MONDAY 'November 24, at 21 : Alessandro Perissinotto, writer, examines the rise of rational investigator figure in Edgar Allan Poe, coinciding with the release of the Origin of species.
Speech by Alessandro Perissinotto:
We start from the back cover of "The Origin of Species" .
There are three key words, and a fourth is visible in the background, as a goal. The three keywords are observation - hypothesis - intuition , while the goal towards which all three, the ultimate goal of observing, and intuition is the dell'ipotizzare search for truth, not truth itself, but the search for it. The truth is acquired static, given once and for all, finding it is dynamic and is subject to constant change, and this is really in line with the thinking of Darwin.
Search for the truth through observation, formulation of hypotheses and intuition, this is the knot that binds two wires apparently distant, that Darwinian evolutionism and that of crime fiction. It is to analyze this node This evening we are here.
Once you reach the top then, that the work raises the echo resounds throughout society, forms of thought, penetrating modes of thinking and habits of the people. Until, at some point, thought, action and imagination of the entire company complies to the point where innovation made famous from single, dramatic works, the works themselves, if extracted from their historical context , seem obvious, it seems impossible that it was necessary to write to establish a truth so obvious.
Our whole way of thinking has been and is directly or indirectly influenced by this book, I have taken the words of the back cover, to reaffirm that if any child today, more or less successfully, may declare that man descended from monkeys, it is because there was Darwin. Similarly, it is now obvious that we need to do objective research and surveys to ascertain the truth in cases of murder, but the time when Poe writes, this procedure is innovative.
then proceeds with an assertion that is perhaps less obvious than it seems: If you are here today to celebrate Darwin, it is because before Darwin, it was created in European society a cultural background that made it fertile ground on which L ' source rooted species. One of the last works of Darwin is titled " The formation of humus through the action of worms " here, I would take some time to puzzle those writers who have worked to create this small worm humus.
In a passage from his autobiography, Darwin even welcomes this because of his poor health, having moved away from the distractions of entertainment, it drew ever closer observation of nature, which is the true source of happiness. As Darwin, Zadig also seeks happiness in the observation of nature and as Darwin, but a century earlier, try to understand what he is not allowed to see, looking at what his eyes can peer over and reasoning. But the reasoning is deductive Zadig and Darwin?
Try to understand so a deduction in accordance with the American philosopher Charlie Sanders Peirce, an almost contemporary of Darwin.
"A deduction is an argument whose Interpretant represents it as belonging to a general class of possible arguments precisely similar to each other, such that experience in the long run, most of those whose premises are true will be true conclusions "
Here's an example of deduction: if I put a lot in 10 yellow balls, those that will color the ball out of the bag?
Rule: all the balls in this bag are yellow.
Case: This ball is from this bag
Results: This ball, although I do not see it, is yellow.
But now we do another example: A
literary character here has forgotten his magnifying glass, the pipe cleaners and a syringe.
Which character is it?
Answer: Sherlock Holmes.
We have observed, we have formulated hypotheses, we guessed.
But we have not made any deduction, because Contrary to the balls in the bag, all of which were yellow, not all those leaving syringes, brushes for pipe and magnifying glasses are Sherlock Holmes. Yet, the answer was also the most plausible. So we had an abduction.
"abduction is a method to make a general prediction without any positive assurance that it will be valid or in a particular case or generally. His justification is that it is the only possible hope to regulate our future conduct rationally, and that the induction from past experience is strongly encouraged us to hope that it will be successful in the future "
Zadig, Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Roulettabille not allege, nor throw a guess: speculate on the solid basis of observations as precise and accurate reasoning. CSI investigators, process-if scenarios before determining the exact dynamics of the murder, and that we see in flashbacks, Dr. House writes on the blackboard the differential diagnosis. The same thing is
Darwin.
I read a passage of still Peirce:
"Abduction is the process of formation of explanatory hypotheses. It is the only logical operation which introduces a new idea, as the induction does nothing but determine a value and the deduction develops the consequences necessary for a pure hypothesis. Deduction proves that something must be; abduction suggests that something may be. "
Like any good detective, Darwin was never assertive, use the conditional" could ". Darwin knows that the advancement of science arises from the introduction of new ideas in the form of hypotheses. The deduction does not add anything new: you already know a priori that all the balls were yellow. The assumptions used to investigate to ascertain something that is not yet known, and are used to scratch the strength of ready-made truth. The dogmatic truth of biblical creationism, the inescapable truth of the confession extracted under torture.
The method of torture is not abductive, is, at most, deductive: the confessions of the tortured test the thesis of the torturer. So the detective story is also the son of the reflections on the crimes and penalties Cesare Beccaria .
And with this we see that the little worms that have formed the bedrock of the Origin of Species, set off from afar. Darwin is a debtor of all those who worked the doubt rather than certainty and among them there are also the perpetrators of crime. Who, moreover, were not slow to pay him homage: in 1887, Emilio De Marchi writes The priest's hat, considered the world's first novel Italian yellow. Well, in this work, which began as a popular soap opera, De Marchi outlines a protagonist who is called "Darwinian materialist" and do not hesitate to mention "Charles Darwin". Here is the beautiful flower grew humus of the novel is itself a conundrum for other police humus and above for other reflections. For the pursuit of truth, beyond the misinformation, the dogmas of the things where you have to believe, is always present.
Related Reading:
- Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species Charles Darwin
- : Formation of topsoil by the action of earthworms with comments about their costumes
- Edgar Allan Poe: The Murders in the Rue Morgue (ed. various)
- Voltaire: Zadig (ed.varie)
- Cesare Beccaria: On Crimes and Punishments
- Emilio De Marchi, the priest's hat
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