Other Notes
Writer’s Note
The following notes were taken during the dialogues as well as written before of after that. You will not find the notes of all chapters since some of them are in my notebook.
Notes
Dialogue 2 (Chapter 4-5)
“Astoinishingly – it (The Enlightenment) failed. When does such a historical period come to an end? It dies when, for whatever reason, usually in the aftermath of war and revolution, its ideas no longer dominate.” P. 15
- Institutions have evolved through time, but when someone tries to change it dramatically, with a sudden change, revolutionalizing it, it may be destroyed.
What is Wilson trying to do with the first 5 chapters?
- Giving us a big picture of what mankind has done to achieve consilience (Javier P.)
- The evolutionary process of finding truth and reaching progress.
- “The greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and humanities.” P. 8
- “What is the relation between science and the humanities, and how is it important for human welfare? P. 13
- Human knowledge vs sciences and humanities
- How can we connect the sciences and the humanities?
- P. 23 – The principles of The Enlightenment
o A passion to demystify the world
o Free the mind from the impersonal forces that imprison it. (What are the impersonal forces?)
o Driven by the thrill of discovery.
o Agreed on the power of science to reveal an orderly, understandable universe and thereby lay an enduring base for free rational discourse.
o The perfection of the celestial bodies discovered by astronomy and physics could serve as a model for human society. (p. 21, “…culture is governed by laws as exact as those of physics… These laws, he added, can be adduced from a study of past history.”)
§ Laws govern every cause and effect, and we should search for exact rules in how we behave, in society.
§ *Tacomonaro bridge
o Believe in the unity of knowledge, individual human rights, natural law, and indefinite human progress.
o Try to avoid metaphysics even while the flaws and incompleteness of their explanations forced them to practice it.
o Resist organized religion.
o Despise revelation and dogma.
o Endorse, or at least tolerate, the state as a contrivance required for civil order.
o Believe that education and right reason would enormously benefit humanity.
o Think human beings perfectible and capable of achieving a political utopia (it’s something achievable).
Dialogue 4 (Chapter 7-8)
What are epigenetic rules?
- p.163 They are the algorithms of growth and differentiation that create a fully functioning organism.
- The role of culture in evolution. Can culture change more rapidly evolution than genes, and how?
- Behaviors predisposed to humans. Color vision, language.
- Is culture the result of these epigenetic traits?
- “Epigenetic rules are prescribed by genes” p.138
- “Epigenetic rules leave open the potential generation of an immense array of cultural variations and combinations.” P.210
What are the inherited traits?
What is human nature?
Are ethics an example of epigenetic rules? Rubrics?
Culture transcends to the mind? Institutions guide the mind?
- Bert: As long as we take these institutions into our mind, we will remove or modify our primary epigenetic rules.
- Hyperactive kids as obeying their natural epigenetic rules.
- Institutions mutate our epigenetic rules?
Dialogue 5 (Chapter 8-9)
What are epigenetic rules and what is their role in evolution?