any one individual, and cannot be thought of interms of the simple existenat individual. Ideas need to be thought of at three levels (Ibid p.171). Firstly, the idea has to be grasped at the border on change itself, the border between what must change (time), and what cannot change (the self). A Boder than occurs below any actual conecept ( dx and dy are not numbers).He likens the idea to Dekind’s cut, which defines the continuinity of the number line (quanity) in terms of what must happen when one cuts the line. The line is continual because two series can be constructed, one above, one below, which have there limit as the cut itself (Dedekind ). The idea is therefore something that exists between (in the fracture) the ever moving (time, or a continual series ), and something which does not move (the transcendental self, the limit - the Kantian unconditioned), through which the former can have actual meaning (ibid 172). Secondly all ideas are determined in relation to each other. For example dy and dx exsit ‘only in realtion to each other. It is no longer necessary or even possible to indicate an independant variable’ (ibid 172). Or, in terms of a gene, the action of a gene is dependent upon other genes, and the micro-envirnoment in which the gene finds itself( ibid. 185m, but also Dawkins et al). One can no more seperate the individual parts of an idea than one can meanignfully seperate the elements dy/dx: ‘Elements’ within ideas must be ‘reciporically distnginguish from another’ (Spinoza, part 2 lemma 1, 1993)# .Thirdly ideas are ‘completely determined’. An idea must determine both its limits, and all possile parts of itself. For example, a differential function must determine where it exists, where it does not ( division by zero), and where it is infinite, as well as defining all possible gradients upon a curve ( Ibid p.175).
Ideas for Deleuze, as much as Kant, do not imply ‘ an abstract unversal beyond the individual’, as ‘its is singluarity itself which is pre-individual’ (ibid p.176). Ideas can more more be thought of in terms of things, as dx and dy can be confused with actual numbers. Likewise they will be distinct form the intense forces that create these individuals.These three can on more be confused than can dymanic creative forces, which exist as movement, can be confused either with the space (which corresponds to differenial relations to be actualised) or time ( the time of actualisation, from the ‘dyamnic foces that exist in space and time - ibid p.216-217) . But this does not of course mean that there is no interconnection between these parts of reality. It is to thi interconnection, the final part of this section, will now turn.
Deleuze, the Simple Body, the Individual, and Individuation.
Deleuze’ suggests a three fold division of differentiation, differenciation and individuation. Deleuze suggests that there are three condtions which allow one to define the moement ideas emerge (ibid p.183) ( moements that reflect the threefold divsion of ideads already oultined). Firstly the elements of an idea do not have any reality independant from that idea. They cannot even be said to be ‘actually existent’. This indtermination ‘renders possible the manifestation of difference freed from all subordination’ (ibid ). Secondly these elements must be exclusively reciporically determined - there can be one independantly determined variables. Finally The idea must be defined as a structure, or complex theme., that is ‘ a system of multiple, non-localisable connections between differential elements which is incarnated in real relations and actual terms’. Deleuze draws the parrallel (ibid p 213, see also Leibniz 1989 p.208, and 214, see also 1996 section 55) between ideas and Leibniz’s example of the mumour of the waves at the sea shore. This mumour is composed an an infinty of ‘minutest perceptions’ none of which can be known in themselves, and yet the entire sound, as ceasely moving idea(differntiails) can be thought of in the idea. These minutest perceptions are then condensed, through aperception, to form a new and quite different perfection (a differenciated one) capabple of saying oh this sound is such. Ideas are therefore ‘real (as the mmour of the sea is real) and yet not actual , differentiated without being differencuated, and complex without being entire’ (Deleuze 1994 p.214)
Ideas are essentially the same , for Deleuze at least, as Spinoza’s simplest bodies. Bodies which are ‘distinguished from one another (invicem)# , by means of motion and rest, speed and slowness and not by reason of substance’ (Spinoza 1985 part 2, lemma 1 (after prop 13). These simplest bodies do have have an essence ( Deleuze 1992 p.206) - or perhaps one should say they are merely part of the essence of the infinite immediate mode ( Spinoza 1992 Ep 64). They are ‘things’, but merely the means through which external differences (differentials) exist. They ‘have no existence of their own’ and yet existence is composed of them’ (Deleuze 1992 p.207): Any exisitng mode containg an infintely of different differences, all reciporically defining their identity one from another. Such relations being neither one of substance (things) or static. What differs for both Spinoza and Deleuze, is what is defined through constant change (movement), and not through the being of a simple object.
