Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Darwin's Earthworms
The story of Darwin's earthworm studies is a great example of what Pollan means by "reciprocity." But is this mutual interaction of nature and culture also an illustration of the hypothesis that "all is one"? This cycle of exchange between farmer and earth could describe the dynamic unity that Aristotle considers in Bk.1 Ch.2 of the Physics, but does this way of speaking place too many conceptual demands to be practical? On the other hand, would changing our speaking habits in the manner suggested by E-Prime be comparable to the sorts of adjustments we would have to make in order to develop the kind of practical control that would make reciprocity possible?
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I had a global studies class in high school in which the teacher outlawed 'to be' verbs in all our writing. Instead of saying "this country was colonized by the british....", we would instead write "The british colonized this country.." This way of writing provided a clearer understanding of the relationship between things. I think that making this sort of adjustment to the manner in which we discuss nature would definately help underscore reciprocity. However, to fully adopt the 'all is one' theory into our daily langauge, we would need to verbally explain down to every atom the reciprocity between everthing. It seems to me that we effectively use is as shorthand for describing the relationships between things that were not fully understood by the ancients and too lengthy explanations that we do understand today. For instance, to say that "the sky is blue" in E-prime style, we would have to say that 'Our atmosphere absorbs all waves of the visible light spectrum except blue, making the sky appear blue to the human eye.' its much easier to insert is and not explain all that, although understanding the explanation might be crucial to our understanding of the relationship between the sky and its blueness.
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