Comments on Christopher Austin and Anna Marmodoro's Essay (2018) "Structural Powers"

By Razie Mah

Christopher J. Austin and Anna Marmodoro publish chapter 7 in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science (edited by William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons and Nicholas J. Teh, 2018, Routledge Press, New York, pages 169-183). The full title is "Structural Powers and the Homeodynamic Unity of Organisms".
The nature of the scientific biological experiment, where one collects samples from a variety of creatures and posits that the results apply to one, ideal creature, conjure a subtle philosophical problem. This problem points to the importance of a metaphysical noumenon, which cannot be objectified as its phenomena. If a noumenon does not exist, how can its phenomena exist?
However, the problem does not end there. What if one has obtained observations and measurements of a phenomenon, but cannot clearly identify the noumenon, the ideal entity, that must give rise to these phenomena? Surely, natural philosophy must enter the picture, because gathering more data simply does not resolve the issue. Do observations of phenomena guarantee the existence of (what must be the corresponding) noumenon?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Dec 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781942824961

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

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Comments on Christopher Austin and Anna Marmodoro's Essay (2018) Structural Powers

By Razie Mah

Published for Smashwords.com

2020

Notes on Text

Christopher J. Austin and Anna Marmodoro publish chapter 7 in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science (edited by William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons and Nicholas J. Teh, 2018, Routledge Press, New York, pages 169-183). The full title is Structural Powers and the Homeodynamic Unity of Organisms.

The authors argue that science focuses on phenomena, which pertain to the here and now, while taking for granted the fact that living entities maintain integrity through time. They argue that biologists need to admit to a metaphysical aspect, a structural power, that keeps a single life alive.

This proposition is examined using the tools of the triadic structure of judgment, the category-based nested form and, most importantly, the dyadic structure of Peirce's category of secondness. Structural power belongs to the noumenon, not its phenomena.

This commentary is then followed by a presentation of provisional findings in regards to the complementarity between Aristotle's natural philosophy and Peirce's category-based nested form.

‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.

Prerequisites: A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction, Comments on Jacques Maritain's Book (1935) Natural Philosophy

Recommended: Comments on Daniel De Haan's Essay (2018) Hylomorphism and the New Mechanist Philosophy..., Comments on William Jaworski's Essay (2018) Psychology Without a Mental-Physical Dichotomy, Comments on Janice Breidenbach's Essay (2018) "Action, Animacy, and Substance Causation

Table of Contents

What Say You?

Say What?

Say Structural Power

The Intangible Power of Structure

Implications

Provisional Summary: Aristotle

Provisional Summary: Mechanical Philosophy

The Provisional Identification of a Problem

What Say You?

0001 Is there an explanatory gap in contemporary biology?

In this tour de force, filled with sculpted sentences of immense mereological complexity, philosophers Christopher Austin and Anna Marmodoro answer, Yes.

What secures, metaphysically, an organism's continued persistence over time?

The answer?

Structural power.

Say What?

0002 First, what is mereological complexity?

Mereology is the study of the way that parts constitute the whole.

Complexity has a problem. In order to examine the functioning of the parts, one typically has to break apart the whole.

0003 For a sentence, the process may be painful, especially in regards to sentences chiseled by these authors.

For a living creature, the inquirer must... um... kill it. Sometimes,