Nature, Freedom, and Responsibility: Ernst Mayr and Isaiah Berlin - eminent scientists from early 20 century - Abstract

Social Research, Winter, 2000 by Strachan Donnelley

The conception of an individual as a "populational being" connotes a sea change in systematic philosophical thinking. An essentialist conception of an individual--conceived either as a species-type or an individually unique being--easily lends itself to atomistic thinking: the individual conceived as essentially unrelated to the world, alone by itself, in need of no other (Descartes' definition of a substance). Not so with the concept of a populational individual, which is fundamentally and necessarily tied to the historical world and a life carried out among others. A particular world history lies behind the individual's very uniqueness of being, in particular its genome (its historically engendered informational DNA), which must interact with its specific present environment, including individual organic others, if its particular phenotypic body and behavior are to emerge. Moreover, for fundamental metabolic reasons, such as energy capture, an individual organism (for example, an animal), must enter into and interact with the world, and if it is to play an ongoing if modest role in evolutionary and ecological history, that is, reproduce and pass on genetic information, it cannot remain isolated, alone by itself (unless it belongs to an asexual population). In short, populational individuals are not only biologically unique and particular but fundamentally related to the historical, temporal, ongoing world.

Mayr's own philosophical worldview and world commitments here come to the fore. Mayr is fascinated with the diversity of individual populational species, ecosystemic and bioregional life; with life's past history, present and future. In biological explanation, philosophical interpretation, and moral reflection, he characteristically keeps a focused eye on particular, unique, individual organisms, always enmeshed within interacting populations and wider communities of life. He is fascinated by the plural and diverse ways a "tinkering" animate nature purposelessly pulls off its evolutionary twists and turns. He celebrates life's particularities and contingencies, its messiness and openness to unplanned novelty.

In all this Mayr remains naturalist, materialist, empiricist, and pragmatist. He will accept only naturalist (and historical culturalist) explanations, no matter how conjectural or open ended. He holds philosophical and theological rationalists--all a priori reasoners--at bay. They are at bottom essentialists, ill-begotten children of Plato. Yet he equally staves off crude reductionists, materialists, and determinists and insists on the central and ongoing importance of scientific and philosophical speculation (hypothesis making) held open to empirical refutation. (There are no guarantees of truth.) Finally, he insists on the importance of conceptual clarification in exploring the complex fundamental facts of worldly life. For example, he draws a sharp distinction between cosmic teleology and "teleonomy," the informational programs of DNA that guide organic development and behavior (Mayr, 1991: 67). These genetic programs can be closed (hardwired) or open ended, that is, amenable to modification or learning through environmental, including cultural, interactions. He thereby blocks and repudiates cosmic teleology or goal directedness while leaving open the possibility, if not the empirical reality, of naturally circumscribed free will or choice (and thus responsibility) of organic individuals, including human beings with their historical communities and cultural information in particular (154 ff.).