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SUMMARY:Natural history or psychology? Reading expressions and being read 
 in Darwin's science of interdependence - Ben Bradley (Charles Sturt Univer
 sity\, NSW)
DTSTART:20170220T130000Z
DTEND:20170220T140000Z
UID:TALK69766@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Edwin Rose
DESCRIPTION:Charles Darwin claimed to have been the first to approach 'the
  highest psychical faculties of man ... exclusively from the side of natur
 al history'. It was on grounds of his practice as a naturalist that Darwin
  distanced his own studies of agency from those of contemporaries who over
 tly styled their work as 'psychology' (Spencer\, Bain). What hung on this 
 distinction? And what was it Darwin took from studying the economy of natu
 re that he believed to illuminate mind and behaviour? Setting out from his
  crucial concept of 'social animals'\, I aim to show that natural history 
 meant something more and other to Darwin than evolutionary ancestry\, part
 icularly when studying human agency: namely\, the here-and-now of interdep
 endence. My case-study is of Darwin's methods for understanding the meanin
 gs of non-verbal expressions as residing in their recognition _by others_.
  His theory of blushing takes this form of recognition to a second level (
 I read you as reading me). This dynamic of higher-order or 'meta' recognit
 ion proves to be the central principle in Darwin's explanations for the pa
 ngs of conscience and for erotic attraction.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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