I can't help bringing up another place in the book where Dennett talks about Shakespeare. It doesn't have much relevance to Dennett's point about Darwinism's spreading applicability, but it's interesting. To tell the truth at this point, when something jumps out at me in this book, I'm happy for it. Dennett is a brilliant guy who chases many rabbits down many holes, it seems to me. I get lost trying to follow him. I'm soldiering on with the book.

Nicholas Humphrey (1987) makes the question vivid by posing a more
drastic version: if you were forced to "consign to oblivion" one of the
following masterpieces, which would you choose: Newton's Principia,
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Mozart's "Don Giovanni," or Eiffel's Tower?

"If the choice were forced," Humphrey answers,
I'd have litde doubt which it should be: the Principia would have to go.
How so? Because, of all those works, Newton's was the only one that was
replaceable. Quite simply: if Newton had not written it, then someone else
would—probably within the space of a few years... The Principia was a
glorious monument to human intellect, the Eiffel Tower was a relatively
minor feat of romantic engineering; yet the fact is that while Eiffel did it his
way, Newton merely did it God's way.

Newton and Leibniz famously quarreled over who got to the calculus first,
and one can readily imagine Newton having another quarrel with a
contemporary over who should get priority on discovering the laws of
gravitation. But had Shakespeare never lived, for example, no one else would
ever have written his plays and poems. "C P. Snow, in the Two Cultures,
extolled the great discoveries of science as 'scientific Shakespeare'. But in
one way he was fundamentally mistaken. Shakespeare's plays were
Shakespeare's plays and no one else's. Scientific discoveries, by contrast,
belong—ultimately—to no one in particular" (Humphrey 1987). Intuitively,
the difference is the difference between discovery and creation, but we now
have a better way of seeing it. On the one hand, there is design work that
homes in on a best move or forced move which can be seen (in retrospect, at
least) to be a uniquely favored location in Design Space accessible from
many starting points by many different paths; on the other hand, there is
design work the excellence of which is much more dependent on exploiting (
and amplifying) the many contingencies of history that shape its trajectory, a
trajectory about which the bus company's slogan is an understatement:
getting there is much more than half the fun. Pp. 139-140

I tend to go along with Humphrey's judgment. It's the particularity of not only literature but of everything else about culture that interests us and is irreplaceable if lost. When we try to figure out what system or laws might apply to the creation and transmission of culture, as was tried with meme theory, I become skeptical that we've come up with anything we can or want to use. Culture evolves, kaleidoscopically, as I suppose life does, too, over a much longer haul. It's the ever-changing patterns that have value for themselves, rather than for laws they may yet be shown to demonstrate.

DWill wrote: To tell the truth at this point, when something jumps out at me in this book, I'm happy for it. Dennett is a brilliant guy who chases many rabbits down many holes, it seems to me. I get lost trying to follow him. I'm soldiering on with the book.

I have the same feeling often with this book. Interestingly, I sort of read right past the part that leapt out at you, and yet as you bring it up, I realize it is a key issue. Too much soldiering needed, really.

Nicholas Humphrey (1987) of all those works, Newton's was the only one that was replaceable. Quite simply: if Newton had not written it, then someone else would

And yet, almost no one can read Chaucer, and it borrows heavily from the Decameron, nor is it particularly good literature as we judge literature today. So it's main interest is historical: it marks a certain point in the development of English literature, and, as a quality work at that point, maps out landmarks in the relation between literature and society. The Principia is of interest for much the same reason: Newton's awkward choices of terminology and notation, and the other tracks of the process by which he reached his milestone conclusions, are monumental landmarks in philosophy of science.

the fact is that while Eiffel did it his way, Newton merely did it God's way.

This is the same observation that we have with "convergent evolution." An old version that I love is the SciFi story Omnilingual, about encountering relics of an alien race on some planet, and realizing that the periodic table was being presented in some alien form, which provided the key to translating the alien language.

The question often seems to be discussed as "contingency." Which of the specifics of a species' genotype are contingent, in that they would be different if some arbitrary event had happened differently, and which are inevitable?

DWill wrote:

Intuitively, the difference is the difference between discovery and creation, but we now have a better way of seeing it. On the one hand, there is design work that homes in on a best move or forced move which can be seen (in retrospect, at least) to be a uniquely favored location in Design Space accessible from many starting points by many different paths; on the other hand, there is design work the excellence of which is much more dependent on exploiting (and amplifying) the many contingencies of history that shape its trajectory, a trajectory about which the bus company's slogan is an understatement: getting there is much more than half the fun. Pp. 139-140

I tend to go along with Humphrey's judgment. It's the particularity of not only literature but of everything else about culture that interests us and is irreplaceable if lost.

