StructuringThemes

Stories are more compelling if they adopt a familiar structure (see Landau's structuralist account) and if they resonate with other stories (the hermeneutic emphasis). Identifying the structural themes and noticing connections between parts highlights the causation implied and perhaps exposes weaknesses in the account. For example, Hrdy’s uses four dualities that at first seem to reinforce each other—large/small cell, egg/sperm, “female”/”male” unicell, female/male mammal—but then allow us to ask what is anything the relationship is say between a sperm and a male. After all, sperm can carry an X or a Y chromosome. To pursue critical thinking around structural themes, use the pairings to reflect on how the story could appear if the other theme in the pair had been emphasized.
 * Structural themes in stories /narratives /historical accounts**

> Note: Stories may be only part of explanations or arguments, so, when trying to see which of the themes below inform or structure an account, concentrate on the historical part and its end-point—the outcome that the account is trying to make understandable. The rest of the author's exposition may provide evidence for, or render plausible, various elements of the story, but this is a secondary issue. Also, an account may work in more than one structural theme.

//A. In each of the following the first theme is more common in biology and allied social thinking, while the second is an alternative that is more open and difficult to analyze:// (A chain of if-then connections does not necessarily make a narrative linear because the story can be weaving together several different types of phenomena, i.e. not just following one entity.)
 * 1. linearity** one person or entity is the central subject followed through the course of the story, inc. life course maturation;.

(Even if different phenomena enter the story without much background being given to them, consider what they entail. For example, in the speculative account of the origin of human intelligence the basic tendency of primates to be social was assumed in having the early humans stay and care for the premature babies, rather than leaving them to die. This then constitutes another strand woven into the story )
 * //vs.//** **multiple strands** (in the one story -- multiple explanations of the same phenomenon don’t necessarily make an account non-linear.)


 * 2. development - unfolding - essential trajectory** everything, including the endpoint, is implied from the outset -- if you have an egg you'll eventually get an adult chicken -- if you have a society you'll inevitably have it modernize, democratize, etc. Of course, not everything fits, but the deviations are mere //deviations// from the ideal course.


 * //vs.//** **critical interventions** along the way (by Gods, heroes, random mutations) move things along


 * 3. progress** __everything__ is climbing ever higher, getting better, or the opposite, regress -- everything is getting worse, declining from the Golden Age of the past.


 * //vs.//** **simply change** most of what happens doesn't contribute to the final outcome, e.g. Ediacaran fauna & Burgess shale do not contribute genealogically to present taxa


 * 4. directional, even determined** very few steps from start to outcome, or very few opportunities for anything different to have happened. Includes //Whig history// (= the past is presented so that the present is made to seem a necessary consequence of it ) -- it's hard to see any other directions things could have gone (side-branches, failures, etc.)


 * //vs.//** **contingent** and thus winding, branching path -- lots of places for things to have gone another way - dicey connections between events and “quirky changes” (the path to the end-point is windy, not direct)


 * 5. adapted, fit to situation** current function seems so good, even //optimal// or //perfect//, that the story doesn't have to fill in much history of how it came to be


 * //vs.//** **constructed** many strands come together or coalesce to produce an outcome, which is thus open to change at many points in the process. “Characters = genes plus environment” is a very weak form of construction, especially if the central thread of the story is genetic, leaving the environment just a modifier of the result.


 * 6. gradual & continuous** steady accumulation:"evolution not revolution"


 * //vs.//** **episodic, even catastrophic** bursts of activity or happenings, e.g. Cambrian radiation, post-Mesozoic radiations of birds and mammals


 * 7. naturalism** human social behavior and arrangements are natural, i.e. do not need specifically social explanation


 * //vs.//** **humanism** explain humans in specifically human terms (see also B8 below).


 * 8. dualisms** categories come in pairs (e.g., homosexual/heterosexual; male/female)


 * vs. multiplicities** divisions into two types obscures a lot of diversity (e.g., variants of sexual preference)

//B. In each of the following the themes are equally common and often co-exist in tension within the one account (we’ll say more about these themes in later classes)://


 * 1. uniformity**insist on invoking the same causes then (in the past) as you see now


 * //vs.//** **historically located** unique causes, or causes that need reference to the particular situation and timing, i.e., events wouldn't be true in all times or places


 * 2. balance of nature**(see also //adapted, stability//)


 * //vs.//** **struggle for existence** necessarily involving sub-optimality and imperfection (at least transiently)


 * 3. fixed, stable places, niches**


 * //vs.//** **scramble for a place**


 * 4. stable equilibrium**


 * //vs.//** **change**


 * 5. biological causes of changing conditions of life**


 * //vs.//** **physical/ climatic determination**


 * 6. Nature integrated, like an organism**


 * //vs.//** **aggregate of individuals**


 * 7. Nature passive**


 * //vs.//** **active, creative**


 * 8. anthropomorphism** depicting non-humans (living or non-living) in terms of human motivations, emotions, social arrangements, etc.

(These themes can reinforce each other if the idea of what’s natural is anthropomorphized.)
 * //vs.//** **naturalism** human social behavior and arrangements follow the same rules as the rest of nature.


 * 9. Parallels and borrowing** (e.g., Hrdy’s small/large cell = sperm/egg = male/female mammals)
 * //vs.//** **Unique and singular** (e.g., explaining differentiation of cell size in ancient unicells, anisogamy in germ cells, and size-activity differentials in mammals each by different means)