|
|
Don't Constrain my Laws, Danny!
SS51000 (SS51@NEMOMUS.BITNET)
Wed, 13 Sep 1995 14:31:04 CDT
D. Yee's suggestion that there is a "consensus" that biological species
are individuals (made up of a theoretically infinite number of
individuals of a lower-order kind, presumably?) rather than classes
sounds most peculiar; though he, Hull, and Ghiselin are "free"--as much
as anyone is--to hold peculiar beliefs. However, I object most
strenuously to his trying to confine the scope of the lawlike
generalization that, in the absence of inhibiting factors, population
growth leads to proportional increase in the number of societies, to the
"small (round,blue) barrel" to which humans remain more or less confined
so far. No! I definitely mean this law to apply to all human beings,
past, present, and future, on this or any other planet, in this or any
other universe. Same goes for the Spencerian law linking
structural-functional differentiation to social growth. Don't fence in
my lawlike generalizations; either give an exception, expose them as
unfalsifiable, or, failing that, accept them at least tentatively--which
,after all,is the only way we should accept any scientific laws anyway.
--Bob Graber
|