on desk:
The origin of life debate: molecules, cells and generation.
ed. and introd. by James E. Strick.
The very first piece is by John Turberville Needham: A summary
of some late Observations upon the Generation, Composition, and
Decomposition of Animal and Vegetable Substances. (1748)
I have no knowledge of this subject, but i can see that what is to be
investigated are called: substances, here: living substances.
In a next piece (1791), the Comte de Buffon mentions 'organic
molecules' (cells). 'Creatures of God' will lasts for some time,
but soon becomes a mere way of saying.
I am not suggesting that Needham was a metaphysician, merely that
his use of the notion substance is not without implications.
Implications that regard the special FIELD of his physical enquiry:
those same animal and vegetable substances.
Maybe one remembers that Heidegger opened his discussion of The dominion
of the subject in the Neuzeit, with the medieval notion of subject, and
that it is important to know that in those days every thing and creature
was considered to be a subject, something that occurs, not because we
observe it, but because it was created. Which IN ITSELF is incomprehensible,
and therefore something to be believed. Heidegger shows that, when this truth
of faith stops to be the basis of the salvation of the soul, the laying of a
new fundament becomes necessary, and that the fundament is an exemplary being:
man himself. Because he can trust nothing from the outside no more.
In this position (Not, need), and in order to BE the fundament, he needs to get
everything before it, a subject, for whom everything becomes object, by way
of representation. Note that representation is NOT the human acting that was
also familiar to the Greeks or the Hittites. But representation is the
ground of the true appearing of everything!! Not only modern science would
not be there, eh..here, but also not this world itself! If it costs too much
effort to stand philosphically on your head, remember then that the material
substance is in no way by itself the guarantee of an identical world, identical
to Descartes and to us here and now.
Descartes, in the Metaphysical meditations, shows the untrustworthiness
of all kinds of traditional truth (of sensory perception, of pure thinking),
as long as an inconcussible fundament is not found. Only when it is laid - also
remember the tree of physics - , the other objects of truth become possible:
first of all: material substance, which is transparant because of its
extension. And then also knowledge of God, the infinite substance, which
guarantees the bond of the two substances. One of his regulae for the direction
of the ingenium is the one keeping the two substances apart. 'One cannot hit a
thought'. But one can think a hand trying in vain to hit a thought. So, the
connexion of the two substances, to Descartes is a question for and of the mind,
not for the body. The bodily to him is merely extension: the occupation of space.
Its movements, movement as such, not transparant, not correspondent to the
required notion of truth (clare et distincte)
Leibniz takes up where Descartes and the Cartesians end. His youthful aversion
to metaphysics, made him opt for merely mathematical points, but soon, as he
reports himself, he felt the insufficiency, and the need, for reasons of
explanation, of metaphysical points: monads as the elements of ALL reality.
Then first, what had to be done, is taking the exemplary role, that Descartes
has attributed to man, at least in the way of Descartes, away again. That's
why he is so critical of the Cartesian res extensa: it is an immobilized world.
Rather everything lives, and a stone only imaginable as something sleeping, or
put to sleep, like if we are hit and faint. He refuses to believe that dead
material is the building material of the world. World is always a unity, a
mundus concentratus, and everything that is, aspires to the universe, to
concentrating everything that is, in one. The world's unity is falsely sought
by the image of (material) aggregation: bricks construing a wall. THIS kind
of unity does no right to the world, can never be a sufficient ground for the
phenomena. What representation is, cannot be viewed the way the mechanics of
a mill can be witnessed inside the mill itself. Rather everything is like a
sea consisting of drops, each of which is in itself another sea, and so on.
So that everything is a unity of perception and appetite. And extension only
required by the passivity that is proper to finite being. This passivity, or
possibility, is no longer medieval (Aristotelian) possibility, but it has an
activity, potentiality of its own.
Now, the unity of the world comes into sight, and only now, conceptions like
Needham's get within reach. Objects are never just 'there', just given.
They first must be made possible. This cannot be seen anymore - and that's
why we need 'history' - in times that science has stopped thinking, and all
'suspect' notions are chased out. Like the notion of subject, lying-at-ground,
originally: occurring, lying before, Vorliegen, hypokeimenon.
Jud does extended efforts to show this blindness, for which i'm very grateful:
the insufficience (not the personal!) is stimulating. A hint to what, in Leibniz,
is the relation of monadology (doctrine of the subject) and the principle of
sufficient ground. There is a demand, Leibniz listened to. When we listen to it,
we're on a track to hear what is demanded of us, in another tonality. We can only
bring ourselves there,
rene
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
The origin of life debate: molecules, cells and generation.
ed. and introd. by James E. Strick.
