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Full download Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology Edited By: Daniel J. Nicholson And John Dupre file pdf all chapter on 2024
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/5/2018, SPi
Everything Flows
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/5/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/5/2018, SPi
Everything Flows
Towards a Processual
Philosophy of Biology
Daniel J. Nicholson
and John Dupré
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/5/2018, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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First Edition published in 2018
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Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of this licence
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/5/2018, SPi
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Contributors ix
Foreword xi
Part I. Introduction
1. A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology 3
John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson
vi
Index 379
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Acknowledgements
The work leading to this volume is a central outcome of a grant from the European
Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme
(FP7/2007–2013)/ERC Grant Agreement 324186, on which JD was the Principal
Investigator and DJN was a Research Fellow. We are very grateful to the ERC for its
support. More specifically, the majority of the papers herein originated at the
workshop “Process Philosophy of Biology”, the first major event funded by the
grant, held in Exeter in November 2014. We would like to thank all the participants
in that event, which marked the first step on the road to this publication.
We must also thank Stephan Guttinger and Anne Sophie Meincke, the other two
Research Fellows on the project, who have been essential contributors to each stage of
the development of the project, both intellectually and practically. Additionally,
anyone who has run a large research project will know how important it is to have
a capable administrator, and we have been very fortunate to have Chee Wong in
that capacity. We are most grateful for her tireless contributions to the project’s
management.
Finally, we have had the privilege of inviting a very substantial number of
colleagues from around the world to workshops, colloquia, and other kinds of
collaborative research visits. We will not try to name them, if only because we
would surely leave someone out, but we are grateful to them all. More even than is
obvious from the many authors who have contributed to the volume, this is an
output that has been influenced by an extended international and interdisciplinary
academic community.
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Contributors
G A, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of
Exeter, Exeter, UK
R L A, Centre for Applied Philosophy of Science, School of Economics
and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway
A A, IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind, and Society, Department of
Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, San Sebastián,
Spain
E B, Institute of Biology Paris-Seine, Sorbonne University, Paris, France
A-S B, Center for Science and Society, Departments of the Bio-
logical Sciences and Philosophy, Columbia University in the City of New York, New
York, USA
M B, Institute of Philosophy of Scientific and Technological Practice,
Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Rome, Italy
F́́ B, Department of Philosophy, University of Montreal, Montreal,
Canada
J DF, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research,
Klosterneuburg, Austria
J D́, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of Exeter,
Exeter, UK
F F, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of Exeter,
Exeter, UK
P G, Department of Philosophy and Charles Perkins Centre, University
of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
S G, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of
Exeter, Exeter, UK
A S M, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of
Exeter, Exeter, UK
S M, Department of Philosophy, University of Durham, Durham,
UK and Centre for Applied Philosophy of Science, School of Economics and Business,
Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway
D J. N, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of
Exeter, Exeter, UK
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x
L NÑ R, IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind, and Society, Depart-
ment of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, San
Sebastián, Spain
T P, Immunology Unit, CNRS and University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux,
France
J S, Department of Philosophy and the History of Ideas, University of
Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
P S, Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
K S, Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
D M. W, Department of Philosophy, Institute for the History and Philoso-
phy of Science and Technology, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
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Foreword
[O]ur mind has an irresistible tendency to consider the idea it most frequently
uses to be the clearest.
—Henri Bergson (1946: 214)
There is a notable lack of substance, not in the writing you will find in this book,
I assure you, but out there in the domain of the living. Let’s face it: there is no thing in
biology (or, as Bohm would have it, in the world). Things are abstractions from an
ever-changing reality. Reality consists of a hierarchy of intertwined processes. If life is
change, then the activities driving this change are what we must explain. Yet we lack
concepts and experimental approaches for the study of the dynamic aspects of living
systems. This severely limits the range of questions we ask, most of the time even
without our realizing. The problem is so obvious it is rarely ever talked about. There
are very few explicitly processual theories in biology today. As a practising biologist,
I’ve always found this utterly baffling and disappointing. We remain strangely fixated
on explanation in terms of static unchanging entities.
