Evolutionary myths

[aquaeri]

ozarque has had an interesting series of posts recently about linguistic gaps, ideas that can't be easily expressed in a given language. And cmeckhardt has followed up with an interesting discussion about how for example movies and other shared experiences fill gaps in language

Comments

[firecat]

I can relate to this. I love B5 but I was really disappointed once I found out what the Shadow/Vorlon conflict was actually based on. I didn't put my finger on it that it was because it conflicted with evolution, but I just felt like it was waaaaaaaay too simplistic.

[aquaeri]

It was simplistic, but there were bits of it I liked that I wanted to work: the whole "growing up and breaking free of parental supervision" idea could have been great.

But Lorien as the oldest living thing, perfect and immortal, that got up my nose something appalling. And I didn't feel the human/younger race victory was legitimate as long as Lorien, an even older species, was telling the Vorlons and Shadows what-for.

Also as a minor gripe, the Shadows were presented as pro-evolution, but it was a really bizarre, social-Darwinist distortion (and I'm not sure if people outside the field understand what an insult "social Darwinism" can be :-) ). The mere fact that the Shadows had to be rejected, as part of the sort-of-but-not-really, evolutionary progression, just proved that.

I'm really pleased I'm not the only person who liked B5 in general but had intense dislike for the resolution of the major plot arc.

[firecat]

I didn't think Lorien was supposed to have been portrayed as perfect, but maybe close enough that it doesn't matter.

And yes about the bizarre social Darwinism. And yes, some of us get that it's an insult. :-)

I was reading the B5 newsgroup when it was being broadcast for the first time, and you are far from the only person to have disliked the resolution of the major plot arc.

[ruth_lawrence]

Sociology and/or politics majors really should know what 'social Darwinism'. One could hope most educated anglophones would do so.

I react the way you describe (I suspect) when there are mistakes in Mendelian genetics, which is after all so easy that it's a litmus test really.

[aquaeri]

catching up - I'm fluent in Danish, and familiar enough with German and French, and I did enough Latin to be able to read Latin poetry and appreciate it more than either of the translations we were comparing it to. Couldn't do it now.

I've poked at Indonesian and Japanese, but not enough to really be relevant to my point.

In terms of evolutionary reading, I rather enjoyed "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" by Daniel Dennett, although he does get a few things wrong.

[apocalypse_of_g]

In its early days, the Theory of Relativity attracted some scorn from fundamentalists, so much so that the Nobel committee did not mention it when giving the award to Einstein. But I guess that one faded away a bit, lingers only in diatribes against "relativism," perhaps because it doesn't strike at the root of fundamentalist notions of the universe.

Me, I'm very surprised that Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind wasn't hammered by fundamentalists when it was first published. Have you read this one?

[aquaeri]

No, I'm not familiar with Jaynes. Another book to add to the reading list.

And I do have vague memories about relativity being on the fundamentalists' hit list way back when. But it seems to be evolution which is the really big evil.

[apocalypse_of_g]

Jaynes suggested that the sort of mental state present in the Iliad, certain portions of the Old Testament, and other examples of ancient mythology was a kind of pre-conscious state in which people lacked the sort of internal narrative that is simply a part of our existence now. He argued that the mind was radically different in structure and that the voices of the gods were simply representational of one-half of the brain--i.e. the bicameral mind. It's actually much more complex than that, and I'm doing a bad job of explaining it, but the book's a great read. Of course, many of his theories have now been debunked, but the book is still tremendously influential, especially as regards the inherently metaphorical nature of language, and continues to be cited. But given what it argues (and that it was published by one of the large publishing houses), it is strange that it didn't come under the ire of fundamentalists.