http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer
assages by Spencer.
http://tinyurl.com/okdr8c ".......This process, so obvious and familiar, I name because it has a meaning which needs emphasizing. For we here see that in the struggle for existence among societies, the survival of the fittest is the survival of those in which the power of military cooperation is the greatest; and military cooperation is that primary kind of cooperation which prepares the way for other kinds. So that this formation of larger societies by the union of smaller un-united societies by the united larger ones, is an inevitable process through which the varieties of men most adapted for social life, supplant the less adapted varieties......"
".....The behaviour of Arab boatmen on the Nile displays, in a striking way, this inability to act together. When jointly hauling at a rope, and beginning to chant, the inference one draws is that they pull in time with their words. On observing, however, it turns out that their efforts are not combined at given intervals, but are put forth without any unity of rhythm. Similarly when using their poles to push the dahabeiah off a sand-bank, the succession of grunts they severally make, is so rapid that it is manifestly impossible for them to give those effectual united pushes which imply appreciable intervals of preparation. Still more striking is the want of concert shown by the hundred or more Nubians and Arabs employed to drag the vessel up the rapids. There are shoutings, gesticulations, divided actions, utter confusion; so that only by accident does it at length happen that a sufficient number of efforts are put forth at the same moment. As was said to me, with some exaggeration, by our Arab dragoman, a travelled man—“Ten Englishmen or Frenchmen would do the thing at once.............”
On May 16, 7:07 pm, "Dr. Acula" <jerryd...@gmail.com> wrote:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3... "....Again succession by fixed rule was rigorously adhered to; and again seclusion entailed loss of hold on affairs. “High descent was the only qualification for office, and unfitness for functions was not regarded in the choice of officials.” Besides the Shôgu’s four confidential officers, “no one else could approach him. Whatever might be the crimes committed at Kama Koura, it was impossible, through the intrigues of these favourites, to complain of them to the Seogoun.” The result was that “subsequently this family…gave way to military commanders, who,” however, often became the instruments of other chiefs....."
Here "unfitness" means unsuitable and thus fitness by Spencer meant suitable. The issue is the concept, what concept does John Wilkins have on his blog with "fitness". Back in 1876 Spencer was a very successful author, to a reader then the term "survival of the fittest" when reading Origin of Species was interpreted in terms of the passages quoted. And one can clearly see the mythologicalness surrounding all this as pointed out by
http://lostborders.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/the-origin-of-species-as-...
The Origin of the Species is “myth,” in the way Mircea Eliade uses the word myth – a story that tells how “a reality came into existence.”
Eliade wrote: “To tell how things came into existence is to explain
them and at the same time indirectly to answer another question: Why did they come into existence? Eliade explains: “The why is always implied in the how — for the simple reason that to tell how a thing was born is to reveal an irruption of the sacred into the world, and the sacred is the ultimate cause of all real existence.”
The Origin of the Species is, in this sense, a religious story. Although Darwin’s intention was to tell a story that did not involve God, it makes us think of God, not just because it reminds us of Genesis, but because its genre is myth.
In the story told in The Origin of the Species, the species have emerged through a long struggle for survival. The struggle theme is also found in the ancient near eastern myths in which the cosmos emerged from a struggle between a god and a great sea monster, the god representing order and the sea monster representing chaos. Through the course of history, that myth became part of the western mosaic of myths and became a paradigm that has guided our attitudes and actions, which is what Eliade said myths do. The Origin of the Species is the latest retelling of that myth, but in the retelling the paradigm has changed.
In the new myth, order is not imposed on chaos by a god, but by the organisms of life themselves. The organisms have fought the battle themselves. This is the paradigm that guides our attitudes and actions in modernity.
The ancient myth explained the existence of an agrarian world ruled by kings and queens and emperors. The myth retold in The Origin of the Species explains an industrial world ruled by democracies and free markets. In the retold myth, we do not fight sea monsters, but each other and the world is not one given to us by a god, but one we have won or made for ourselves.
Notes on aristotle[]
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1394&chapter=101599&layout=html&Itemid=27 Thus, so far is it from being true that Time, as conceived by us, is a form of thought; it turns out, contrariwise, not only that there can be thoughts while yet Time has not been conceived, but that there must be thoughts before it can become conceivable.
§ 69. The necessary dependence of Time upon Motion is a doctrine taught by Aristotle, who asks—“How can time be when motion is not?” and who argues that, “if time is a numeration of motion, and if time be eternal, motion must be eternal.”
Whether or not the objective relation between Time and Motion be, as is here asserted, indissoluble; it is beyond question that, subjectively, the two cannot be separated. Motion, as understood by the developed mind, is inconceivable without an accompanying conception of Time; and Time can be disclosed to us only through Motion. Though, when once we have accumulated a stock of ideas that can follow one another through consciousness even when the senses are in repose, we can recognize Time apart from any perceived motion; yet, it needs but to consider that all these ideas were gained through motion—that had neither we nor surrounding things ever moved, we should have had no ideas at all, and therefore no conception of Time—to see clearly that Time is knowable only through motion. As, according to the foregoing analysis, our notion of Time is the notion of relativity of position in the series of states of consciousness; as this presupposes a series of such states; as this presupposes successive changes of state; it follows that that which is required to produce changes of state, is that through which Time is disclosed. And it needs but a little reflection to see, that without motion, subjective or objective, no changes of consciousness could ever have been generated.
Respecting the perception of any particular portion of time (or conception it might perhaps more strictly be called; seeing that the majority of its constituents are represented, rather than presented, to consciousness) it only needs saying that it consists in the classing of the relation of position contemplated, with certain before-known relations—the cognition of it as like such before-known relations.