The prime example of this substance fixation in biology is our love affair with
genes, those particulate agents of heredity and development. It is all too easy for
biologists to slip into deterministic and preformationist language, where genes
represent some sort of enduring essence of an ephemeral living body. As a result,
the mysterious source of gene agency remains unexamined and unexplained.
Another example is our insistence that proper ‘mechanistic’ explanations of living
organisms must be formulated at the level of component molecules, which we take to
be unchanging at the timescales relevant to the processes we study. James Ladyman
and Don Ross (2007), in their book Every Thing Must Go, call this the metaphysics of
‘microbangings’, small entities causing their effects by bumping into each other.
Ladyman and Ross point out that this view is outdated and inconsistent with the
dynamic view of the world given to us by modern physics.
Our fixation on static things leads to fallacious patterns of reasoning, within biology
and elsewhere. The French process philosopher Henri Bergson alluded to this in the
quote above, while Alfred North Whitehead (1925: 52) put it more explicitly by
calling it ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness’. This consists in the unwarranted
reification of objects, which become fundamental and replace the underlying dynamic
reality in our thinking. This fallacy is deeply engrained in our cognitive habits. From
a very early stage of development, we learn to distinguish objects, to isolate them
from their context. Cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980: 30–2)
have suggested that this reflects a tacit commitment to a doctrine of ‘containment’:
we treat the world as a container of objects that change properties or location and
interact with one another. Each object is in turn a container with smaller objects
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xii
inside, and so on. This doctrine is fundamental to our thinking; it forms the basis of
set theory and relational logic. It is very deeply rooted in our human nature: all western
languages share it, even ancient ones. To identify an object as a container, we must
establish its boundaries as precisely as possible. Where and when does it begin? Where
and when does it end? We instinctively crave for clear and rigorous answers to
such questions.
However, modern science suggests that reality is simply not like that. The world is
full of fuzzy boundaries. Seemingly unchanging entities keep on emerging and
decaying if we consider them over a long enough time span. Moreover, it is impos-
sible to say precisely when they truly become what they are and when they cease to be
themselves. Or where they begin and where they end. This problem of identification
and individuation is beautifully illustrated by the ancient Greek thought experiment
about the ship of Theseus. According to the legend, the ship was preserved by the
Athenians for centuries upon Theseus’ return from his journeys. In the process, each
plank of the hull was replaced when it started to rot, until none of the original planks
was left. Just as in our own bodies, the substance that makes up the ship is constantly
replaced. Does this mean that the ship changes over time, or does it remain the same?
As this conundrum illustrates, we need criteria for recognizing, individuating, and
classifying processes. We need more accurate and adequate thinking tools that let go
of the abstraction of the object. In short, we need to transcend the limitations of
substance-based thinking. This is what the book you have in your hands sets out to do.
This is not armchair philosophy, nor is it an exercise in speculative system
building. This book outlines a processual research agenda for theoretical biology
with direct and wide-ranging implications for practicing biologists. It connects to
specific areas of inquiry, such as cancer genetics, evolutionary theory, developmental
biology, and the neuroscience of olfaction. It is written in a language that makes it
accessible not just to philosophers but also to experimentalists. And, perhaps most
importantly, it challenges many of the substance-based assumptions that hamper
progress in specific domains. These fundamental assumptions about the world shape
the research questions we pursue and the explanations we accept as satisfactory.
Unfortunately, modern scientific curricula have long forgotten to teach students
about these hidden aspects of science. Even worse, the format of scientific meetings
and papers is designed deliberately to sweep these philosophical foundations under
the rug. They have become invisible, barred from the conscious attention of many
researchers. In ignorance of their own metaphysical assumptions, scientists are
falling back on naïve, often neopositivist preconceptions that severely constrain
their thinking and keep their minds closed to the possibility of unconsidered
alternatives. This is a terrible shame. If this book succeeds in doing only one thing,
I hope that it will be to ignite a lively and public discussion among researchers in the
life sciences about our underlying philosophical worldviews and their limitations.
