Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA16829 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 15 Jan 2001 14:38:49 GMT Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 06:35:54 -0800 Message-Id: <200101151435.GAA09658@mail1.bigmailbox.com> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary X-Mailer: MIME-tools 4.104 (Entity 4.116) X-Originating-Ip: [209.240.221.118] From: "Scott Chase" <hemidactylus@my-deja.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: RE: DNA Culture .... Trivia? Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk('binary' encoding is not supported, stored as-is)
>From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
>To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Subject: RE: DNA Culture .... Trivia?
>Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 11:32:12 -0000
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
>I'm aware, and have said before, that science can't really answer 'why'
>questions, so that was a mistake. I guess it was prompted by Bill's
>implication that other disciplines have the answers that memetics seeks.
>Those answers, are indeed answers to 'how' questions.
>
>
And I thought evolutionary biology was concerned wih "Why?" questions. Harvard evolutionist Ernst Mayr must have misled me when he said that "Why?" questions assumed scientific status via Darwin (see Mayr's _This is Biology: the Science of the Living World_. 1997. Cambridge, Massachusetts, p.116). John Alcock must be similarly misleading in his book _Animal Behavior: an Evolutionary Approach_ (1993. Sinauer Associates, Inc, Sunderland, Massachusetts) when he outlines how versus why questions in chapter 1. Alcock says (p. 2): "Why questions ask *why* the animal has evolved the proximate mechanisms that cause it to perform an activity."
Thus, ultimate causes (with "why" questions) relate to proximate causes (with "how" questions). "How" is concerned with physiology and developmental processes, where "why" is concerned with historical/evolutionary matters. The distinction is as important as that between ontogeny and phylogeny.
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