Toward an Openly Hermeneutical Paleontology

Fossil bones are part of the landscape. Digging exposes them but does not elucidate them. Radiometric and other dating techniques uncover their place in time and allow a particular imagined structure to take shape — perhaps an early form of australopithecine is imaginatively reconstructed — but the classification of an imagined structure is not the end of an explanation or understanding of the fossil bones. Paleontology is a science; it is also, however, a history. Transposing the past into the present, the paleontologist wants to say of his fossil reconstructions what Hamlet said of Yorick: I know him well. Thus theories concerning early hominids are a result of what might or perhaps even should be called paleontological hermeneutics: where the would-be texts are fossils and where, consequently, a sense of life, continuity, and wholeness needs to be fleshed out in order that the text be there to interpret, what is requisite is a grasping of existential as well as structural and functional significations. It is a matter then not only of explaining a certain sequence of events - why a certain change in joint structure was successful or how certain practices were preadaptive to later capacities, for example it is also a matter of understanding a whole — an individual, a living presence and the day to day actuality of that living form

Darwin’s empirical evidence

Darwin’s extensive writings may seem antiquated to current thinkers with their predilections for cognitive science, neuroscience, and analytic branches of philosophy. He showed that morphologies are not simply taxonomic distinctions that allow classification into species. They describe living animals, hence morphologies-in-motion: animate forms of life engaged in synergies of meaningful movement, all of which are testimony to animal sentience

\u27Man Has Always Danced\u27: Forays into the Origins of an Art Largely Forgotten by Philosophers

Philosophers have had comparatively little to say of the art of dance, a surprising fact given the range of people both inside and outside of dance who have claimed that \u27man has always danced.\u27 This essay attempts to substantiate this claim by an inquiry into the origins of dance, its focal attention being on the word always and any linkage to males deriving from that focal point of attention. It begins with evolutionary considerations in the form of courtship displays, behaviors finely and extensively described by Darwin, and goes on to consider displays by chimpanzees in particular. These considerations point toward pan-cultural as well as evolutionary origins. The essay proceeds to show how bipedality, a qualitative kinetics, rhythm, and play enter into and affirm evolutionary continuities and the pan-culturality of dance

Kinesthetic Memory

This paper attempts to elucidate the nature of kinesthetic memory, demonstrate its centrality to everyday human movement, and thereby promote fresh cognitive and phenomenological understandings of movement in everyday life. Prominent topics in this undertaking include kinesthesia, dynamics, and habit. The endeavor has both a critical and constructive dimension. The constructive dimension is anchored in Luria’s seminal notion of a kinetic melody and in related phenomenological analyses of movement. The dual anchorage stems from the general fact that kinesthetic memory is based on kinesthetic experience, hence on the bodily felt dynamics of movement, and on the particular fact that any movement creates a distinctive kinetic dynamics in virtue of its spatio-temporal-energic qualities. The critical dimension focuses on constructs that commonly anchor discussions of movement but bypass the reality of a kinetic dynamics, notably, Merleau-Ponty’s “motor intentionality,” and the notions of a body schema and body image. The pointillist conception of movement and the Western metaphysics that undergird these constructs is examined in the concluding section of the paper