My own scientific trajectory has been inspired and shaped, in an absolutely crucial
way, by such philosophical considerations. As a child, I was very strongly committed,
both emotionally and intellectually, to a view of static preservation. I am writing these
words while on vacation in my hometown of Tschiertschen, a small mountain village
in the Swiss Alps. I can assure you that there is a strong and deeply ingrained
resistance to change in rural Swiss society. Like many of my country people, I also
wished to preserve the beauty of the mountain environment I grew up in and the
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xiii
wealth and orderliness of its society. It seemed perfect to me as it was. Thinking this
through, however, I became aware of the suffocating dread of such a vision. This was
a very visceral realization. Everything that is beautiful and exciting about the moun-
tains I love has its basis in the dynamical processes that shape them: eon-long
upheaval and erosion, the wild torrents so much appreciated by the Romantics, the
unpredictability of the weather, and a tradition of tough high-altitude life, flexibly
adapting to ever-changing and harsh environmental conditions. To me, static pres-
ervation, a freezing of the current state, no matter how precious, kills all that is
beautiful, all that is exciting. The illusion of stability is just that: an illusion, and a
perilous one at that. This realization was itself a slow and gradual process, not a
sudden epiphany. And it has guided my journey of exploration ever since.
It guided me during my undergraduate training as a geneticist, which occurred in a
staunchly reductionist molecular biology research environment. I suffered from the
strongly antiphilosophical attitude around me, but was not able to express my
dissatisfaction explicitly and convincingly. I wish I had known more about process
thinking back then, to give my doubts and qualms focus and rigor. Who knows if this
would have changed anything, as most of my colleagues didn’t even feel that there
was a problem. Worse still, they thought that molecular biologists didn’t need any
philosophy at all, since they were dealing with hard empirical facts! It didn’t help to
point out that this is itself a philosophical statement. In fact, nowadays scientists
often use the term ‘philosophical’ in a derogatory manner, to describe questions that
may or may not be interesting, but are definitely not answerable given our current
state of research. Science, it is believed, will increasingly replace philosophy by
making such questions answerable. This attitude has always bothered me. It creates
a kind of intellectual monoculture that focuses only on the lowest-hanging fruit: the
motto of science as the art of the feasible, taken to an unhealthy extreme.
Everybody around me was obsessed with the same question: how to decode the logic
of gene expression during development by studying the regulatory sequences on the
DNA that are thought to implement this logic. I felt that my colleagues ascribed an
almost magical agency to those sequences. The central idea was (and to a large extent
still is) that there is some sort of ‘code’ that can be read out of the DNA and that will
result in a particular pattern in the embryo at some stage of development. Everybody
was looking for the genetic program formed by this code: preformationist thinking par
excellence! And yet very few people seemed to believe that their underlying assump-
tions were problematic and warranted philosophical scrutiny. When I looked for
postgraduate advisors, I deliberately sought out (and was lucky to find) a number of
exceptions to this widespread rule of wilful, self-imposed philosophical ignorance.
The most eclectic of these was Brian Goodwin, an unorthodox and open-minded
thinker if there ever was one. Brian brought me into contact with process thought in
the form of Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s classic phenomenology, as well as with
his own theory of biological structuralism (e.g. Webster and Goodwin 1996). On
the one hand, I found these views tremendously fascinating and inspiring, funda-
mentally altering and refocusing my thinking about ways of becoming in embryology.
But on the other, I felt that these approaches were a bit vague and detached from current
experimental practices. Luckily, around the same time I learned the mathematical and
conceptual tools of dynamical systems theory from Brian, Nick Monk, and my doctoral
supervisor, John Reinitz. These tools could be combined in a powerful way with
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xiv
quantitative experimental work to study the processes of pattern formation. During this
stage of my career my interests decidedly moved away from the molecular details and
the substance-based approach of molecular developmental genetics.