The very first piece is by John Turberville Needham: A summary
of some late Observations upon the Generation, Composition, and
Decomposition of Animal and Vegetable Substances. (1748)
I have no knowledge of this subject, but i can see that what is to be
investigated are called: substances, here: living substances.
In a next piece (1791), the Comte de Buffon mentions 'organic
molecules' (cells). 'Creatures of God' will lasts for some time,
but soon becomes a mere way of saying.
I am not suggesting that Needham was a metaphysician, merely that
his use of the notion substance is not without implications.
Implications that regard the special FIELD of his physical enquiry:
those same animal and vegetable substances.
Maybe one remembers that Heidegger opened his discussion of The dominion
of the subject in the Neuzeit, with the medieval notion of subject, and
that it is important to know that in those days every thing and creature
was considered to be a subject, something that occurs, not because we
observe it, but because it was created. Which IN ITSELF is incomprehensible,
and therefore something to be believed. Heidegger shows that, when this truth
of faith stops to be the basis of the salvation of the soul, the laying of a
new fundament becomes necessary, and that the fundament is an exemplary being:
man himself. Because he can trust nothing from the outside no more.
In this position (Not, need), and in order to BE the fundament, he needs to get
everything before it, a subject, for whom everything becomes object, by way
of representation. Note that representation is NOT the human acting that was
also familiar to the Greeks or the Hittites. But representation is the
ground of the true appearing of everything!! Not only modern science would
not be there, eh..here, but also not this world itself! If it costs too much
effort to stand philosphically on your head, remember then that the material
substance is in no way by itself the guarantee of an identical world, identical
to Descartes and to us here and now.
Descartes, in the Metaphysical meditations, shows the untrustworthiness
of all kinds of traditional truth (of sensory perception, of pure thinking),
as long as an inconcussible fundament is not found. Only when it is laid - also
remember the tree of physics - , the other objects of truth become possible:
first of all: material substance, which is transparant because of its
extension. And then also knowledge of God, the infinite substance, which
guarantees the bond of the two substances. One of his regulae for the direction
of the ingenium is the one keeping the two substances apart. 'One cannot hit a
thought'. But one can think a hand trying in vain to hit a thought. So, the
connexion of the two substances, to Descartes is a question for and of the mind,
not for the body. The bodily to him is merely extension: the occupation of space.
Its movements, movement as such, not transparant, not correspondent to the
required notion of truth (clare et distincte)
Leibniz takes up where Descartes and the Cartesians end. His youthful aversion
to metaphysics, made him opt for merely mathematical points, but soon, as he
reports himself, he felt the insufficiency, and the need, for reasons of
explanation, of metaphysical points: monads as the elements of ALL reality.
Then first, what had to be done, is taking the exemplary role, that Descartes
has attributed to man, at least in the way of Descartes, away again. That's
why he is so critical of the Cartesian res extensa: it is an immobilized world.
Rather everything lives, and a stone only imaginable as something sleeping, or
put to sleep, like if we are hit and faint. He refuses to believe that dead
material is the building material of the world. World is always a unity, a
mundus concentratus, and everything that is, aspires to the universe, to
concentrating everything that is, in one. The world's unity is falsely sought
by the image of (material) aggregation: bricks construing a wall. THIS kind
of unity does no right to the world, can never be a sufficient ground for the
phenomena. What representation is, cannot be viewed the way the mechanics of
a mill can be witnessed inside the mill itself. Rather everything is like a
sea consisting of drops, each of which is in itself another sea, and so on.
So that everything is a unity of perception and appetite. And extension only
required by the passivity that is proper to finite being. This passivity, or
possibility, is no longer medieval (Aristotelian) possibility, but it has an
activity, potentiality of its own.
Now, the unity of the world comes into sight, and only now, conceptions like
Needham's get within reach. Objects are never just 'there', just given.
They first must be made possible. This cannot be seen anymore - and that's
why we need 'history' - in times that science has stopped thinking, and all
'suspect' notions are chased out. Like the notion of subject, lying-at-ground,
originally: occurring, lying before, Vorliegen, hypokeimenon.
Jud does extended efforts to show this blindness, for which i'm very grateful:
the insufficience (not the personal!) is stimulating. A hint to what, in Leibniz,
is the relation of monadology (doctrine of the subject) and the principle of
sufficient ground. There is a demand, Leibniz listened to. When we listen to it,
we're on a track to hear what is demanded of us, in another tonality. We can only
bring ourselves there,
rene
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---