Carolina QuotesParts and wholes evolve in consequence of their relationship, and the relationship itself evolves. These are the properties of things that we call dialectical: that one thing cannot exist without the other, that one acquires its properties from its relation to the other, that the properties of both evolve as a consequence of their interpenetration.
Richard Lewontin Connected to the Carolinas
Source
The Dialectical Biologist (1985), co-written with Richard Levins, Introduction, p. 3.
- year
- 1985
- locator
- p. 3
Cite this record
“Parts and wholes evolve in consequence of their relationship…” Richard Lewontin. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-799692DD0D. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/799692dd0d
More from Richard Lewontin
The division between those who try to learn about the world by manipulating it and those who can only observe it had led, in natural science, to a struggle for legitimacy. The experimentalists look down on the observers as merely telling uncheckable just-so stories, while the observers scorn the experimentalists for their cheap victories over excessively simple phenomena. In biology the two camps are now generally segregated in separate academic departments where they can go about their business unhassled by their unbelievers. But the battle is unequal because the observers' consciousness of what it is to do "real" science has been formed in a world dominated by the manipulators of nature. The observers then pretend to an exactness that they cannot achieve and they attempt to objectify a part of nature that is completely accessible only with the air of subjective tools.
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