Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id JAA19065 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 6 Jul 2000 09:06:11 +0100 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2000 01:02:39 -0700 From: "Scott Chase" <hemidactylus@my-Deja.com> Message-ID: <CGLFBLEPNPJCNBAA@my-deja.com> X-Sent-Mail: off X-Mailer: MailCity Service Subject: Jung and Haeckel X-Sender-Ip: 209.240.200.167 Organization: My Deja Email (http://www.my-deja.com:80) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Language: en Content-Length: 6008 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
--On Thu, 06 Jul 2000 10:56:04 John Wilkins wrote: >On Wed, 5 Jul 2000 12:55:27 +0100 v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk (Vincent >Campbell) wrote: > >>I won't pretend to have understood most of your recent postings, but >>here >>goes with a few comments. >> >>First, there's a lot of Jung in what you say, but isn't Jung about as >>credible as Freud when it comes to social analysis? After all his >>notion of >>archetypes stems from his belief in a collective unconscious- what's >>your >>position on that? > >Just to interpose, and without any references I can cite, but I think >Jung's account of the collective unconsciousness owes something to the >neo-Lamarckian and recapitulatory view of evolution; > To some extent both go hand in hand, at least as far as organic memory analogies go. Haeckel had a pecliar notion about perigenesis which was paralel in ways, I guess, to Darwinian pangenesis. IIRC it was things such as the mechanism of terminal addition of characters at the end of ontogeny which tied into some sort of Lamarckism. > > that we >biologically inherit trace records of the past phylogenetic experience >of our species. A similar notion underpinned Piaget's account of child >development. I'm sure there is or will have been a scholarly treatise in >this influence of non-Darwinian evolutionary theory on psychology. >Anyone with a good ref will be my friend :-) > I'm not up to speed on Piaget's views on Haeckelian doctrine. IIRC there's one book where he's supposed to elaborate a little, but I haven't read that one yet. As for Jung, I've been pondering the Haeckelian undercurrents of some of his ideas for a while. Coming straight from the horse's mouth ( CG Jung, _The Development of Personaity_ CW 17, para 104-5, Princeton University Press):
(bq) "Now if we were to ask what would happen if there were no schools, and children were left entirely to themselves, we should have to answer that they would remain largely unconscious. What kind of a state would this be? It would be a primitive state, and when such children came of age they would, despite their native intelligence, still remain primitive- savages, in fact, rather like a tribe of intelligent Negroes or Bushmen. They would not necessarily be stupid, but merely intelligent by instinct. They would be ignorant, and therefore unconscious of themselves and the world. Beginning life on a much lower cultural level, they would differentiate themselves only slightly from the primitive races. This possibility of regression to the primitive stage is explained by the fundamental biogenetic law which holds good not only for the development of the body, but also in all probability for that of the psyche.
According to this law the evolution of the species repeats itself in the embryonic development of the individual. Thus, to a certain degree, man in his embryonic life passes through the anatomical forms of primeval times. If the same law holds for the mental development of mankind, it follows that the child develops out of an originally unconscious, animal condition into consciousness, primitive at first, and then slowly becoming more civilized." (eq)
There are other passages like this one sprinkled through Jung's Collected Works. Stephen Gould (in _Ontogeny and Phylogeny_. 1977. The Belknap Press of Harvard Universiy Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts) covers some of Haeckel's pervasive influence on psychology, including Jung. Jane Oppenheimer (in _Essays in the History of Embryology and Biology_. 1967. MIT Press, Cambridge) mentions Jung in the context of Haeckel IIRC. A more recent treatment of Jung which includes some detail on Haeckel is Richard Noll's _The Jung Cult_ (1997/1994. Free Press Paperbacks, New York). Noll is persona (no pun intended) non grata in the Jungian community. A critique of Noll by a "Darwinian Jungian" is from Anthony Stevens:
http://www.cgjungpage.org/articles/stevens1.html
This URL covers some of the main issues. As for a broader reference covering the history of psychology, I'd like to see that myself. I've had to piece a lot together with Jung, and I've ignored a lot of his other ideas like synchronicity. Didn't Dawkins mention Jung several times in _Unweaving the Rainbow_? I've tried to swear off the Jung tangent for a while. > >> >>Second, the A/~A distinction sound remarkably like Wittgenstein's >>approach >>to logic and the formulation of knowledge, the distinction he makes is >>P/~P. >>Where do you stand on Wittgenstein's notion that meaning of words rest >>only >>in negation? > >Where does he say this? In the Tractatus or in his later philosophy (eg, >Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics)? In the Investigations, he >treats meaning as the following of a rule, more or less. > I almost bought Tractacus yesterday. Maybe later. > ><snip rest, to say> >I find Chris Lofting's account of the difference between Lamarckian >views of evolution and Darwinian views totally opaque. > I don't know if it was just me, but I had difficulties parsing his posts. The one Ted Steele related topic on the immune system jumped out at me though. > > The two >theoretical views are not a matter of semantic or dichotomous >definition; they are two quite different models of how biology occurs, >and they are not in the sort of opposition that textbooks often suggest. >It is possible to be a Lamarckian Darwinian, if the relevant definitions >are clear enough (for example, Darwin accepted both the inheritance of >acquired characters and the effects of use and disuse on the propensity >of a trait to be inherited). > > So far, the recent views regard the immune system and possibly also the epigenetic inheritance systems (methylation marks, epimutations, epialleles). I'm not sure how far any of this will go, but I'll try to keep my mind open. Steele makes an occasional appearance on talk.origins.
Scott
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