From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves, and the Meanings of Life (The MIT Press)

How the meaningless process of natural selection produces purposeful beings who find meaning in the world. In From Darwin to Derrida , evolutionary biologist David Haig explains how a physical world of matter in motion gave rise to a living world of purpose and meaning. Natural selection, a process without purpose, gives rise to purposeful beings who find meaning in the world. The key to this, Haig proposes, is the origin of mutable "texts"--genes--that preserve a record of what has worked in the world. These texts become the specifications for the intricate mechanisms of living beings. Haig draws on a wide range of sources--from Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy to Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment to the work of Jacques Derrida to the latest findings on gene transmission, duplication, and expression--to make his argument. Genes and their effects, he explains, are like eggs and chickens. Eggs exist for the sake of becoming chickens and chickens for the sake of laying eggs. A gene's effects have a causal role in determining which genes are copied. A gene (considered as a lineage of material copies) persists if its lineage has been consistently associated with survival and reproduction. Organisms can be understood as interpreters that link information from the environment to meaningful action in the environment. Meaning , Haig argues, is the output of a process of interpretation; there is a continuum from the very simplest forms of interpretation, instantiated in single RNA molecules near the origins of life, to the most sophisticated. Life is interpretation--the use of information in choice. "The main task of this book is to explain how the process of natural selection produces purposeful beings that make sense of their world - organisms who do things for good reasons. It provides a link between a physical world described in terms of matter in motion and a living world described in terms of meanings and purposes. David is proposing a unification of biology and the humanities through a shared engagement with questions of purpose and meaning. From the Introduction: Spoken and written language are the expression of deep inner structures. The language that is censored says something about the values and fears of the censor. This book pays close attention to the meanings of words for four main reasons. The first is that languages evolve and provide useful analogies for thinking about genetic evolution. The second is that meaning is the outcome of a process of interpretation and is specific to each interpreter. The same words will be interpreted differently and mean different things for each reader. As a result many acrimonious disputes in the philosophy of biology are really quibbling about definitions rather than disputes about facts. The third is that the origin of language marked an extraordinary expansion in the lexical expressivity of the flux of meaning. The fourth, and most important, is that the beauty and diversity of language, like the beauty and diversity of the natural world, are wonders to behold. Natural selection reuses old materials for new purposes. Its products are thereby comprised of parts of variable age that nevertheless must work together in some more-or-less coherent fashion. The resulting genomes are pastiche and so is this book. Its bricolage extends to the extensive use of quotations and paraphrase. Finally, I believe that the humanities and sciences have much to say to each other, so I wished to express my ideas in a style that would engage both audiences at the risk of enraging both and being ignored by both. Much of the prose was originally written under the constraints of meeting the selective criteria of scientific reviewers, and it shows. But the freedom from these constraints as I have revised the text has been liberating"-- Provided by publisher "The main task of this book is to explain how the process of natural selection produces purposeful beings that make sense of their world - organisms who do things for good reasons. It provides a link between a physical world described in terms of matter in motion and a living world described in terms of meanings and purposes. David is proposing a unification of biology and the humanities through a shared engagement with questions of purpose and meaning. From the Introduction: Spoken and written language are the expression of deep inner structures. The language that is censored says something about the values and fears of the censor. This book pays close attention to the meanings of words for four main reasons. The first is that languages evolve and provide useful analogies for thinking about genetic evolution. The second is that meaning is the outcome of a process of interpretation and is specific to each interpreter. The same words will be interpreted differently and mean different things for each reader. As a result many acrimonious disputes in the philosophy of biology are really quibbling about definitions rather than disputes about facts. The third is that the origin of language marked an extraordinary expansion in the lexical expressivity of the flux of meaning. The fourth, and most important, is that the beauty and diversity of language, like the beauty and diversity of the natural world, are wonders to behold. Natural selection reuses old materials for new purposes. Its products are thereby comprised of parts of variable age that nevertheless must work together in some more-or-less coherent fashion. The resulting genomes are pastiche and so is this book. Its bricolage extends to the extensive use of quotations and paraphrase. Finally, I believe that the humanities and sciences have much to say to each other, so I wished to express my ideas in a style that would engage both audiences at the risk of enraging both and being ignored by both. Much of the prose was originally written under the constraints of meeting the selective criteria of scientific reviewers, and it shows. But the freedom from these constraints as I have revised the text has been liberating"-- Résumé de l'éditeur How the meaningless process of natural selection produces purposeful beings who find meaning in the world... “A challenging though rewarding exploration of the meaning and purpose of life” that blends evolutionary biology and philosophy (Kirkus Reviews). Evolutionary biologist David Haig explains how a physical world of matter in motion gave rise to a living world of purpose and meaning. Natural selection, a process without purpose, gives rise to purposeful beings who find meaning in the world. The key to this, Haig proposes, is the origin of mutable “texts”—genes—that preserve a record of what has worked in the world. These texts become the specifications for the intricate mechanisms of living beings. Haig draws on a wide range of sources—from Laurence Sterne and Immanuel Kant's to Jacques Derrida and the latest findings on gene transmission, duplication, and expression—to make his argument. Genes and their effects are like eggs and chickens. Eggs exist for the sake of becoming chickens and chickens for the sake of laying eggs. A gene's effects have a causal role in determining which genes are copied—and a gene persists if its lineage has been consistently associated with survival and reproduction. Organisms can be understood as interpreters that link information from the environment to meaningful action in the environment. Meaning, Haig argues, is the output of a process of interpretation; there is a continuum from the very simplest forms of interpretation, instantiated in single RNA molecules near the origins of life, to the most sophisticated. Life is interpretation—the use of information in choice. **How the meaningless process of natural selection produces purposeful beings who find meaning in the world.** Haig draws on a wide range of sources―from Laurence Sterne's __Tristram Shandy__ to Immanuel Kant's __Critique of the Power of Judgment__ to the work of Jacques Derrida to the latest findings on gene transmission, duplication, and expression―to make his argument. Genes and their effects, he explains, are like eggs and chickens. Eggs exist for the sake of becoming chickens and chickens for the sake of laying eggs. A gene's effects have a causal role in determining which genes are copied. A gene (considered as a lineage of material copies) persists if its lineage has been consistently associated with survival and reproduction. Organisms can be understood as interpreters that link information from the environment to meaningful action in the environment. __Meaning__, Haig argues, is the output of a process of interpretation; there is a continuum from the very simplest forms of interpretation, instantiated in single RNA molecules near the origins of life, to the most sophisticated. Life is interpretation―the use of information in choice. How the meaningless process of natural selection produces purposeful beings who find meaning in the world. Evolution; genetics; gene; human nature; philosophy of biology; information; meaning; purpose; teleology; cause; final causes; formal causes; form; ultimate cause; natural selection; choice; evolution; morality; genes; selfish gene; genetics; memes; memetics; freedom; soul; self; internal conflict; divided self; empathy; mechanism; semantics; synchrony; diachrony; Geisteswissenschaften; homology; morphology; creativity; structure; function; riboswitch; automaton; hermeneutics; attractor; butterfly effect; chicken; egg; recursion; words; etymology; language; consciousness; philosophy; biology; history; narrative; just-so-stories; mutation; possible; actual