Jason Tipton

In this paper, I speculate on imitation’s role in language development and, more significantly, on its connection to sexual selection. My analysis is grounded in an interpretation of Darwin’s Descent of Man . In addition to observing imitation’s role in language development according to the argument of the Descent , I explore the ability of human beings that allows for the imitation of both the beautiful and the terrible or repulsive. I suggest that humans, in their appreciation of the beautiful and formidable characters produced by a process of sexual selection, can appropriate these things in order to adorn themselves, thus imitating other non-human animals. This capacity points to a form of polymorphism manifest in human beings that is grounded in a psychological fluidity. Human beings, like birds, also have the power to use song in order to charm and challenge. Song and music provide the means by which imitation as seen in language development and sexual selection are intertwined, thus providing the important connection between the two main foci of my paper

This book provides a detailed analysis of Aristotle's Parts of Animals. It takes its bearings from the detailed natural history observations that inform, and in many ways penetrate, the philosophical argument. This analysis raises the question of how easy it is to clearly disentangle what some might describe as the "merely" biological from the philosophical. This book explores the notion and consequences of describing the activity in which Aristotle is engaged as philosophical biology. Do readers of Aristotle have in mind organisms like sea squirts (ascidians) or sea cucumbers (holuthurians) when trying to understand Aristotle's argument regarding plant-like animals? Do we need the phenomena in front of us to understand the terms of the philosophical argument in a richer way? The discussion of plant-like animals is important to Aristotle because of the apparent continuum between plant and animal life. Where does Aristotle draw the line? Plant-like animals bring this question into focus and demonstrate the indeterminacy of any potential solution to the division. This analysis of the Parts of Animals shows that the study of the nature of the organic world was Aristotle's way into such ontological problems as the relationship between matter and form, the interplay between form and function, and the heterogeneity of the many different kinds of being.

In the last fifty years or so there has been a tremendous renewal of interest in Aristotle's biological writings. As I understand it, this interest was motivated by at least two different sorts of researchers who had different assumptions and motivations. On the one hand there are the biologists, and chief among them, D'Arcy Thompson. On the other hand there are those who, in their study of Aristotle's philosophic work, have been forced to recognize that a significant portion of the corpus---more than one quarter of the total by most accounts---is devoted to these biological subjects and wish to make sense of how these musings are to be understood in light of the canonical works, e.g. the Metaphysics, Physics, De Anima, Nichomachean Ethics . Many point to David Balme as one of the principle sources of this interest in putting the biological works within a philosophical framework. The point is to understand better why Aristotle repeatedly turns to biological examples to clarify questions encountered in the study of physics or metaphysics; for "plants and animals are substances most of all" . One must understand Aristotle's philosophical biology at the same time as trying to understand his biological philosophy. ;The sign of this renewed interest is the recent appearance of numerous books and articles devoted to the study of Aristotle's biological writings. The study I am undertaking of Aristotle's Parts of Animals aims to contribute to this growing body of scholarship. Perhaps the easiest, yet the most significant, way to distinguish the contribution I think I can make is this. Most scholars believe that the PA is not really a book, that it does not form a whole that is coherent; hence, among the numbers of books and articles, there is not a treatment of the argument of the PA as a whole, as its arguments unfold. To understand the general sentiment regarding the status of the PA we do not have to look far; David Balme and others hold that PA I is a "string of papers" and that PA II--IV is largely independent from the argument of PA I. . In contrast to this position, I suggest that the argument of the PA can be seen as a whole, that the topics first touched upon in PA I are picked up, expanded, modified, and examined in greater detail in the course of the argument of the PA as a whole

One of the explicit objectives of Darwin's Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex was to explain cultural differences seen in human beings. Such an explanation, Darwin believed, was to rest upon an understanding of sexual selection. I examine the role that the beautiful plays within the mechanism of sexual selection as it works to differentiate isolated groups. It is suggested that an examination of the relationship between sexual selection and artificial selection — a relationship mediated by the beautiful — will illuminate key issues of the Descent as well as contemporary debates regarding the relationship between evolution and ethics. The beautiful, originally rooted in sexual selection, can become de-coupled from sexual selection and utilized in some selective process which is conscious