scholarly journals Metaphor and Meaning in the Teleological Language of Biology

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-24
Author(s):  
Annie L. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Ernst Mayr ◽  
Describing Function ◽  
Physiological Processes ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Hand ◽  
Biological Explanations ◽  
Conceptual Language

In the early twentieth century, neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory replaced traditional teleological causality as the accepted explanatory basis for biology. Yet, despite this rejection of teleology, biologists continue to resort to the language of purpose and design in order to define function, explain physiological processes, and describe behavior. The legitimacy of such teleological language is currently debated among biologists and philosophers of science. Many biologists and educators argue that teleological language can function as a type of convenient short-hand for describing function while some argue that such language contradicts the fundamentally ateleological nature of evolutionary theory. Others, such as Ernst Mayr, have attempted to redefine teleologyin such a way as to evade any metaphysical implications. However, most discussions regarding the legitimacy of teleological language in biology fail to consider the nature of language itself. Since conceptual language is intrinsically metaphorical, teleological language can be dismissed as decorative if and only if it can be replaced with alternative metaphors without loss of essential meaning. I conclude that, since teleological concepts cannot be abstracted away from biological explanations without loss of meaning and explanatory power, life is inherently teleological. It is the teleological character of life which makes it a unique phenomenon requiring a unique discipline of study distinct from physics or chemistry.

Revising Plants, man and life: Edgar Anderson reshapes a classic book

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Kleinman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Ernst Mayr ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanism ◽  
Popular Work ◽  
Scientific Attention ◽  
Key Events ◽  
Jesup Lectures

On at least four occasions, Edgar Anderson (1897–1969) began revising his book Plants, man and life (1952). Given both its place in Anderson's career and his place in the development of evolutionary theory in the mid-twentieth century, the emendations are noteworthy. Though a popular work, Plants, man and life served as the distillation of Anderson's ideas on hybridization as an evolutionary mechanism, the need for more scientific attention on domesticated and semi-domesticated plants, and the opportunities such plants provided for the study of evolution. Anderson was an active participant in several key events in what historians have come to call the Evolutionary Synthesis. For example, he and Ernst Mayr shared the 1941 Jesup Lectures on “Systematics and the origin of species”. Anderson's proposed revisions to his book reflect both an attempt to soften certain acerbic comments as well as an attempt to recast the book as a whole.

Pragmatism and Prophecy: H. G. Wells and the Metaphysics of Socialism

2017 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
DUNCAN BELL
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Philosophical Orientation ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Components ◽  
Political Thinker

Read throughout the world, H. G. Wells was one of the most famous political thinkers of the early twentieth century. During the first half of the 1900s, he elaborated a bold and idiosyncratic cosmopolitan socialist vision. In this article, I offer a new reading of Wells's political thought. I argue that he developed a distinctivepragmatistphilosophical orientation, which he synthesized with his commitments to Darwinian evolutionary theory. His pragmatism had four main components: a nominalist metaphysics; a verificationist theory of truth; a Jamesian “will to believe”; and a conception of philosophy as an intellectual exercise dedicated to improving practice. His political thought was shaped by this philosophical orientation. Wells, I contend, was the most high-profile pragmatist political thinker of the opening decades of the twentieth century. Acknowledging this necessitates a re-evaluation of both Wells and the history of pragmatism.

scholarly journals Crowds, police and provocations: Temporal patterns of rioting in Britain, 1800-1939

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Tiratelli
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Feedback Loop ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Temporal Patterns ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
Over Time

This essay develops an original, temporal approach to the study of rioting. It uses a catalogue of 414 riots from nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain to trace some common developmental patterns, demonstrating that: (i) riots often begin with provocation, intervention by the police, or routines that license violence; (ii) riots are linked together by cycles of revenge and the feedback loop between action and identity; and (iii) the state’s monopoly of organised violence was often decisive in bringing riots to an end. These findings reveal significant limits to the explanatory power of two widely used concepts in this area: triggers and identity. More interestingly, they show that this power varies meaningfully over time. I therefore end by calling for a properly historicised theory of rioting and drawing attention to two key sites of historical change: the norms and traditions which govern public violence, and the state’s monopoly of force.

The Promise of Utopia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Clinton Godart
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Ideology ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Future ◽  
New Form ◽  
Theories Of Evolution

In early twentieth century Japan, socialists and anarchists appropriated evolutionary theory and reoriented evolutionary theory to the Left. They promoted ideas of materialism with a critique of the ideology of the kokutai and State Shintō, thus triggering clashes between evolutionary theory and the ideology of the state. This development was balanced by the emergence of new visions of evolutionary utopianism, with Buddhist and Christian variants. New theories of evolution were introduced, such as those of Kropotkin and Bergson, and theories of vitalism emerged as a new form of resisting materialism. Utopianists, such as Kita Ikki, Kagawa Toyohiko, and Nichiren Buddhists, used evolutionary theory to predict extreme optimistic visions of the future. Both the left and utopianists deployed evolutionary theory to produce visions of modernization and progress that were very different from the vision of modernization produced by the state or by the religious ideology of the kokutai.

Some Polish Composers of To-Day

Tempo ◽  
1948 ◽  
pp. 25-28
Author(s):  
Andrzej Panufnik
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fertile Soil ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Group ◽  
Karol Szymanowski

It is ten years since KAROL SZYMANOWSKI died at fifty-four. He was the most prominent representative of the “radical progressive” group of early twentieth century composers, which we call “Young Poland.” In their manysided and pioneering efforts they prepared the fertile soil on which Poland's present day's music thrives.

V1214: Edward Loughborough Keyes: An Early Twentieth Century Leader In Urology

2004 ◽  
Vol 171 (4S) ◽  
pp. 320-320
Author(s):  
Peter J. Stahl ◽  
E. Darracott Vaughan ◽  
Edward S. Belt ◽  
David A. Bloom ◽  
Ann Arbor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

New insights into the controversy surrounding marine biological laboratory (Marine Station) facilities in the Firth of Clyde in the early twentieth century

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-170
Author(s):  
P. G. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Marine Biological Laboratory ◽  
Biological Station ◽  
Marine Biological ◽  
Biological Laboratory ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Marine Station ◽  
Regius Professor ◽  
Adjacent Island

Three letters from the Sheina Marshall archive at the former University Marine Biological Station Millport (UMBSM) reveal the pivotal significance of Sheina Marshall's father, Dr John Nairn Marshall, behind the scheme planned by Glasgow University's Regius Professor of Zoology, John Graham Kerr. He proposed to build an alternative marine station facility on Cumbrae's adjacent island of Bute in the Firth of Clyde in the early years of the twentieth century to cater predominantly for marine researchers.

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