Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Lonergan: Natur; "höhere" Gesichtspunkt; Ding -> erklärende Art / Gattung: Kombination von schemes of recurrance;

Kurzinhalt: ... Lonergan defined explanatory genera by noting that it is quite possible to have "distinct sets of conjugates" (i.e., the terms in explanatory relations), where the sets of conjugate may be related by higher viewpoints but not "logical operations" ...

Textausschnitt: 2.5 Higher Things

43b Just as the variables of explanatory correlations (such as p, V, T; or CytFe and X, and so on) can be combined into schemes of recurrence, so also schemes themselves can be added together in various ways. We have already seen an illustration of this when the turning flywheel (itself a scheme of recurrence of the most simple sort) was added to the Carnot cycle. There the connection between the two cycles was made as the drive shaft transformed the variable, angular momentum, into the variable, pressure, and conversely, pressure into angular momentum. In this section I would like to mention one principal way in which schemes can be added together, namely, explanatory genera/species; a second way, emergent probability, will be treated in the next section. (Fs)

44a In Insight Lonergan defined explanatory genera by noting that it is quite possible to have "distinct sets of conjugates" (i.e., the terms in explanatory relations), where the sets of conjugates may be related by higher viewpoints but not "logical operations" (1958: 255). Similarly, explanatory species are series of things with "higher systems which make systematic [in various ways] the coincidental aggregates" of events (263). For example, the oxidative phosphorylation cycles in a cell make systematic a portion of the vast aggregation of chemical transformations which happen to lie within a cell's membrane; their regularity results in a regular frequency of ATP; other "biological pathways" combine the ATP with other molecules in various sequences to yield still further systematized functioning (such as the cyclical synthesis of insulin proteins in a pancreas cell). The occurrence of the oxidative phosphorylation cycles, in turn, depend upon other cycles (such as the Krebs cycle) in which glucose, fatty acids, or proteins are broken down to supply energetic hydrogen atoms to the NAD coenzymes. The overall way in which oxidative phosphorylation cycles and other cycles are added together results in the distinctive pattern of functioning of this or that "species" of cell. Introduce different cycles, or combine the same cycles in different ways, and you will have a different species. (Fs)

44b Now the addition of schemes to one another in this way adds great versatility to the combination. The Carnot cycle alone would have to depend upon the luck that compressions and forced expansions would be supplied at just the right times. The flywheel by itself would have to rely upon the highly improbable complete lack of friction. Likewise, the oxidative phosphorylation cycle requires a constant supply of electrons from NAD-H2; the cycles of intussusception and glucose break-down require supplies of ATP as conditions for their functioning. But together, these cycles can systematically supply conditions to one another which the coincidental aggregate would not supply with sufficient regularity. So it is that more complex and differentiated species have highly flexible, adaptive ranges of "natural" functioning, changing, and behaving-what Lonergan called a "flexible circle of ranges of schemes of recurrence" (1958: 459). (Fs)

44c Such combinations owe their flexibility proximately to the complex and differentiated way in which the diverse set of schemes are integrated together. But principally they owe this natural adaptiveness to the fact that explanatory correlations underpin the whole pattern of functioning. This is because the events in such cycles are intrinsically determined by explanatory conjugates, and the explanatory conjugates are intrinsically related in a determinate way to other variables. For example, p and V are related to one another in a complex but determinate manner by the Gay-Lussac law, such that when the temperature changes, they do not cease being related. Rather, their concrete relation shifts in accord with the changed secondary determinations of temperature. If this were not so, the cycle could not close. Likewise, CytFe+++ can function either as the recipient of energetic electrons, or as the product of 2CytFe+++X reacting with H(PO4)--, or in any of a whole host of other ways in accord with explanatory chemical correlations. The explanatory correlations form the heart of this fact. Finally, no less than natural adaptiveness, the "unnatural" demise of individual things and indeed of whole species is likewise explained by the explanatory correlations. When the conditions shift, crucial links in the cycle are blocked. If the oxygen supply is blocked, 2CytFe++X cannot give up its two electrons, and so cannot transfer an energized X to phosphate, nor resume its role in stage 1. (Fs)