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Research Interests: Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Newtonian Dynamics, Philosophy, Epistemology, and 15 morePhilosophy of Biology, Nonlinear dynamics, Evolution, Molecular Genetics, Darwinism, Natural Selection, Biological Sciences, Problem Solving, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Origin of Life, Selection, Nonequilibrium thermodynamics, Biological systems, Phenomenon, and Psychology and Cognitive Sciences
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Research Interests: Genetics, Embryology, Biology, Hegel, Essentialism, and 15 moreEcology, Darwinism, Darwin, Eugenics, Cytology, Haeckel, Biological, Galton, Design Argument, Genes, Genotype, Artificial Selection, George, Chromosomes, and A
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This paper explores a possible connection between Aristotle’s defence of rhetoric as an art and his claim that its three kinds, deliberative, forensic and epideictic, necessarily take place in sites where citizens appear to one another as... more
This paper explores a possible connection between Aristotle’s defence of rhetoric as an art and his claim that its three kinds, deliberative, forensic and epideictic, necessarily take place in sites where citizens appear to one another as citizens. The argument is that only in such sites, and hence only in poleis, can speakers and audiences distinguish the internal norms of this, and indeed any other, art from external effects that, although they may be called rhetorical, are not artful or technikos on Aristotle’s definition. That in making this argument Plato serves as Aristotle’s foil is suggested by allusions in the Rhetoric and other Aristotelian treatises to specific passages in Phaedrus and Statesman. The paper concludes by claiming that conditions for practising the art of rhetoric in the strict sense are as civic now as they were in classical antiquity. The media in which the art is practised may have multiplied, but when its civic nature is grasped the kinds into which Aristotle divides it appear not to have changed as much as might be thought.
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This chapter begins by contrasting Spencer’s view of natural selection with Darwin’s understanding of its “paramount power.” Darwin’s interpretation contains seeds of a defining mark of the modern evolutionary synthesis: Adaptation is... more
This chapter begins by contrasting Spencer’s view of natural selection with Darwin’s understanding of its “paramount power.” Darwin’s interpretation contains seeds of a defining mark of the modern evolutionary synthesis: Adaptation is necessarily a consequence of natural selection working as a “creative” factor over multiple generations. The chapter distinguishes between several versions of the modern synthesis in order to argue that some are less at odds than others with the current turn toward development and in order to suggest that allowing ontogeny to be the generative locus of (much) selectable variation makes for more continuity between the developmentalist turn and the modern synthesis than is sometimes thought. Shifting “adaptation” from trans-generational populations to ontogenetically construed organisms is in tension with the modern evolutionary synthesis, but not as much as some believe.
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Robert Ivie is well known to readers of this journal for his work on the rhetoric of war. Nurtured in the context of the discourse of the Cold War and its downward spiral into the pointless maelstrom of Viet Nam, Ivie’s leitmotiv has... more
Robert Ivie is well known to readers of this journal for his work on the rhetoric of war. Nurtured in the context of the discourse of the Cold War and its downward spiral into the pointless maelstrom of Viet Nam, Ivie’s leitmotiv has always been the us-them, good-evil, civilized-savage polarities of war rhetoric. His work is notable, among other things, for refusing to accord Eisenhower his usual pass in putting these paranoid polarities in place (1994). Taking Kenneth Burke as his guide, Ivie argues, perhaps more explicitly and expansively in this book than elsewhere, that this kind of rhetoric, into which the United States descends with almost clock-work regularity, operates against the democratic values, practices, institutions, and norms of discourse that we profess. Us-them rhetoric is anti-democratic because the claim that monsters ‘‘who hate us’’ are bestirring themselves always provokes scapegoating and witch-hunting at home, and, spurred by the call to eradicate evil abroad, unleashes military violence on an often disproportionate scale. In predictably failing to win hearts and minds, these crusades always block the very effect that they are supposed to accomplish, namely the spread of democracy. Ivie’s book is set against the backdrop of the most vivid re-ignition of the us-them theme, and its anti-democratic upshot that we have witnessed in a long time: the post 9=11 War on Terror and its precipitous descent into the invasion of Iraq. These events provide stunning confirmation, if any be needed, of Ivie’s main themes. He can rightly say, I told you so. In Democracy and America’s War on Terror, however, Ivie engages in surprisingly little detailed rhetorical criticism of texts to make his points. His interest instead is in the structural causes of renewed cycles of war-making on the part of a nation that, although it always takes itself to be on the defensive, is in fact almost always on the offensive, even to the point of being, as Ivie admits it is, imperialistic (125). His causal diagnosis proceeds in two stages. First, the cycle is unleashed and sustained by fear. Democracies, Ivie says, are inherently prone to fear because they inherit the old discourse that positions republics as fragile, transient, and continuously open to Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 36:331–334, 2006 Copyright # The Rhetoric Society of America ISSN: 0277-3945 print=1930-322X online DOI: 10.1080/02773940600713372
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Ever since Darwin, there has been a troubled but changing relationship between two great achievements of nineteenth century science, thermodynamics and Darwinian evolutionary theory. The second law of thermodynamics, particularly in its... more
Ever since Darwin, there has been a troubled but changing relationship between two great achievements of nineteenth century science, thermodynamics and Darwinian evolutionary theory. The second law of thermodynamics, particularly in its Boltzmannian statistical formulation, predicts that as entropy increases to a maximum, so will disorder. Eventually, energy differences in the universe will disappear, so that no more work will be possible. Darwin’s theory, by contrast, implies the possibility that biological systems can, though not necessarily, increase in ordered complexity over time through the action of natural selection. The increase in heterogeneity that is a hallmark of life does not seem to follow the arrow of time that points toward the heat death of the universe.
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Page 1. (Published in William A. Demski and Michael Ruse (eds) Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pages 173-190) Darwinism, Design, and Complex Systems Dynamics Bruce H. Weber ...
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The “evolutionary synthesis” is a phrase widely used for a period in evolutionary studies between 1920 and 1950 when important theoretical developments took place. The period also saw new types of interdisciplinary collaborations develop.... more
The “evolutionary synthesis” is a phrase widely used for a period in evolutionary studies between 1920 and 1950 when important theoretical developments took place. The period also saw new types of interdisciplinary collaborations develop. These new associations reset the priorities of evolutionary studies for more than fifty years. Contributors came from every country with a significant scientific community and from nearly every discipline in the life sciences. The phrase “evolutionary synthesis” also refers to a period of discipline formation. Most important, this involved new community infrastructure, such as new professional societies and journals, dedicated to evolutionary studies. Those at the heart of these organizations quickly rose to prominence in the community and worked hard to set the agenda.
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Page 257. 18 Developmental Systems, Darwinian Evolution, and the Unity of Science Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew We take it as a presumption of this chapter that we are living at a time when the central problem in theoretical ...
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Ethos
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Abstract: The Baldwin effect stands for a wide variety of ways in which learning can be conceived as guiding adaptive evolutionary change. An analysis of the history of this notion reveals that it does not reliably refer either to a... more
Abstract: The Baldwin effect stands for a wide variety of ways in which learning can be conceived as guiding adaptive evolutionary change. An analysis of the history of this notion reveals that it does not reliably refer either to a theory-neutral empirical phenomenon or to a single ...
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Hull
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