[-empyre-] DNA Poetics

[Nicholas Ruiz III <editor@intertheory.org>]

this was bounced for some unknown reason...I've
forwarded it for sdv@krokodile.co.uk...

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Judith/all

What you refer to as a 'complex open system'  is 
precisely what is inferred in the concept of a
wide-range-determined system,  in neither scientific
nor philosophical terms is the universe a true open
system.

The statement that there is no such thing as
empiricism is fascinating, as the version you are
working with is very different from the empiricism as
constructivism that I'm used to. In these terms
empiricism is not a realism, as you suggest but a
constructivism. Which is to say that where you argue
if "language is  involved in any stage or human
observers intercede in measurements  that are made
with tools requiring interpretation..." empiricism is
impossible.  Where this is normally presented as a
classical anti-realist and anti-natuaralist position.
Empiricism broadly following Deleuze and Van Frassen
is a constructivism,  both of whom correctly argue for
a constructive-empiricism which allows for, positively
insists in fact, that scientific laws are
representational constructs that are to be understood
through there adequacy.

Recently I read a copy of a Martin and Chao text from
(I believe) Current Opinions in Neurobiology which
suggests, demonstrates that a word actually activates
the same areas of the human brain that are turned on
when the object that the word represents are
seen/heard/experienced. It has been rather
interestingly suggested that this confirms that
representations are arbitrary and as 'proof' meaning
is acquired through experience rather than through and
innate concepts. This should rather obviously suggests
what the neurological studies are confirming that
there are no hard-wired linguistic concepts, though
language and semiosis has evolved as an innate
tendency.

It is also worth making it clear that inherited
characteristics are not passed solely through DNA, but
also through RNA. A better and more accurate term in
the sense you are using it is probably genetics.

steve