Abstract
Parasites are creatures who survive at the expense of others. An evolutionary transition to symbiosis is not unusual and the dividing line is blurred. In any case, a distinction between two different species existing relatively independently of each other is assumed, as opposed to the internal relations of an organism. Thus, we may have a potentially fruitful model for the kind of interactionism and dualism represented by Popper. In his book, coauthored with Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, Popper in fact attributes characteristics of parasites to the self. Popper himself does not use the term, and presumably he would prefer to describe the relationship as symbiosis. But certainly we may assume that biological analogies would meet with his consent, since he explicitly claims a “biological approach”.
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© 1987 D. Reidel Publishing Company
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Pieper, R. (1987). The Self as a Parasite a Sociological Criticism of Popper’s Theory of Evolution. In: Schmid, M., Wuketits, F.M. (eds) Evolutionary Theory in Social Science. Theory and Decision Library, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4005-5_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4005-5_8
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