Date: Tue, 01 Aug 1995 15:51:48 -0600
From: Lisa Rogers <EQDOMAIN.EQWQ.LROGERS-AT-EMAIL.STATE.UT.US>
Subject:  biol/history, back to Carrol Cox


Howie addressed Carrol's view of invisible individuals quite well. 
If a group changes, mustn't individuals within it change as well?

As for the rest [bits appended below] I disagree with Carrol's
characterization of my views entirely.  I don't even think in those
terms, and I also hope to avoid such abstract generalizations.  I
prefer discussions and examples specific and concrete enough to at
least be talking about PP for instance, rather than "history" in
general.  BTW we probably have very different notions of what history
is, too.

Well, there are many many others who hold that "biology" as they see
it has no relevance to anything social or anything human [other than
a couple of Freudian "drives" perhaps].  I've seen several versions
of that position before, so I'm not surprised.  But the repeated
assertion that biology is allegedly this and that and "irrelevent" is
not enough to convince me.
 
A lot of folks are also not interested in my wish to investigate the
articulation of various approaches, but why should they if they are
already confident thay my approach is useless/irrelevant?  It only
makes sense, I suppose.

But I was not speaking biology in Cox' terms.  And I am also an
anthropologist, although I don't expect that to make a difference to
Cox.

Lisa 

>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>  7/31/95, 02:31pm >>>
...
    I think Lisa and I have different conceptions of the interchange
between biology and history, and hence different conceptions of when
and to what extent biological principles are of historical interest.
...
    For the biologist I assume the worlds of physics and chemistry
are (unchanging) givens, while biology is a realm of change.

... conceptions of biological change (with which Lisa is concerned)
have no real relevance for the social theorist. ...  

.... But, as biologists, they have nothing to say about (for
example)... 

    



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