Kirt:
>>I find those very ideas making a big comeback in the form of evolutionary
>>psychology and (to a lesser developed degree) Darwinian medicine. Are these
>>new fields unknown so far in Europe?

Denis:
>>Evolutionary psychology, Darwinian medicine : new field ? Just old stuff
>>with new scientific packaging. That's it ! Everything has been said Kirt. E
>>V E R Y T H I N G ....Thousands of men have pragmatically  pondered over
>>similar  problems during the past decades and centuries.

>Kirt:
>And the Chinese invented gunpowder for fireworks instead of bullets. And
>the Greeks knew the earth was round and went around the sun (or something
>like that). But the difference is what is made of the idea--its _utility_
>at that time. One could argue an idea is always of the same potential
>usefulness regardless of century or millenia, but I don't consider it so
>myself. On a personal level, we may come across an idea (say, grains are
>problematic) but for some reason it only becomes useful information (that
>is, we act on the idea) when other (undefined) factors are in proper
>alliance.

Denis
What you are saying on the necessity of theories being in resonance (or in
consonance) with one's day to day experience before one actually GETS to
understand what he/she has read, is very important. I don't think Burger
understood all of what he was reading right-a-way. He simply started the
story of the re-discovery of instinct at the time he actually got to
understand what was so important that he hadn't understood so far. But IMO
he would never have persevered if  hadn't found a very convincing guidance.
This guidance obviously is  not mentionned in La guerre du Cru .
Mr Tu listed the other day a number of breaktroughs that were necessary
before Burger could  complete "his" theory of food  instinct. IMO one of the
greatest theoretical stumbling block is  missing in his list : the
realization that mechanical denaturation is, from a theoretical point of
view ,  as baffling as the cooking of  foods. He could have gotten this idea
reading  Clara Davis introductory paragraph between the lines ( or  any
other author) , but he  might  as well have found it all by himself,  or a
combination of the two ( self experimentation + reading souvenir = Eureka )

                                *          *    *       *
Now for the history of the pragmatic idea of using one's senses of smell and
taste  as a personal guidance, you would be very hard put to demonstrate
that its "utility" was not clearly asserted a long time ago. Thanks to the
great english empiricists  who never considered  Descartes' metaphysics
seriously, the idea of instinct as a safe guide was preserved from oblivion,
following its reappraisal by the great Humanists of the Renaissance  In this
respect  we are strongly endebted to  Locke,  Hume, Shafesbury and all the
savants of the Royal Society of London   who really strove to keep science
unharmed from the neocartesian temptatives to definitely get rid of the
"innate will of the senses". These neocartesians  were finally to impose
their rigid  views on french philosophy of science following Voltaire's
death and the radicalization of the French revolution which threw out of the
french university all the "pernicious  metaphysics" of christian erudites.
If any frenchman/woman  would simply begin to  realize how much our theories
actually run counter to the general  evolution  of ideas in France since the
French anticlerical Revolution took place, how foreign it is to  our
philosophy, to our medicine, to our science,  he wouldn't even start to
articulate  the fist letter of the word "instinct" in an "erudite"
discussion... The same thing applies to the modern history of the USA,
except that you were preserved from the general movement of secularization
of ideas/faculty up until 1900-1920, when the capitalist world understood
that all the trouble they were having  with the incipient consumer movement
(see the epic history of the fight for the Food and Drug law..) stemmed
partly from the theoretical support of denominatinal universities.... Why do
you think the capitalists suddenly favored the move to create
state-controlled universities in the US, while they never give a shit before
? Because they realized that it was too dangerous to leave scientific
research entirely in the hands of congregations...In parallel, they made
sure that the cost of "good science" would be raised up to a level where
independant research could not be funded by private means anymore. Clara
Davis financed  her experiments on instinct thanks to the generosity of
well-off citizens of the puritan Middle-West.

                                *       *       *       *
I guess Easter Monday  is time for reflection about the sense we want to
give to our lives. I'm so glad to be born a christian, not a buddhist nor a
muslim, that I want you to rejoice with me. I'll offer you a little sermon
from a former  American  divine. ( Kirt , you shouldn't feel crucified :
Scottish presbyterian/congregationalist scholars  were instrumental in
redefining the contours of empiricist philosophy after Descartes played
havoc with philosophy ...)

"...The organs of smell and taste are more especially the instruments of
instinct employed in the functions of respiration and alimentation, as
sentinels on the out-posts of the vital domain...Our organ of smell,
therefore , is constituted with fixed and precise relations to the
constitutional nature of the blood and other substances of the body, to the
general wants of the vital economy, to the functional powers of the lungs
and stomach within, and the fixed and precise relations to the qualities of
odours wihtout. So that, in a perfectly normal and undepraved state of the
organ, it detects the qualities of odors with the nicest accuracy, and
unerringly discriminates between what is good or salutary for the living
body, and what is baneful or injurious. Physiologists, judging from the
depraved condition of the human organs, universally assert that the
instinctive power of smell and taste is naturally far less keen and
discriminating in man than in many of the lower animals. But it is entirely
incorrect....( pages of apocalyptic description of how to baffle one's sense
of smell and taste  follow ).
...Improper substances are received into the vital  domain with more or less
repugnance of the instinctive powers at first, according to the character of
the substances, and according to the caution or excess of our incipient
transgressions, till the depravity is extended from the mouth trough the
whole body; and the mouth and stomach not only become reconciled to, but
exceedingly delight in the character and influence of teh most pernicious
substances, which either with hasty ravages spread ruin over our whole vital
doman and violently preicpitate us into the grave, or treacherously sap the
foundations of our constitution, and fil us with disquietude and feebleness
and disease, which terminate in ultimate death... ( I just lOVE  it...)
In a healthy and true condition of teh system, when the organ of taste is in
a perfectly normal and undepraved state, if substances designed by the
Creator for our aliment be brought, in the best and most appropriate
pristine condition, the gustatory qualities of the substances will afford us
the highest degree of gustatory aenjoyment which it ispossible in the nature
of things for the same substance to yield. Thus, if a perfectly ripe
strawberry, or peach, or any other kind of fruitsbe received into the mouth
and masticated our gustatory enjoyment, if our organ of taste is healthy and
undepraved, will be as great as the qualities of the particular substance
can make it. We cannot by any confectionary process make the qualities of
the ripe strawberry more delicious." ( I can't help... )
... Those therefore who seek for gustatory enjoyment in the artificial
preparations of culinary skill defeat their own object; for they, as a
general fact, necessarily diminish their gustatory enjoyment by such means
and circumscribe it to narrower and narrower limits, IN PROPORTION AS THEY
DEPART FROM THAT SIMPLICITY WHICH IS REQUIRED BY THE CONSITUTIONAL LAWS OF
NATURE..."

Alleluia !   Alleluia ! Alleluia !
Those were the days of the fierce combat between the "dry" and the "wet", a
time for prophets of health...
not a time for lukewarm  anti-dogmatists and tepid hair splitters.

I guess I was born too late.

Happy Easter to everybody.
Cheers
Denis