https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//index.html?id=2180 Index des publications de Authors Piotr Lenartowicz fr 0 https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//4325-11-2006-00.html The article reviews the book Życie a orientacja w rzeczywistości przyrodniczej [Life and Orientation in Natural Reality], by Jolanta Koszteyn. Tue, 15 Dec 2020 10:47:27 +0100 Tue, 15 Dec 2020 10:47:27 +0100 https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//4325-11-2006-00.html https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//4269-11-2006-03.html The sciences, from their ancient beginnings, use a double way of investigation. One was applied to mineral and astronomical bodies, another to living ones. A ruling, tacit, common sense methodological or epistemological principle was this: The method of description should respect the inner essential properties of the object. For instance, neither the movements of the astronomical bodies, nor the behavior of the living bodies should be described in the scale of subatomic interactions. In modern times quite another methodological principle has been enthroned. The cosmos, astronomical, mineral and alive bodies altogether, have, allegedly, to be considered as a single natural whole, ruled by essentially the same set of principles. The properties of the mineral world are accepted as a universal model of descriptive concepts, and the explanatory concepts proper to the mineral world are accepted as a universal model of explanation in biology. So, up to now, the academic sciences have been dominated by the philosophical option of materialist monism, or panmaterialism. This option—we may call it antiteleologism and fragmentarism—has a profound impact on empirical research and the way biological phenomena are described. This strange, unnatural, arbitrarily imposed conceptual framework ignores the most fundamental biological dynamisms, and precludes our intellect from seeing the right questions and striving towards the right answers. Consequently it arbitrarily reduces the range of “scientifically acceptable” explanations. This antiteleological methodology of sciences, imposed on biological mind by philosophers, led to major change in the ideas of philosophers of nature. The physiology and anatomy of the fully developed living bodies has become their central object of study. Much less attention is paid to developmental processes such as biosynthesis, morphogenesis, embryogenesis, phenotypic adaptation and regeneration. The fully shaped structures (biomolecular, cytological or anatomical) and their functional properties are considered a hopeful basis of all the necessary explanations. For instance the structure of tile DNA molecule has become more important than the problem of its origin, and the structure of the brain more important than the developmental processes which lead to its construction. However, the enormous progress of biological sciences in spite of the widespread, dominating antiteleological and fragmentarist approach corroborates the very ancient, Aristotelian insight, which put the principal stress on the developmental aspect of life. Aristotle, and his more modern followers, was fascinated by the integrated and intrinsically heterogenous tendencies visible in the course of life. Today, we can say that at least eight such tendencies are universal, i.e. appear in every single form of life (starting with bacteria tip to the biology of man): (a) The tendency to select the proper kind of raw material and the proper kind of raw energy present in the environment. (b) The tendency to synthesize new, highly selective forms of chemical structures (biological material). (c) The tendency to utilize biological material in the process of building the nano-, micro-, and macro-machines. (d) The tendency for a relatively rapid, continuous production and replacement of all the elements of the functional structures of the body (metabolic turnover). (e) The tendency for a relatively rapid, continuous modification of the functional structures in a way which makes them more efficient within a changing environment (a tendency for phenotypic adaptation). (f) The tendency to repair and to regenerate the damaged elements of the functional structures of the body. (g) The tendency for multiplication, which means the production of such structures and the depots of the biological material as seeds, eggs, spores or buds. These structures, providing the environmental conditions are favorable, are starting points of new instances of the above described tendencies. (h) The tendency—possibly universal—to provide all the structures of the body with the “recognition marks” which help to eliminate all the, “alien” bodies and to recognize members of the own kind. These tendencies are not homogeneous. Homogeneous tendencies can be illustrated by the tendency of bodies to attract one another. This kind of tendency was the empirical source of such abstract concepts as gravitation, electrostatic force or magnetic force. Biological tendencies are heterogeneous and, at the same time, integrated. Human intellect is capable of recognizing the fundamental indivisibility (integration) of the set. A great number of observations and experiments have revealed and verified the fundamental indivisibility of the whole set of these tendencies. The concrete, bodily outcomes of these tendencies, however, are quite different in different families and orders of living things. Because of these differences the existence of different kinds of integrative principles was postulated. In this way a plurality of living substances was assumed. Mon, 14 Dec 2020 12:50:16 +0100 Mon, 14 Dec 2020 12:50:16 +0100 https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//4269-11-2006-03.html https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//4251-10-2005-26.html The general ideas of this book are of double origin. One source is akin to the relatively recent current of biological thought named Evo-Devo. Second source belongs to a more ancient French philosophical tradition represented, among others, by Bergson and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Few words about