This ended up causing a string of problems that I didn’t anticipate at the time but
which are obvious to explain with the benefit of hindsight. Many of my applications
for postdoctoral fellowships, and then for grants that might fund my newly estab-
lished independent research group, were rejected. Papers came back from journals
too, often unread or with strange, uninformative, and even hostile reviews. It wasn’t
only that the editors and referees thought that my research was flawed. They didn’t
find it interesting at all, and mostly didn’t even make an effort to understand the
question. It took me a while to realize that the problem I had wasn’t scientific but
philosophical! Sadly, scientific reviewers are often so stuck in the habits and tradi-
tions of their field that they can’t think of research being worthwhile if it does not
neatly fit into one of their familiar categories.
This is when process thinking itself became a central and fixed part of my research
agenda. Publishing our philosophical arguments has allowed me not only to detect
weaknesses and find a better grounding for my own thinking, but also to better
explain why I do what I do to my colleagues. And slowly I’m beginning to see an
effect. Over the last decades I’ve been happy to observe interest shifting towards
dynamical systems modelling in developmental biology. Reviewers who state that
‘nothing can ever be learned from a model’ still exist, but have become exceedingly
rare these days. In fact they appear to be a species on the verge of extinction. An
increasing number of my colleagues have overcome the scepticism they initially
exhibited and now tolerate, or even actively support, the processual research agenda
a small minority of us have been pursuing for years.
This recent trend is tremendously encouraging. Quite clearly, the time is ripe for
more process thinking, not only in developmental biology but across the life sciences.
This is why I am so excited about the collection of essays in this book. It is an
important and timely endeavour. I hope it will inspire young biologists in particular
to open their minds, to widen their intellectual horizons, and to adopt new philo-
sophical perspectives. I also hope it encourages them to ask radically new questions,
build new conceptual frameworks and theories, and develop new experimental
approaches that directly address the fundamentally processual nature of living
systems.
Enjoy the read! I certainly did.
Johannes Jaeger
Associate Researcher
Complexity Science Hub Vienna
Klosterneuburg, Austria, 16 August 2017
References
Bergson, H. (1946). The Creative Mind. New York: Philosophical Library.
Bohm, D. and Biederman, C. (1999). Bohm-Biederman Correspondence, vol. 1: Creativity and
Science. London: Routledge.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/5/2018, SPi
xv
Ladyman, J. and Ross, D. (2007). Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Webster, G. and Goodwin, B. (1996). Form and Transformation: Generative and Relational
Principles in Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Whitehead, A. N. (1925). Science and the Modern World. New York: Macmillan.
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PART I
Introduction
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1
A Manifesto for a Processual
Philosophy of Biology
John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson
1. Introduction
This book is a venture in the metaphysics of science, the exploration of the most basic
features of the world implied or presupposed by science. One of its main aims is to
demonstrate the fundamental importance of such an investigation. Getting this very
general picture right makes a real difference to whether we do the science well and
understand properly what it tells us. The particular metaphysical thesis that motiv-
ates this book is that the world—at least insofar as living beings are concerned—is
made up not of substantial particles or things, as philosophers have overwhelmingly
supposed, but of processes. It is dynamic through and through. This thesis, we
believe, has profound consequences.
More specifically, we propose that the living world is a hierarchy of processes,
stabilized and actively maintained at different timescales. We can think of this
hierarchy in broadly mereological terms: molecules, cells, organs, organisms, popu-
lations, and so on. Although the members of this hierarchy are usually thought of as
things, we contend that they are more appropriately understood as processes.
