“Photography is a brief complicity between foresight and luck.”
– John Stuart Mill

In a letter to his brother-in-law in 1861, Alfred Russel Wallace wrote:

… I remain an utter disbeliever in almost all that you consider the most sacred truths. I will pass over as utterly contemptible the oft-repeated accusation that sceptics shut out evidence because they will not be governed by the morality of Christianity … I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions. To the mass of mankind religion of some kind is a necessity. But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for truth, or believe that those will be better off in a future state who have lived in the belief of doctrines inculcated from childhood, and which are to them rather a matter of blind faith than intelligent conviction.

Interestingly enough, Wallace, especially towards the end of his career became greatly interested in spiritual topics. He promoted spiritualism in such a strong way that it was his old friend Charles Darwin who, in 1879, tried a rally support among naturalists to get a civil pension awarded to Wallace. Joseph Hooker – Darwin’s best friend, and one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century – replied:

Wallace has lost caste considerably, not only by his adhesion to Spiritualism, but by the fact of his having deliberately and against the whole voice of the committee of his section of the British Association, brought about a discussion of on Spiritualism at one of its sectional meetings. That he is said to have done so in an underhanded manner, and I well remember the indignation it gave rise to in the B.A. Council.

Wallace eventually did receive his pension, though.

I’m too tired to write a proper review, and you all know discworld novels anyway. “Monstrous regiment” is a decent one that is definitely worth reading.

“Life was a process of finding out how far you could go too far, and you could probably go too far in finding out how far you could go.”

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.”

“You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.”

“To go from a consequence of behavior observed at the present time to the conclusion that similar consequences may have shaped the evolution of the behavior in the past requires an inductive leap. The justification for this inference must be made explicit and examined critically. Rarely is this done.”
– Dewsbury, 1992

Well said, sir.

“The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.”

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

Andere Leute haben sich an anderer Stelle ausführlich (und um vieles qualifizierter, als ich das könnte) mit Konrad Lorenz und dessen Verwicklungen mit nationalsozialistischen Ideen befasst. Darum soll es hier heute nicht gehen. “Die Rückseite des Spiegels – Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens”, 1973 erschienen, kann gewissermaßen als Hauptwerk des späten Lorenz’ verstanden werde, der hier nochmals viele ältere Ideen aufgreift und zusammenfasst, relativ losgelöst aus einem früher vorhandenen ideologisch gefärbten Hintergrund.

Das Buch enthält einige fachliche Fehler, am auffallensten ist mit Sicherheit die regelmässige Nennung “arterhaltender” evolutionärer Prozesse (er verwendet das Wort ‘Gruppenselektion’ zwar im Buch kein einziges Mal, aber doch sind zumindest die am Ende des Buches ausgeführten, komplexeren Gedankenmuster nur auf einer solchen Basis sinnvoll zu verstehen). Das hat dafür gesorgt, dass Lorenz heute in der universitären Biologie keinen Platz im Lehrplan mehr findet. Auch den auf die Spitze getriebenen stetige Vergleich zwischen evolutionären und gesellschaftlichen, kulturellen Prozessen finde ich unplausibel, obschon er zum Nachdenken anregt, gerade weil viele richtige Prämissen den Gedanken zugrunde liegen.

All dem zum Trotze enthält das Buch viele spannende Ideen, von denen ich hier einige abbilden möchte.

Abschließend muss erwähnt werden, dass mein Interesse an Lorenz nicht zuletzt durch seinen Schüler und meinen ehemaligen Professor Norbert Bischof herrührt, der seinen ehemaligen Mentor regelmäßig zitiert hat. Beide haben einen ähnlich belehrenden, ja fast besserwisserischen Stil, der mir regelmäßig große Freude beim Lesen bereitet.

“[Evolution] ist ein Vorgang der Erkenntnis, denn jede ‘Anpassung an’ eine besimmte Gegenbeit der äußeren Realität bedeutet, daß ein Maß von ‘Informationen über’ sie in das organische System aufgenommen wurden.”

Read the rest of this entry »

“Our cortico-linguistic abilities are adept at generating concepts that may have little scientific utility. This is a problem in the so-called premature sciences — ones that emerged before there was any adequate way to pursue deep causal analyses. Psychoanalysis, indeed psychology in general, represent such sciences.”
– Jaak Panksepp, 2006

Too bad I didn’t read Panksepp’s 2006 paper on endophenotypes properly when preparing for his workshop at the cluster ~ 3 months ago. I could have brought this quote up – sitting in a room with a couple of pretty well-respected psychologists …

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, each of us will have two ideas.”
—George Bernard Shaw

(via C. Bergstrom: “Dealing with Deception in Biology”)

“It is important to acknowledge that the evolutionary accounts proposed above are speculative and untestable.”

This is the kind of honesty you rarely encounter in the modern literature.