the Evo-Devo research program. Its creation was prompted by the analysis of the developmental processes in the embryos of different species. About fifteen years ago some discoveries related to the dynamics of the embryological development demonstrated a striking structural identity/stability of homeoboxes in different living forms. Homeoboxes are just small genes (only 180 base pair long) determining a strictly specific aminoacid sequence of short polypeptides (only about 60 aminoacids long) which „act" like hormones, „regulating" the dynamism of the gradually developing body. The parentheses were used deliberately, to stress the arbitrary character of the „signalling". Mon, 14 Dec 2020 12:24:22 +0100 Mon, 14 Dec 2020 12:24:22 +0100 https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//4251-10-2005-26.html https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//4057-0701-04.html It is our intention to re-investigate only a few of the innumerable epistemological problems concerning Paley's argumentation for the existence of God. Nowadays this argumentation is commonly considered as invalid. Modern philosophers believe that the Humean Dialogs on Natural Religion and the Darwinian theory of evolution deprived Paley's reasoning of any cognitive validity. This judgment seems to us unjustified. We shall try to demonstrate that the very meaning and the logical structure of Paley's argumentation are continuously misunderstood, and that critics have attacked rather a false image of Paley's cognitive pathway. Furthermore, we will show that Paley actually argues for the existence of a single agent producing biological organs. Indeed Paley demonstrates, that a biological organ is a kind of objective whole, and by necessity one produced by a single agent. However, Paley's form of argumentation is not sufficient to indicate whether this agent might be identified with a divine Creator, or Aristotelian "soul" building and commanding biological organs, or the recently discovered, described and deciphered deoxynucleotide polymer (DNA, molecular genome) present in the reproductive biological cell. Thu, 10 Dec 2020 12:41:06 +0100 Thu, 10 Dec 2020 12:41:06 +0100 https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//4057-0701-04.html https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//3965-0501-07.html Since the discovery of the Neandertal bones 1856 (cfr Toussaint, 1996), the extremely old, fragmentary fossil remains of hundreds of man-like bodies have been discovered in Europe, Asia, and Africa (cfr Bonjean, 1996). Even the oldest ones - usually the most incomplete - look man-like and „un-apish", even to a layman, if compared with a modem apish and human correlate. Sometimes, in the vicinity of these remains, primitive stone tools or the evidence of their production have been found. At present, it seems absolutely certain — within the limits of our present physical and biological knowledge - that at least four million years ago, in Africa, some creatures resembling modern man were living, and that at least two and half million years ago, in Africa, stone tools were produced. In contrast with the firm, scientifically-arguable belief that all modem human tribes - however different they are - belong to a single species (cfr Littlefield et al., 1982; Marks, 1995), in paleoanthropology an equally firm scientific belief is maintained that the extinct man-like forms belong to several different, „presapient", „prehuman'', more ape-like species (cfr Wood, 1996). Wed, 09 Dec 2020 17:52:35 +0100 Wed, 09 Dec 2020 17:52:35 +0100 https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//3965-0501-07.html https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//3941-0401-19.html The main thesis of this book - written by a well known epistemologist and philosopher of sciences (Institute of Philosophy, Pedagogical University, Zielona Góra) is rather sceptical. Both parties of the conflict defend a complex set of beliefs (metaphysical, religious, quasi-religious, or methodological), both a priori accept many narrow, but controversial assumptions, both often ignore the primary arguments of the opponent. Wed, 09 Dec 2020 17:29:50 +0100 Wed, 09 Dec 2020 17:29:50 +0100 https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//3941-0401-19.html https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//3923-0401-04.html Biologists are not used to the term „substance". They prefer to say „a living being", „an organism", a „specimen of species Homo sapiens'' - for instance. Chemists, on the other hand, when they say „this is a new substance" they usually mean the same Aristotle would mean - I think. The chemical meaning of the term „substance" is closest to the one I am going to discuss in this paper. To know a substance, one has to accumulate and store a multitude of different forms of evidence concerning this „natural behavior". So that concept of the „nature" of a given chemical substance is necessarily very complex and it cannot result from a single sensation, or a momentary observation Wed, 09 Dec 2020 16:54:40 +0100 Wed, 09 Dec 2020 16:54:40 +0100 https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//3923-0401-04.html https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//3763-0101-02.html The principles of the physical patterns of self-organization are numerous, different upon various levels of the scale of complexity (subatomic, molecular, geological, astrophysical). The integrated pattern of the changes going on in a living body indicates an integrated nature of its principle - whatever it might happen to be. Aristotle called this kind of principle „psycho", H . Driesch called it „entelecheia", sociobiolo- gists believe that D N A is the right name for it. The fundamental problem consists in seeing - not just deciding a priori - if the empirical data do require - in a living organism - a single, integrating agency. If such a requirement originates in an illusion, the whole problem is fictitious. If this requirement is well founded, then we must to search for such an agent. Wed, 09 Dec 2020 10:52:56 +0100 Wed, 09 Dec 2020 14:29:31 +0100 https://fp.waik.stronazen.pl:443//3763-0101-02.html