It has been argued that the difference between poetry and prose is that you cannot replace any word in poetry with a synonym without changing the work. This is particularity as significance. It is not "for want of a nail" contingency, but "the road less taken" contingency.

DWill wrote:When we try to figure out what system or laws might apply to the creation and transmission of culture, as was tried with meme theory, I become skeptical that we've come up with anything we can or want to use. Culture evolves, kaleidoscopically, as I suppose life does, too, over a much longer haul. It's the ever-changing patterns that have value for themselves, rather than for laws they may yet be shown to demonstrate.

The "meme" notion operates at the grossest level of analysis. Umberto Eco and semiotics might be a better place to look for a system of understanding culture. Why Don Giovanni? It captures a certain sense in the air at the time that the aristocracy was not only accountable but vulnerable. (The Barber of Seville even more so, or so I am told - I tend to shun opera.)
Yet "value for themselves" is a bottom-line criterion of works of the imagination. Just because we can trace connecting links does not mean we would end up with the same message or the same work if we set out to make something beautiful with only those links which we claim, in hindsight, reveal the significance of the work.
Contingency and particularity are therefore vital to the whole business of "meaning" which Dennett is supposedly going to illuminate.
The way this was presented to me in my school days was a colleague explaining that she detested "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." Why? I asked. "It reads like 'Here is a symbol. Now the symbol will symbolize. Now you will be asked to think about what is symbolized, as the symbol expands its symbolic role'." When particularity is lost, meaning is murdered, its lifeblood drained out to leave only meat.

geo wrote:In the prologue, Dennett says: "Evolutionary thinking is all very well if you’re explaining the efficient wing of the albatross or the elegant nest of the weaverbird, but keep your dirty Darwinian hands off my “Ode to a Nightingale.”

Well, indeed, keep them off. Dennett wants to argue (he is interested in AI, remember) that mechanism gradually intrudes its explanatory hands into the realms we had assigned to mind. As if "sufficient complexity" is the only matter of interest. Very shallow.

What is missing is the sense of aspiration which forges such an "Ode to a Nightingale." Explaining that aspiration as a result, say, of biological forces pushing males to compete for the attention of females externalizes it: it removes the drama of living within the aspiration itself. To think that the poet "just wanted to get the girl" is so reductionist as to impoverish life (not to mention its implications for poetry by women.) An interesting point, a piece of our understanding of mechanism, but never to be mistaken for an account of the reality being analyzed.

The way this was presented to me in my school days was a colleague explaining that she detested "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." Why? I asked. "It reads like 'Here is a symbol. Now the symbol will symbolize. Now you will be asked to think about what is symbolized, as the symbol expands its symbolic role'." When particularity is lost, meaning is murdered, its lifeblood drained out to leave only meat.

There is a whole lot to comment on in what you've said! Having just a couple of minutes now, I'll refer to the universality idea in literature, whereby the writer has appealed across time and culture to human beings who would appear not be be living the same lives as the writer did. But the connection is made, and often (usually, always?) in a seeming paradox the reason is that the writer has nailed down some particularity, showing perhaps that the particular will always (?) be the road to the universal. Or maybe this is not a good generalization. I think of Shakespeare's sonnet "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," which though anthologized everywhere is certainly less particularized than "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame," one less popular due to its savage rawness, and one that does not necessarily make a reader say, "Me, too." Yet is the latter poem not the higher achievement of art, precisely because it does seem to issue from a personality and be entirely genuine and frank?

Symbolism would seem to have force only if flesh and blood are laid as the foundation. That might explain the failure of JLS. Your friend put the whole matter very well.

DWill wrote:. . . I'll refer to the universality idea in literature, whereby the writer has appealed across time and culture to human beings who would appear not be be living the same lives as the writer did. But the connection is made, and often (usually, always?) in a seeming paradox the reason is that the writer has nailed down some particularity, showing perhaps that the particular will always (?) be the road to the universal.

I think this is the power of literature, that it connects us as human beings, sometimes over many centuries. Such is the case with someone like Shakespeare, who still resonates with us four hundred years later, although even he is showing the tint of age. I really enjoyed Humphrey's passage because it highlights the crucial difference between objective knowledge, illuminated by science, and subjective meaning, provided by the arts. Shakespeare touches on the human condition and helps us explore common human values that transcend culture, which is why the Bard still resonates with us, and connects us emotionally as human beings.

