Where Do Forms Come From?
A conversation between Mike Levin and Iain McGilchrist
I hate that expression - don’t you? – ‘I’m so excited’ that, etc, etc …. Anything from EasyJet wetting itself over the privilege of seeing you onboard their luxurious planes, and so on, to meeting me next week for a purely management level discussion about things that don’t matter in the slightest, sub specie aeternitatis … But there are a few people with whom I do find it genuinely exciting to talk — let’s reclaim the word — ie, it really does provide an opportunity to exchange truly important ideas. And one of them is Michael Levin. I am therefore genuinely excited about a conversation we had couple of days ago, and which is now up on YouTube here:
Despite its title, this is at least the seventh conversation I have had with Mike (some also involving Richard Watson), and all can be discovered on the internet, and all were interesting to me.
The topic we are grappling with from our different standpoints is where do the forms that govern the evolution of everything - not just living beings, but beyond, although the question of forms in life is the most immediately remarkable and engrossing. I think there are differences between our positions, but they are so much less important than the points of contact. There are a lot of philosophical issues that follow from our latest exchange, but I hope it may be a starting point for some really deep and - yes, exciting - discussions and speculations.
Thank you, my readers.
I will be posting more on the utterly fascinating - even exciting - issue of the nature of life itself following this post.
NS Lyons
I expect many of you are reading and following NS Lyons already, but if you do not follow his writings, I do urge you to do so. I think he is one of the most astute cultural commentators of our age. I sent this post to a colleague who, I think, though the title disrespectful to Europeans, but I don’t think he spotted the way it both uttered Vance’s point of view and took a little distance on it at the same time. He is a subtle writer.
I am already a n admirer of Josef Pieper,
I have to say as an admirer of your writing that the subtle distance that Lyons was taking from Vance wasn't clear to me.
He says that Europe has been fighting an information war on the USA, yet is silent on the information war being waged against liberals from Russian actors at an industrial scale, nor how this is weaponised to give power to the far right. Nor how the US has turned on it's allies in favour of a clearly hostile power that threatens its own borders. What does Vance mean by free speech? Freedom to say anything to anyone at anytime? His administration doesn't seem at all keen on free speech they won't let dissenting voices speak at all and threaten physical reprisals if challenged - as witnessed obviously by not letting Zelensky speak, threatening universities if their students protest, and leaving thousands of troops unarmed overnight who they were previously supporting.
I've been thinking about your book and the way it focuses on paths to truth, and the need to do this to overcome the kind of postmodern nihilism where there is no truth only infinite subjective opinions. Vance and the administration he serves seems not interested at all in the truth and only interested in free speech where it gives the freedom to weaponised mis-truths half truths or lies. The kinds of confabulation you attribute to the left hemisphere seem highly present in this