``... It's high time that we repressed our aversion to this good and honorable word. Theories have essences. (So by the way, in a more restrictive and unanced sense, do organisms..)'' Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, p. 10
Carrol
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Which reminds me to say I only got as far as about page 70 something and had to put in down. The trouble is, this is such a big work that I have to take in pieces. I couldn't just plough through it.
But regarding this passage. It's a mistake. What the word essence refers to should be seen as part of a perceptional construct. It then needs to be related to the gestalt formation of perception. But this subtle distinction only applies to analysis of an otherwise objective domain, say biology outside its human dimensions. Within human boundaries, then essences become something like the distillation of a cultural and or linguistic character. A very similar perceptual mechanism maybe at work, but it takes on symbolic significance, and we pretend, and treat such characters as it they were a living things.
It is to this latter aspect that I think that Gould is really referring, because it sets the stage to discuss the structure of a theory, or rather the structures that are interwoven together to become a grand scale theory.
When such a concept as essence is applied to living things, there is an extremely like possibility that what is called an essence is transferred from within a human world of such ideas where perhaps such entities exist in some meaningful that is cultural fashion. But I think it is a profound mistake to apply them directly to organisms, especially since the word organism already has such an idea preconstructed within.
Where this really gets tricky is when considering some molecular sub-system that has organized and routine behavior. It will appear to have an essence. But that appearance is I think primarily part of human perception.
One the hand, it appears that such a sub-system is life, so we have life all the way down? On the other hand, if an essence is life, then how can it be evolved from sub-divisions and sub-organizations and then evolve integrated into a whole? And where all this leads is into questioning exactly what constitutes a well bounded phenomenon. Is an essence such a well bounded phenomenon? Are we looking at a phenomenon, or are we some how manufacturing its appearance through our own perceptions?
So because of all that, I would prefer to stay far away from ideas like essence, at least in terms of science. On the other hand essences fit very well in poetry, art, theories, any of the more abstract of human cultural productions. And so, perhaps within discussion of theory, rather than direct observation, something like essence would work as a mere stand-in expression for words like whole, character, or some assemblage of qualities.
I found myself going back over many passages and decided there was just too much to deal with. The next section provides a chapter by chapter summary called, An Abstract of One Long Arugment.
I think it will take a long time for the bio-science community to absorb this work. More than likely they will dismiss it. Maybe not. It is just hard to imagine many of the people I knew would be willing to sit down and spend the time it would require to go over it.
So, now, even more than before I have to wonder if Hawkes actually read the whole thing and considered each of its very long parts.
Chuck Grimes