Now, if Darwin had never come along, someone else would have connected the dots of evolution—as Alfred Russel Wallace did—and to some extent Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus. But there's a certain magnificence in how splendidly Darwin did connect those dots. As such, we pay homage to the philosophers, scientists, and artists of yesteryear because those are the shoulders our current philosophers, scientists, and artists are standing on. As Harry says, we might not choose to read Chaucer much these days, but we still owe a debt of gratitude to him and others, who remain beacons of light through the murkiness of time.

DWill wrote:I'll refer to the universality idea in literature, whereby the writer has appealed across time and culture to human beings who would appear not be be living the same lives as the writer did. But the connection is made, and often (usually, always?) in a seeming paradox the reason is that the writer has nailed down some particularity, showing perhaps that the particular will always (?) be the road to the universal.

Particularity has more than one virtue. The first that comes to my mind is "realism." Life is full of particulars, and without lifting out some particulars, the hazy globular remains have no sense of real life to them.

The second to my mind is "complexity." In a book about a painting, "The Girl with the Pearl Earring," author Tracy Chevalier has Vermeer ask the clever model to note the colors she actually sees in a complex shimmer of colors (water? oil on water? I forget the context.) The girl sees, to her own surprise, that she sees a greenish patch within a red (?) field. Vermeer explains that seeing what your eye really sees is not an easy trick. The mind glosses things to make them all one color. The simplifications provided by the brain need to be unpicked to get at life as it is lived.

Similar to realism, but going in a kind of opposite direction. The first is the realism of attention fixing on things, the second is the hidden aspect of reality in containing too many things to actually fix on. I'm guessing that the mind has to move in both directions: toward "the telling detail" and away from "trying to know how things work", each at some point in the process of "suspension of disbelief" or particularity will be unable to do its work.

DWill wrote: Or maybe this is not a good generalization. I think of Shakespeare's sonnet "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," which though anthologized everywhere is certainly less particularized than "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame," one less popular due to its savage rawness, and one that does not necessarily make a reader say, "Me, too." Yet is the latter poem not the higher achievement of art, precisely because it does seem to issue from a personality and be entirely genuine and frank?

Well, appealing to more people has never been a reliable indicator of quality! But "richness of emotional honesty" is certainly a wonderful quality, and though it has less crowd appeal than "richness of emotional affirmation", they surely both need some particularity to come alive. An interesting comparison. Makes me want to go exploring the Bard.

geo wrote: I think this is the power of literature, that it connects us as human beings, sometimes over many centuries.
I really enjoyed Humphrey's passage because it highlights the crucial difference between objective knowledge, illuminated by science, and subjective meaning, provided by the arts. Shakespeare touches on the human condition and helps us explore common human values that transcend culture, which is why the Bard still resonates with us, and connects us emotionally as human beings.

Two comments. One, "connection" is said to be the essence of religion, by some commentators. "ligio" is the root of ligament and liaison. Which suggests that literature (with origins in the tales around the fire and in the religious festivals of ancient Greece) and art in general, is gradually becoming the linking force, the source of feelings of commonality, in modern culture.

Second, it is interesting how particularity makes this happen. Richard Rorty puts forward the idea of narrative as a source of empathy, a powerful observation that goes back at least to Tolstoy's observation that the noblewoman was reduced to tears by the sight of a peasant's plight on stage even while her footman froze to death waiting by her carriage outside the theater.

geo wrote: As Harry says, we might not choose to read Chaucer much these days, but we still owe a debt of gratitude to him and others, who remain beacons of light through the murkiness of time.

I think Humphrey chose Chaucer and Shakespeare precisely because they are considered irreplaceable treasures by at least a minority of informed people. Even though we don't read Chaucer today, the Canterbury Tales and "Troilus and Cressida" are considered to be masterpieces. What if Humphrey had chosen, instead of Chaucer's work, something else from the period, such as Gower's Confessio Amantis. No one but a few scholars pays any attention to it today, but it's still a unique and irreplaceable product. I would nevertheless surely be in favor of losing it over The Origin of the Species, even though I believe that natural selection would have been elucidated by someone else.

Dennett appears to think that in all matters of culture, Darwinian evolutionary concepts apply, but I'm closer to thinking that in regard to Shakespeare, Dickens, Keats, Picasso, et al, they're irrelevant. He's good at showing how ideas gathered force from many sources in "Design Space" and thereby developments such as natural selection acquired some inevitability and became standardized and reduced. He concedes that no such standardization and reduction occurred in the works of Shakespeare (indeed, that fact accounts for their high value), but I get the feeling that he does think that Darwin's dangerous idea lays claim to "Ode to a Nightingale." I don't think it really does. We can talk all we want about antecedents to Keats's themes, borrowings, and stylistic influences--and this is all interesting--but it doesn't give us a new theoretical base, doesn't enable us to see the poem in different ways. The selection involved in Keats's composition is not, really, very much like natural selection.

