Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Scientific materialism is a mythology, and Wilson asserts that “the evo-
lutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.” It can be
“adjusted until it comes as close to truth as the human mind is con-
structed to judge the truth.” notes Wilson.
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Of critical importance is a discussion of matter, the ultimate ground-
ing—so to speak—of evolution. In Wilson's theory, matter is all that is,
it is also all that is needed to account for all activity—insect or animal,
private or social. For Wilson, matter is most creatively expressed in the
gene, the basic unit of heredity and “a portion of the giant DNA mole-
cule that affects the development of any trait at the most elementary
biochemical level.” Thus, we need to examine human nature through
biology and the social sciences. This will lead us to an understanding of
the mind “as an epiphenomenon of the neuronal machinery of the brain.
That machinery is in turn the product of genetic evolution by natural
selection acting on human populations for hundreds of thousands of
years in their ancient environments.”
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The Transcendent Potential of Matter
But is matter only matter, inert
particles interacting according to the laws of physics and/or chemistry,
or is there another level?
One traditional theory explaining the interaction of particles of matter
such as electrons and positrons is hylo-systemism, which as Wolter
explains, holds that “all bodies, or at least nonliving bodies, are com-
posed of elementary particles or hylons which are united to form a
dynamic system or functional unit.” In this context, system refers to “a
functional nature, possessing new powers.”
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When put into various
combinations or actualized under various conditions, these elementary
particles form new systems educed from the matter and the properties
of this new system. Wolter notes that they “are not simply the arith-
metical sum of the actual properties manifested by these hylons in
isolation for the property of any given system such as the nucleus or the
hydrogen atom . . . is rooted proximately in the new powers of the
respective system, powers which, though ultimately reducible to the two
or more hylons that function as essentially ordered causes, exist only
virtually in the individual hylons.”
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Consequently, the properties of individual particles seen in isolation
can never tell us the full range of these particles when combined into a
