Literature and Evolutionary Psychology - An Objection

I had a recent email discussion with a fellow scholar who argued against using evolutionary psychology to understand the actions of Shakespeare's characters on the grounds that Shakespeare couldn't have put in something he didn't know about. The problem with this is that if evolutionary psychology accurately describes human behavior, then Shakespeare doesn't have to have known anything about it to nonetheless use it. I think this may be one of the main errors theorists make in their objection to using things like evolutionary theory and psychology.

Oddly. that never stopped many scholars from using Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, though.

Beauty and Paradox

Beauty is what emerges out of the interaction of paradoxical elements. The more paradoxical elements, the more beautiful the object.

I am pretty certain the above is true. Some examples:

Woody Brock's concept of relative complexity of theme versus complexity of transformation of theme
beauty balances symmetry and asymmetry (the golden mean ratio being an example)
beauty contains both unity and variety

Beauty is emergent from the conflict between paradoxical opposites.

More, the universe seems to also be emergent from the conflict between paradoxical opposites. Self-organizing systems, too, emerge when there are paradoxical opposites (I just finished reading Paul Krugman's "The Self-Organizing Economy," in which he observes that cities self-organize into complex patterns due to the simultaneous presence of centripetal and centrifugal forces among businesses, for example). Indeed, the strange attractors of chaotic, biotic, and self-organizing systems are paradoxical in nature, simultaneously attracting and repulsing. If all of this is true, then Frederick Turner is correct when he says that our recognition of beauty is the recognition of the deep tendencies of the universe itself. Since these deep tendencies keep arising -- and keep arising in more and more complex forms -- then it makes evolutionary sense for us to appreciate beauty.

Paradox is a pair that seem self-contradictory, but in fact arise out of reflexivity. How can something be both symmetrical and asymmetrical at the same time? Or both complex and simple simultaneously? These are paradoxical relations. The golden mean ratio is an irrational ratio (and ratios are rational), meaning it is a paradox.

An example:

Something cannot be both black and non-black at the same time and in the same sense, as that would be a contradiction. However, something can be a mixture of black and white. One kind of mixture -- a linear mixture -- gives us gray, of course -- but another kind of mixture, a nonlinear mixture where the object simultaneously becomes more black and more white at the same time will give us something with black and white texture, with large splotches and areas of black and white. For for something to become more black and more white at the same time is a paradox. It also gives one more order as well.

The strange attractor is strange precisely because it attracts and repels simultaneously.

The Nobel Peace Prize? Really?

Although I'm not the biggest Obama fan when it comes to economic policy, and though I question his tendency to refuse to meet with friends and to show support for some pretty despicable leaders, I'm not exactly a knee-jerk anti-Obama guy. I hope he's successful on many of his professed social positions, and I hope that he is successful on the international stage. If you don't know anything at all about economics, it's too early to judge Obama about much of anything, considering he hasn't even been President for a year.

And considering that last fact, how on earth can the Nobel Peace Prize have been awarded to Obama? The Nobel Committee argues that it's for his "efforts" and because he gives "people hope." So he got it not because he has actually accomplished anything, but for what are at the present moment nothing more than symbolic actions and rhetoric?

Let's be honest here. Al Gore won the Prize because he was anti-Bush. This is the Committee's last middle finger to the Bush administration. Not that the Bush administration doesn't deserve such a gesture for much of its international efforts -- but that shouldn't be what the Prize is for.

Obama hasn't done a single thing to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. I hope he earns it, but I suspect he won't.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Thomas A. Steitz, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; and Ada E. Yonath, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome". SPecifically, they each mapped out the location of each and every atom in the ribosome, helping us to understand better their function. And this is quite literally no small thing. Ribosomes are made up of several molecules of RNA and several proteins, so they are huge complexes. An impressive feat, to say the least.

Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology

This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to three scientists, Jack Szostak, Elizabeth Blackburn, and Carol Greider, for their discoveries of telomeres and telomerase. Telomeres, discovered by Szostak and Blabuburn, are found at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes, and prevent the chromosomes from being degraded with copying. Telomerase, discovered by Blackburn and Greider, is an RNA-protein enzyme that acts as a kind of reverse transcriptase that copies telomeres and adds them to the ends of chromosomes. Telomeres are particularly interesting because their lengths are associated with longevity. The fact that older couples' children tend to live longer than do children of younger couples implies something about the activity of telomerase, implying an environmental elements to inheritance of life span.

How to Get to Socialized Medicine

Here is the evil genius of the socialists . . . er, Democrats. To pay for the government health insurance plan, they plan to tax medical devices and replacement parts. This, in addition to taxing private health insurance. This will of course drive up costs, making it more difficult for people to afford medical care, and driving up insurance costs, which will of course be passed on to consumers if possible. The higher insurance premiums, etc. will create pressure for a government option -- which will be "cheaper" because it will be subsidized. Of course, since it will be subsidized, people will pick up the government option. Also, as insurance companies cut prices to try to compete, they will become less and less profitable, until they one by one go bankrupt. This will, in the end, leave people with only the government "option" -- meaning, we will have a single-payer, meaning we will have full-blown socialized medicine. And Baucus still wants to put me in prison if I don't buy insurance, no matter if I can afford it or not, or if I want it or not. So I will in the end be forced -- under threat of imprisonment, which is always a threat of violence, to buy government insurance, no matter if I want it or not. And this is supposed to be a better, more ethical system. A system based on threats and fear? WHen the mafia does this, it's called a protection racket. Why is this illegal for a gang of private citizens, but legal for this gang just because they call themselves our government?

Previously Published in Sojourn (out of UT-Dallas)

False Memories

Why have gaslight in an electric age?
Why feel the need to be transported
Back to a time none of us remembers,
So far removed it has turned cliché,
A time rustic and quaint, time
Flattening difference into utopia?
A Parisian café longed for
By a man who never left the States.
Narrow streets, full cafes, buildings
Centuries old. Or,
So he’s heard. A romantic place
Of Hemingways and Fitzgeralds, everything
An off-focus impression.
At night, lamplight, neon
Goes unseen. A myth
To be sure – uncommon, but
Not unseen. Waiters seat
Single customers with others –
Discussions, wine, and bread until
Gas-lit flame replaces day,
Flickering faces orange, the deep
Shadows drawing wisdom out
Of every café face.
A woman, in short shirt –
A navel, orange in the lamplight –
Draws the eye to new shadows unseen
In a clean electric-light place.

Darwinian Political Science

An interesting posting on the idea of biopolitics.