Miles Jackson wrote:
>
> On Mon, 31 May 2004, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > The limitations of communication in e-mail posts. Human agency is there,
> > and there is no question of us being pawns of some mechanism. But it
> > would take me about 18 months and a final draft of 30 to 150 pages to
> > work it out.
Obviously I was wrong. Neither 30 pages nor 18 months were necessary. Miles did it nicely in one post and just four paragraphs.
And I agree strongly that Gould's hierarchical analysis (levels of causation) is a powerful tool for social as well as biological understanding. His and Lewontin's concept of spandrels is equally powerful. In biology and history as in church architexture, many features/events are side-blows as it were. If they have a function, that function played no role whatever in their appearance but was "added" on later.
Carrol