Subject
Fw: final comment from Victoria Alexander
From
Date
Body
----- Original Message -----
From: "Victoria N. Alexander" <alexander@dactyl.org>
To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Cc: <b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz>; <JohnsonK@Coudert.com>; <chtodel@cox.net>
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 8:01 AM
Subject: final comment
>
> _______________________________
>
> Prof. Boyd is excited over the tautology issue because, perhaps, it's
> been used mainly by Creationists against Darwin. His arguments seem to
> be a kind of knee jerk reaction against that group, not against me. I'm
> not sliding to new ground; Professor Boyd is swinging wide of the mark.
> He hasn't seemed to have noticed yet that I'm about as far from that
> group as one can get. (I'm equally far from Laplacean determinism.) I
> have not criticized Darwin for the tautological smack of his idea of
> fitness selection. In fact, I have said that the beautiful thing about
> the definition of fitness is that it follows a circular argument. Let me
> say it again, there is no inherent definition of fitness. This does not
> make natural selection a meaningless idea. At any given time, only one
> thing is selected. At the moment of selection, fitness has an objective
> stable meaning, but only in each particular case. Let me say it again,
> in Darwinism, there is no general law of adaptation. Prof. Boyd has been
> confusing the individual case with the general law.
>
> D. B. Johnson was thoughtful enough, not only to address me correctly,
> but to direct everyone to my CV, where one will find that I did my
> research at SFI, which gave me direct address to Fontana, Schuster,
> Krakauer, Gell-Mann, Goodwin, and Crutchfield, unquestionably the
> leading workers in the field of evolutionary biology, and whom one ought
> to ask if one has any further doubts about my work. If you have read my
> work, much of which is available online, I hope that you will take a
> look at the scientific works that I cite. (I especially recommend my
> friend, Brian Goodwin's "How the Leopard changed its Spots," which is
> accessible and even Nabokovian in some respects. You'll enjoy it.) That
> is where subscribers ought to go if they want to hear more of this
> argument. Science has changed drastically in the last twenty-five years.
> If Prof. Boyd thinks I'm slippery it's because he hasn't realized yet
> that the rules of the game have changed. These days scientists are
> comfortable with the fact that there may be no inherent definition of,
> say, fitness. These issues are very important ones. They should not be
> reduced to the pettiness of a couple of self-promoting scholars. They
> actually get to the root of our current notions about causality. It
> appears that determinism is an emergent phenomenon. (That statement will
> ruffle Prof. Boyd, I realize.) If we can understand evolution in the way
> that physicists and mathematical biologists now describe it, then we can
> better grasp how all physical laws are not given a priori but arise
> through some sort of selection process. One of the best things about
> these recent advances in science is that they give us the intellectual
> tools to get beyond the "everything is meaningless if there is no a
> priori meaning" argument. I hope this will take the focus on Prof. Boyd,
> off me, and onto to more important things. In some sense, Nabokov's
> anomalous position, as one poised between Kantian idealism and
> postmodernism, may be due to the fact that we never had the right
> intellectual category to place him in. I think we may have finally found
> one that suits him a little better. I offered this idea to Prof. Boyd in
> the spirit of helpfulness, because I know that he has been trying in his
> work to rescue Nabokov from a position between two intellectual evils.
> Professor Boyd ought to be careful what sort of questions he asks if
> the answers are going to make him uncomfortable.
>
> Victoria Alexander
>
From: "Victoria N. Alexander" <alexander@dactyl.org>
To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Cc: <b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz>; <JohnsonK@Coudert.com>; <chtodel@cox.net>
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 8:01 AM
Subject: final comment
>
> _______________________________
>
> Prof. Boyd is excited over the tautology issue because, perhaps, it's
> been used mainly by Creationists against Darwin. His arguments seem to
> be a kind of knee jerk reaction against that group, not against me. I'm
> not sliding to new ground; Professor Boyd is swinging wide of the mark.
> He hasn't seemed to have noticed yet that I'm about as far from that
> group as one can get. (I'm equally far from Laplacean determinism.) I
> have not criticized Darwin for the tautological smack of his idea of
> fitness selection. In fact, I have said that the beautiful thing about
> the definition of fitness is that it follows a circular argument. Let me
> say it again, there is no inherent definition of fitness. This does not
> make natural selection a meaningless idea. At any given time, only one
> thing is selected. At the moment of selection, fitness has an objective
> stable meaning, but only in each particular case. Let me say it again,
> in Darwinism, there is no general law of adaptation. Prof. Boyd has been
> confusing the individual case with the general law.
>
> D. B. Johnson was thoughtful enough, not only to address me correctly,
> but to direct everyone to my CV, where one will find that I did my
> research at SFI, which gave me direct address to Fontana, Schuster,
> Krakauer, Gell-Mann, Goodwin, and Crutchfield, unquestionably the
> leading workers in the field of evolutionary biology, and whom one ought
> to ask if one has any further doubts about my work. If you have read my
> work, much of which is available online, I hope that you will take a
> look at the scientific works that I cite. (I especially recommend my
> friend, Brian Goodwin's "How the Leopard changed its Spots," which is
> accessible and even Nabokovian in some respects. You'll enjoy it.) That
> is where subscribers ought to go if they want to hear more of this
> argument. Science has changed drastically in the last twenty-five years.
> If Prof. Boyd thinks I'm slippery it's because he hasn't realized yet
> that the rules of the game have changed. These days scientists are
> comfortable with the fact that there may be no inherent definition of,
> say, fitness. These issues are very important ones. They should not be
> reduced to the pettiness of a couple of self-promoting scholars. They
> actually get to the root of our current notions about causality. It
> appears that determinism is an emergent phenomenon. (That statement will
> ruffle Prof. Boyd, I realize.) If we can understand evolution in the way
> that physicists and mathematical biologists now describe it, then we can
> better grasp how all physical laws are not given a priori but arise
> through some sort of selection process. One of the best things about
> these recent advances in science is that they give us the intellectual
> tools to get beyond the "everything is meaningless if there is no a
> priori meaning" argument. I hope this will take the focus on Prof. Boyd,
> off me, and onto to more important things. In some sense, Nabokov's
> anomalous position, as one poised between Kantian idealism and
> postmodernism, may be due to the fact that we never had the right
> intellectual category to place him in. I think we may have finally found
> one that suits him a little better. I offered this idea to Prof. Boyd in
> the spirit of helpfulness, because I know that he has been trying in his
> work to rescue Nabokov from a position between two intellectual evils.
> Professor Boyd ought to be careful what sort of questions he asks if
> the answers are going to make him uncomfortable.
>
> Victoria Alexander
>