To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day. (Lao-Tsu)
The fundamental error of evolutionary epistemologies as they now exist is their failure to understand how much of what is 'out there' is the product of what is 'in there'. Organism and environment are co-determined. (Lewontin, 1983, p. 169)
The transmission of acquired characteristics brings about that acceleration of development, found in all spheres of human life, which may well be one of the causes of the decline of individual human civilizations after a certain period of time. (Lorenz, 1973, p. 173)
Our categories and forms of perception, fixed prior to individual experience, are adapted to the external world for exactly the same reasons as the hoof of the horse is already adapted to the ground of the steppe before the horse is born and the fin of the fish is adapted to the water before the fish hatches. ( Lorenz, 1941/1982, pp. 124-5)
[HOME] [NEXT]Most certainly, Hume was wrong when he wanted to derive all that is a priori from that which the senses supply to experience, just as wrong as Wundt or Helmholtz who simply explain it as an abstraction from preceding experience. Adaptation of the a priori to the real world has no more originated from 'experience' than has adaptation of the fin of the fish to the properties of water. (Lorenz, 1941/1982, p.125)