Ruch – podstawa realności świata ożywionego

Whether in science or in art, choreographic strategies are grounded in movement. Thus, a kinetic dynamic is integral to choreographic strategies in both the pursuit of scientific knowledge about some phenomenon and in the creation of works of art, a kinetic dynamic that is tied to thinking in movement and to the qualitative dynamics of movement. In order to bring this foundational reality of movement to the fore, the chapter first details common practices and ways of thinking that are obstacles to its recognition, obstacles running from dictionary definitions to embodiments of all kinds. In the process of critically specifying these common practices and ways of thinking, the chapter shows how, on the basis of the inherent qualitative dynamics of movement, a dynamic congruency exists between emotions and movement and how in our everyday lives, alone and with others, we create synergies of meaningful movement. It in fact shows how both Buddhist expositions of mind and phenomenological analyses of consciousness are anchored in movement and in turn how and why talk of mirror neurons and embodied simulation are benighted scientific attempts to explain the experience of movement. The chapter then turns to paradigms of choreographic strategies in science and in art, the first detailing neuroscience research studies focusing on brain cell interactions, the second detailing Merce Cunningham’s description of his approach to choreographing and learning a new solo dance. In each instance – whether a matter of science or of art – movement and the practice of thinking in movement are at the core of the choreographic strategy.Udostępnienie publikacji Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego finansowane w ramach projektu „Doskonałość naukowa kluczem do doskonałości kształcenia”. Projekt realizowany jest ze środków Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój; nr umowy: POWER.03.05.00-00-Z092/17-00

Bewusstsein: Eine Naturgeschichte

This article shows how the proper question to answer concerning consciousness is not ‘how consciousness arises in matter’, but how consciousness is part and parcel of the evolution of animate forms. The article traces out just such an evolution by consideration of real life forms including bacteria and invertebrates. It vindicates the evolutionary thesis that external proprioceptive organs, as evidenced in their own right, were modified and internalized over time into kinesthetic organs, sustaining, in effect, a directly movement sensitive corporeal consciousness across virtually all forms of evolutionary life. The paper specifies significant consequences of the thesis having to do with the unconscious, with present-day focal studies of the brain that neglect a correlative natural history, and with the need to attend to corporeal matters of fact.L’article montre que la question appropriée en matière de conscience n’est pas « comment la conscience s’articule dans la matière » mais de quelle manière la conscience est-elle un élément de l’évolution des formes animées. L’article décrit justement cette évolution en examinant des formes de vie réelles, y compris des bactéries et des invertébrés. Il donne raison à la thèse évolutionnaire selon laquelle les organes proprioceptifs externes, en tant que tels, se sont transformés et intériorisés au fil du temps en organes kinesthésiques tout en maintenant de fait une conscience corporelle du mouvement sensible à travers quasiment toutes les formes de l’évolution de la vie. Le texte précise les conséquences significatives de la thèse concernant l’inconscient, sur des études actuelles centrées sur le cerveau qui négligent l’histoire naturelle corrélative, ainsi que sur le besoin de suivre les aspects corporels.In diesem Artikel wird gezeigt, dass die angemessene Fragestellung bezüglich des Bewusstseins nicht darauf abzielt, wie sich Bewusstsein in der Materie niederschlägt, sondern auf die Art und Weise, in der das Bewusstsein als fester Bestandteil zur Evolution der Lebensformen gehört. Die Verfasserin zeichnet eine solche Evolution nach, indem sie reale Lebensformen einschließlich Bakterien und Wirbellose berücksichtigt, und vertritt die evolutionäre These, dass externe propriozeptive Organe – wie anhand ihrer selbst nachgewiesen wurde – sich im Laufe der Zeit modifiziert und zu inneren kinästhetischen Organen gewandelt und so das motorisch sensorische Körperbewusstsein während des Bestehens aller möglichen evolutionären Lebensformen aufrechterhalten haben. Ferner spezifiziert die Autorin bedeutende Konsequenzen ihrer These, die sich zum einen auf das Unbewusste beziehen, des Weiteren auf aktuelle Brennpunktstudien über das Gehirn, bei der die korrelative Naturgeschichte in Abrede gestellt wird, sowie auf das Bedürfnis, sich mit körperbezogenen Tatsachen zu befassen

Pamięć kinestetyczna

[Kinesthetic Memory] This paper attempts to elucidate the nature of kinesthetic memory, demonstrate its centrality to everyday human movement, and thereby promote fresh cognitive and phenomenological understandings of movement in everyday life. Prominent topics in this undertaking include kinesthesia, dynamics, and habit. The endeavor has both a critical and constructive dimension