The rust in the machine: A metaphoric hermeneutic of evolutionary biology texts.

摘要

Water is a more inclusive root metaphor than machines for evolutionary biology because it is multicultural, covers a wider body of empirical evidence, and embodies the lived experience of the scientist.; The Neo-Darwinian synthesis reflects a particular historical and socio-cultural matrix. Scientists within the Neo-Darwinian worldview use machines as the root metaphor for living systems. This is Eurocentric because the machine metaphor was inherited from the Enlightenment philosophies of Descartes (1637/1982) and Newton (1687/1972) and reflects the Victorian belief in progress through industrial mechanization. The human value placed on machines has varied widely between cultures and historical periods. Water has played a role in all human societies, not just European societies. It was the root metaphor of many Classical Chinese philosophers (Allan, 1997). By applying the water metaphor to the existing empirical observations of evolutionary biology, a multicultural perspective emerges.; Anglican natural theologians, such as Ray (1691/1979) and Paley (1809), argued that the living world was so complex that it required an explanation beyond Newtonian physics. Their proposed solution was that living things were machines specifically designed by God. While Darwin (1859) agreed that the living world was complex, he proposed natural selection, rather than intentional specific design, as an explanation. The use of language evoking machines in evolutionary biology is metaphoric, not objective. The machine metaphor is theoretically inconsistent because it explains complexity, but also implies design. It pushes to the background simple structures and non-adaptive change in living systems. Water remedies this difficulty by providing a heuristic for anomalies of the machine metaphor, while still not implying intentional design.; The relationship between human engineers and machines is one of creator and creature, which implies a Biblical relationship of dominion over creation. However, human scientists are also evolved living systems, so the relationship could be more accurately modeled as part to part. The water metaphor highlights this relationship because it is embodied in every cell, including those of the observing scientist.