[MD] From each... to each

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Arlo]
Professional biologists exist because their work is valued by others.  Amature
biologists exist because their work is valued by themselves.  (Dare I add that
you also knew that?)

[Arlo]
No, if I "know it", "it" certainly isn't this. "Biologists" exist because we
value Aristotelian classification. From the closing of Lila.

"Then LaVerne asked John, "What kind of dog is that?"

John thought about it and said, "That's a good dog."

LaVerne looked curiously at him for a moment and then looked down at the road.
Then the corners of her eyes crinkled and as they walked on Phaedrus noticed
she was sort of smiling and chuckling to herself.

Later, when John had left, she asked Dusenberry, "What did he mean when he said
'That's a good dog.' Was that just 'Indian talk'?"

Dusenberry thought for a while and said he supposed it was. Phaedrus didn't have
any answer either, but for some reason he had been as amused and puzzled as
LaVerne was.

A few months later she was killed in an airplane crash, and a few years after
that Dusenberry was gone too and Phaedrus' own hospitalization and recovery had
clouded over all memory of that time and he'd forgotten all about it, but now
suddenly, out of nowhere, here it was again.

For some time now he'd been thinking that if he were looking for proof that
"substance" is a cultural heritage from Ancient Greece rather than an absolute
reality, he should simply look at non-Greek­derived cultures. If the "reality"
of substance was missing from those cultures that would prove he was right.

Now the image of the raggedy Indian dog was back, and he realized what it meant.

LaVerne had been asking the question within an Aristotelian framework. She
wanted to know what genetic, substantive pigeonhole of canine classification
this object walking before them could be placed in. But John Wooden Leg never
understood the question. That's what made it so funny. He wasn't joking when he
said, "That's a good dog." He probably thought she was worried the dog might
bite her. The whole idea of a dog as a member of a hierarchical structure of
intellectual categories known generically as "objects" was outside his
traditional cultural viewpoint."

Arlo