DWill wrote:No one but a few scholars pays any attention to it today, but it's still a unique and irreplaceable product. I would nevertheless surely be in favor of losing it over The Origin of the Species, even though I believe that natural selection would have been elucidated by someone else.

I guess my strongest reaction to this question is the artificiality. I am fine with giving more attention to cultural artifacts like the Eiffel Tower which embody choices and creative aspiration than to discoveries of "inevitable" principles. But too often those kinds of differences get turned into stark and highly reductionist "forced discarding": what book would you take with you to a desert island, etc.

And yet I have to admit that particularity is all about that exact kind of forced discarding. You can only say the poem one way, because there is no room for two versions. The exceptions, like cover versions of a song which manage to compete with the original, prove the rule. You could list on the fingers of one hand (there we go again) the songs which have two different versions which both are known by the general public.

So I guess the business about the library of Babel is not entirely useless. We do want to know what is up with particularity - when "all possible versions of the same essential thing" follow the rules of prose, in which "synonyms" for functional units can be substituted, and when they follow the rules of poetry, so that any change produces a qualitatively different thing.

In footnote 6 of chapter 5 Dennett refers to a game of seeing how large an effect can be created by a single typographical change. It's kinda fun: "Who woods these are, I think I know, his house is in the Village, though." "Am I my brothel's keeper?" and, following Hobbes, "the wife of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short." The substitutions are hardly "synonyms" but they do demonstrate a kind of incongruous "closeness".

DWill wrote:Dennett appears to think that in all matters of culture, Darwinian evolutionary concepts apply, but I'm closer to thinking that in regard to Shakespeare, Dickens, Keats, Picasso, et al, they're irrelevant. He's good at showing how ideas gathered force from many sources in "Design Space" and thereby developments such as natural selection acquired some inevitability and became standardized and reduced. He concedes that no such standardization and reduction occurred in the works of Shakespeare (indeed, that fact accounts for their high value), but I get the feeling that he does think that Darwin's dangerous idea lays claim to "Ode to a Nightingale."

Rorty (I am reading him for another purpose) seems to claim that there is a fundamental difference between studying something for which nature makes the final arbitration, like science, versus something for which nature cannot decide for us. The latter is like utopian politics, he claims, which, in the aftermath of the French Revolution treated the space of possible political systems as the whole range available for human aspiration. If we can imagine it, we can propose choosing it.

In subsequent chapters Dennett is going to get into this issue, looking at whether practical limits on what is "possible" must be taken to constrain what is "possible" to the imagination. Is it "possible" to get to a regime in which all corporations are run as political institutions? Or are the forces of reaction too strong, and the people who run things through corporations too smart and influential to allow such a change? Or, more fundamentally, is such a system so unworkable that no society would tolerate it for long? The "ought and can" variation on "ought vs. is" again.

DWill wrote:I don't think it really does. We can talk all we want about antecedents to Keats's themes, borrowings, and stylistic influences--and this is all interesting--but it doesn't give us a new theoretical base, doesn't enable us to see the poem in different ways. The selection involved in Keats's composition is not, really, very much like natural selection.

I very much agree that the selection processes involved are very different, but I think that may be your question, not his. I think Dennett's interest in the matter may be limited to whether there is a physical process involved in creating such a sublime piece of art, or whether it is necessary to evoke a force of "mind" which cannot be accounted for materially.

I find that materiality question pretty stale. Even when you morph it into AI, so that the question becomes, "Can we program a computer to produce poems with the force and beauty of "Ode to a Nightingale"?" I find myself turning to "should we?" long before "can we?" is settled. But we have this sneaking suspicion that the two are related intimately.

Harry Marks wrote: In subsequent chapters Dennett is going to get into this issue, looking at whether practical limits on what is "possible" must be taken to constrain what is "possible" to the imagination. Is it "possible" to get to a regime in which all corporations are run as political institutions? Or are the forces of reaction too strong, and the people who run things through corporations too smart and influential to allow such a change? Or, more fundamentally, is such a system so unworkable that no society would tolerate it for long? The "ought and can" variation on "ought vs. is" again.

Thanks for all of your comments, by the way. In the first sentence above, are you thinking of Chapter 6, "Threads of Actuality in Design Space," where Dennett talks about "forced moves in Design Space," wherein vision or a bilateral arrangement of a body, for example, may have emerged just because they were bound to? Faint echoes of purpose, or at the very least of non-randomness?

Chapter 6 had some salient points for me. I wonder if it's time to go there. I don't want to get too "random" in my own process with this book.