developmentmetaphorsh

4. Synthesis and extensions

A. Sapp > Precis TBA

B. The variant of the Game of Life (involving cellular automata) asks students to find analogs to observations in embryology and developmental biology that render plausible an alternative picture to genes controlling development: >> Changes, e.g. produced by mutations, can yield significant (or trivial) but still integrated change in the organism. >> a change in genes does not necessarily imply a change in some characters. >> a change in genes can sometimes result in a discrete change in some characters. >> Development of social characters will be similarly complex and difficult to tie down to genes, but even more so because >>> a) post-embryonic development involves more extensive interaction with the environment and >>> b) social characters involve interaction among individuals.
 * The organism is a composite of coherent processes.
 * Development is a complex process of structures arising out of structure, and so
 * Although development is complex, this doesn't imply the need for a controlling center. Local rules of interaction can yield larger scale co-ordination.

C. Notes on ways that metaphors can be analyzed in scientific writing: http://www.faculty.umb.edu/pjt/metaphor.html > “[W]hen we search for new concepts and metaphors, or more generally, use words and text to make arguments and seek to convince others, we privilege three related and persistent ‘meta-metaphors’: ‘1) metaphors are root, fundamental, underlying things that shape the surface layers; 2) mental things—thoughts, expectations, what we see—shape our actions; and 3) culture or society get into these thoughts (and so we can be taught [or argued into] how to conceive/perceive the world’... These meta-metaphors discount our experience of thought being constructed in practical activity from diverse resources.” (Taylor 2001)

5. Connections and resources Gilbert, S. F. and A. Fausto-Sterling (2003). "Educating for social responsibility: changing the syllabus of developmental biology." Int J Dev Biol 47(2-3): 237-44. > Two different approaches to reworking a developmental biology course so as to address biology-in-society. Oyama, S. (2001). Terms in tension: What do you do when all the good words are taken? Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. S. Oyama, P. Griffith and R. Gray. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press: 177-193. > TBA Taylor, P. J. (2001). Distributed agency within intersecting ecological, social, and scientific processes. Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. S. Oyama, P. Griffiths and R. Gray. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press: 313-332. > "In a ‘section of Susan Oyama’s The Ontogeny of Information on ‘Subjects and Objects.’ Oyama describes our primary experience of ourselves as subjects maturing from dependence and passivity to independence and control—what I call ‘concentrated’ agency.  We come to experience temporal continuity, casual potency, and are able to impart order according to prior knowledge and plan.  This experience, however, ‘exaggerates our role as detached subjects and denies our object-like status’ (Oyama 1985, 76).  Accordingly, when we try to explain development, interaction, and perception, we tend to posit another subject inside ourselves—mental modules, optimizing or rational actors, or, most notably, genes.  Similarly, to explain the order of the world people have traditionally posited a subject outside it, God, or, more recently, ‘the-forces-of-natural-selection.’ > In order to develop better explanations of development, interaction, and perception, we need, Oyama implies, metaphors and concepts that do not rely on the dynamic unity and coherency of agents, or on superintending agents within or outside those agents. And, to the extent that such patterns of thought persist because of their resonance with the experience agents have of their relations and actions in the material and social world, we need different experience. Or, better, we need to highlight submerged experience of ourselves as ‘object-like’ or ‘distributed,’ that is, as agents dependent on other people and many, diverse resources beyond the boundaries of our physical or mental selves. After all, the primary experience of becoming an autonomous subject is not ‘raw’ experience, let alone uniform and universal experience..., but experience mediated through particular social discourse. > There are circles here to be wrestled with. New concepts and metaphors might emerge if we experienced ourselves differently, but what counts as our primary experience is mediated by prevailing conceptual schemes and shared metaphors. And in current Western social discourse, these highlight our autonomy as subjects. Conversely, when some of us seek to theorize Developmental Systems or, in my case, to highlight distributed agency, we foresake the facilitation afforded by prevailing concepts and metaphors of concentrated agency. To so distance ourselves from the dominant discourse, however, requires a strong sense of ‘independence’ and ‘causal potency’ in attempting to impose an order—on one’s world and on one’s audiences.”

5b. Add to this blog post to make contributions to the revision of the chapter above or to an annotated collection of readings and other resources related to the chapter. 5c. Adaptation of themes from the chapter to students' own projects of of engaging others in learning or critical thinking about biology in its social context: Suggestions for how to do that: > i. Identify an idea that is central to your project area, e.g., balance of life, and invent an activity that leads your audience to explore the complexities of associations that the term might have once one starts probing it. > ii. Identify a theory that is central to your project area, e.g., genetic coding, and invent an activity that leads your audience to explore its history, noting especially the contrasting theories that have been held. > iii. Adapt an existing game so it illustrates ideas related to your project area that are difficult to visualize or to experience.