mercredi 18 septembre 2019

Does nature think evolution ? / Augustin Berque

– UNESCO & Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris, 6-8 juin 2019 – 
Conférence introductive 

Does nature think evolution ? 

自然は進化を考えているのか / La nature pense-t-elle l’évolution ? 

by Augustin Berque 

Abstract – While, on account of the number of possible protein combinations, Neo-Darwinism is mathematically unable to explain evolution through the sole mechanicist alternative of randomness (mutation) and necessity (natural selection and statistical laws), Imanishi Kinji’s antidarwinism is equally unable to explain evolution, if not by invoking a mysterious “course” followed by the species as such. One relates these two antithetic theories to, respectively, the Aristotelian logic of the identity of the subject and the Nishidian logic of the identity of the predicate, and, through a sublation of these two logics into trajective chains, proposes a mesological interpretation of the problem of evolution, implying a certain subjecthood of nature itself. 

I. Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) once wrote, in L’Homme et la Terre (Man and the Earth, 1905), that “Man is nature becoming conscious of itself”. If we follow him, and inasmuch we can assimilate thinking and consciousness, then we have the answer to the question “Does nature think?”

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