Populations, typologies, and stereotypes

Ernst Mayr often asserted that Darwin's most unique and important insight (and thus his lasting contribution to biology) was a move from typological or essentialist thinking to populational thinking. As I think about the biological underpinnings of various worldviews it seems useful to ponder why our brains seem so prone to the kind of typological and essentialistic thinking that effectively blocks broader understanding. From an evolutionary standpoint, one might expect that typological thinking must confer certain advantages. Recent brain imaging studies with fMRI are consistent with this notion as they reveal that the typological patterns of thinking are energetically and metabolically more efficient than more nuanced and complex modes of understanding. Considering each experience as an isolated, individual event unrelated to prior experiences would be a pointless waste of cognitive resources. Experience based expectations make operations of our wetware more efficient...well ingrained habits of thought are metabolically cost effective.

This morning then, in that half-waking half-dreaming state that bridges sleep and wakefulness, I was immersed in realms of chaotic and ephemeral thoughts and feelings about typologies and stereotypes. In the shower, it occurred to mean that I didn't know anything about the etymology of the word stereotype, a situation I decided to change immediately. The Greek root stereo- actually means solid (not something associated with two channels of sound as I had naively assumed) and originally a 'stereotype' was a poured lead printing plate produced from a plaster mould itself derived from a galley of hand set type. Thus, a stereotype is a literally a fixed type, cast in 'stone' and used to produce identical copies. The image of typologies based on galleys of movable type seems to remove many of the negative connotations of the word in my mind.

This is important to me because parsing and comparing worldviews is itself a typological process after all! Stereotypes are literalist 'readings' of fixed 'texts' -- in contrast if our 'types' are 'handset' and moveable then some dynamic, organic evolvability is restored to our concepts. Such 'fuzzy typologies' are the key to understanding associational learning systems. Within the context of a given worldview such ambiguities are viewed as evidence of less-than-clear thinking. Within worldviews we are trained to eschew such wooliness and to pursue internal consistency and coherence. Unfortunately, though such efforts we lock ourselves into self-imposed stereotypies.

Seen in this light, supposed conflicts between religion(s) and science are actually a conflicts between rigidly stereotyping literalisms (of several varieties) and more elastic associational typologies constructed by individuals out of their own experiences. Moreover, scientific literalism is every bit as dangerous religious literalism. To educate then means to guide students to realms deeper than superfical literalisms toward an understanding of the more fluid and ambiguous associational typologies at the core of being. /dps