Simple bodies / ideas have reality, but it is a reality that is completely seperate from the kind of actuality individual things have. An idea does not exist as a potentiallity, or a possiblilty of a thing that does not yet exist ( Deleuze 1994 p.209). To argue this would be to confused simple bodies with individuals, and demand that they have essence. That is, it is to argue that genes must be understood in terms of a present that is, and a present that could of been. But to argue in this way is to hurry to find a solution to a problem that has not yet been properly defined, Genes are not so much about things that are ( and might possiblily be), as the paradox of how particualiry characteristics, that only make ‘sense’ within the ‘whole’ individual, can outlive any one individual, and exist within many different generaltions of differing individuals. The problem is then how can one thoink of something, that as it is an idea is never specific to any one creature, and yet as it actually exist must be specific (and can only operate in terms of that that specificity), althought that ‘speicifivty (the Genome) is only composed of no specific differences. A gene is what differentiated different bodies - differently. But the exat natiure of what is different, what is flowing, can be understood intherms of two very different ideas, whose combination creates a third idea . The first idea attempts to think what genes are in themselves As a simple body (or a minutest perception), is only defined through its interaction with other genes (only becomes a gene for a thing - Deleuze 1994 p. 185). A Gene as an ‘idea’, is not so much a set of instruction, or a recipe book, but the sound an individual wave, upon the Liebnizian beach: the body is flow of particles,and (in a way Liebniz did not quite intend) more like a river than an object. The Second , concentrates on the flows of matter which survies - an arbitrary length of DNA ( that is difference quantities of different differentials), which cascade down the genertaions; some dying out, other merging, yet other manufacturing different copies of themselves.
If gentics is composed of two different ideas - how are these ideas related. This questionexistis on two different levels: Firstly there is the question of whether either of these series can ever be said to in charges. And secondly the far wider question of how one might conceive the movement from one series to another. I have already dealt with this first question extensively (see pages above), and does, as will become obivous imply the second. .On the one hand It is clear, that to talk of a gene for a thing is misleading as misleadung at to define a function in the context of points.The ‘For’ is create not by the presents/absences of a gene, but the differential interaction of many genes.On the other, it is not gentic combinations that are reproduced, but individual genes (or even nucleotide bases). There is an effective dissoance between the different functions of a gene, with survives (in a subsequent creature) being by no means identical to made that gene part of a ‘better’ system of adaption. A dissoance that makes evoltuoipn an ‘internal necessity. This much is evident from Stirleny and Kitchner’s attempt to bridge thedivide in terms of averages# . If they are right then the surival of individual genes is a matter of averages: Those genes which on average (in most contexts) give the best chance of surival will be the ones that predominate. But as such genes will never be the ‘best’ for all genetic comibnations, there predominanace will almost certainly effect other genes, making them the new ‘best average’- and so on. Evolution beomes a necessity of a system where what is selected (combnations) is seperate from what survives (genes). The former always has to change because the latter can never adeqautely encode it. If Lamracks mistake was to make evolution impossible, by only making if for a thing (that already was - and thereby render difference impossible) (Dawkins 1982 Cronin 1992), Dawkins mistake was to base evolution on something that though capabl,e of differing, was not in itself a difference. Evolution is a process which exists in the gap between these two stragedies. Between a
their motions one to anonoter (invicem) in a certain fixed manner ‘ are are ‘thjereby united with one another (invicem) and they all together compose one body or individual is which distinguished from the others by this unity of bodies’ ( Spinoza 1985 part 2 def of individual, after prop 13, modified tpo make the ‘invicems’ consistent throughout). The function of ‘Invicem’ , therefore transoformed. It might be still the case that motion involves reciporicity - but wheras the reciporicity had been one of difference, it now becomes one of similarity. Individual bodies mange to create a new form of motion through their interactions: A motion that is not defined through one difference (in realtion to all the others)- but through the fact that all the differences (different motions) within it have through there interaction, created a new motion, a motion that is united in itself, and therefore in itself distinct from all other bodies.