Posted by bob on April 9, 2000, at 12:47:38
In reply to Re: BIOLOGY or PSYCHOLOGY ?, posted by Scott L. Schofield on April 9, 2000, at 0:29:42
You know, I knew this biology teacher once who would, on the first day of class, say to his students:
"What does 'biology' mean? Okay, let's break it down. 'Bi' -- that means two. 'Ology' -- the study of. So, biology is the study of two things: plants and animals."
He was serious.
Anyway, creating a dichotomy such as biology vs psychology may be problematic in that (a) it falls back on the old Cartesian mind-body duality bugaboo, and so (b) goes back to far older philosophical mistakes (to Aristotle) by raising the questions of a First Cause. Who cast the first stone -- body or mind?
Reducing the problem to biology since, from a purely mechanistic point of view, psychology and mind are expressions of biological constructs, is also problematic in that this approach ignores super-biological constructs such as cultures and societies that have lives of their own outside of the sway of any biological construct to modify in any significant way (outside of such biological constructs as, say, Gandhi, Jesus, or Hitler). boB, you seem particularly tuned into the illnesses of our culture -- how well can you track the initial cause of these cultural illnesses back to a specific biological source?
just wondering,
bob
poster:bob
thread:29296
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000401/msgs/29435.html