[lbo-talk] Democracy Now 5/26

[Carrol Cox]

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