Biology question

Question

How much does our innate need to have everything organized affect our attempt to understand nature? How does our being an unusually large-bodied and extremely complex organism color the way we think about large-scale patterns in evolution? How does our own nature predispose us to think of everything having a purpose and every process as being directed at a particular goal? What are the greatest obstacles to our ability to see nature objectively?

Answer 1

Great questions Rose! I think a few of those questions, specifically the questions about our innate need to organize things and our thought processes regarding evolution, would be best answered by someone with a perspective on philosophy. I'll leave those two for someone else who has a better understanding of those subjects.

For your third question, from an evolutionary perspective we evolved to be goal-oriented and to give everything a purpose because we as a species, are inherently social and critical of others. We want to understand why things happen because we are the only species with such a high level of complex thought and critical thinking skills.

For your fourth answer, this could be answered from an approach to psychology known as top-down processing. Top-down processing is the idea that people perceive their surroundings based on their previous knowledge and experiences. Therefore, if we have any past relationships to the topic being analyzed, it impedes our ability to think objectively, which can lead to various types of bias. For example, this is why legal proceedings make sure to prevent a conflict of interest in their cases. These conflicts of interests can stand in the way of their objectivity and prevent the case from being solved impartially.

Hope that helped, and let me know if you have any other questions!