A question that arises for any process, as we shall discuss in more detail below, is
what enables it to persist. The processes in this hierarchy not only compose one
another but also provide conditions for the persistence of other members, both larger
and smaller. So, if we take for example a liver, we see that it provides enabling
conditions for the persistence of the organism of which it is a part, but also for the
hepatocytes that compose it. Outside a very specialized laboratory, a hepatocyte can
persist only in a liver. And reciprocally, in order to persist, a liver requires both an
organism in which it resides, and hepatocytes of which it is composed. A key point is
that these reciprocal dependencies are not merely structural, but are also grounded in
activity. A hepatocyte sustains a liver, and a liver sustains an organism, by doing
things. This ultimately underlies our insistence on seeing such seemingly substantial
entities as cells, organs, and organisms as processes.
These processes—which have so often been taken for things, or substances—
themselves engage in more familiar-sounding processes such as metabolism, devel-
opment, and evolution; processes that, again, often provide the explanations for the
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its effort is to express the relationship of several ideas by combining
them in one word. This is an example: “popochpoalimawoawoll” (po-
poch-po-al-i-ma-wo-a-woll), meaning “they beat them” and
“wunshillawoawoll” (wun-shill-a-wo-woll), meaning “they killed them.”
During the War of the Revolution the Delawares were first neutral
and then partisans of the Americans and thus prevented attack by
hostile Indians on the Jersey towns and settlements.
The Delawares were passionately fond of their ancestral traditions
and their forefathers, and cherished the belief that they were the
wisest and bravest of men. They loved to rehearse their
genealogies. They were so skilled at it that they could repeat the
chief and collateral lines with the utmost readiness.
The Indians were all passionately fond of games and were mostly
inveterate gamblers, yet, according to authority, they cultivated
among themselves a most scrupulous honesty, always kept their
promises, insulted no one, were hospitable to strangers and faithful
to their friends even unto death.
On the subject of the Indians’ devotion to gambling the following
may be pardoned. Bret Harte, in one of his humorous and purposely
ungrammatical wild western poems, speaking of his friend Bill Nye’s
visit to a mining camp, said:
“For the camp has gone wild
On this lottery game,
And has even beguiled
Injin Dick’ by the same.”
and, later on,
“When Nye next met my view
Injin Dick was his mate;
And the two around town was a-lying
In a frightfully dissolute state.”
and, continuing,
“Which the war dance they had
Round a tree at the Bend
Was a sight that was sad;
And it seemed that the end
Would not justify the proceeding
As I quiet remarked to a friend.”
The Indians never forgot and rarely forgave an injury. They
imitated the wild beasts in their cruelty and ferocity in wreaking
vengeance on a foe. Their crude idea of justice included an eye for
an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and so on. By their unwritten code the
thief was compelled to restore the stolen article or its value, and for a
second offense he was stripped of all his goods. When one killed
another it was left to the dead Indian’s relatives to slay the offender,
but unless this was done within twenty-four hours, it was usual to
accept a pecuniary recompense, payable in wampum.
The simple savage, living in close contact with nature, sees only
health as the normal condition of man. When the form, once
animated and vigorous, lay still and cold, it was an unfathomable
mystery to him, and, according to Dr. Brinton, in all the Indian tribes,
there was no notion of natural death. No Indian “died,” he was
always “killed.” Death in the course of nature was unknown to the
Indians. When one died by disease they supposed he had been
killed by sorcery, or some unknown venomous creature.
The Indians’ dread of death would lead them to speak of it by
circumlocution or euphemism, as “You are about to see your
grandfathers,” or, as among the whites, “If anything should happen.”
They had a vague belief that the spirit of the dead haunted their
earthly homes, which Philip Freneau has thus apostrophized:
“By midnight moons, o’er moistening dews,
In vestments for the chase arrayed,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer, a shade.”
A very important feature of conference with the Indians was an
exchange of presents. The wily savages saw no sense in giving
away valuables unless they received presents of equal value in
return, and if their gifts were not reciprocated they quietly took them
back, whence we get the phrase “Indian giver,” which we learn in
childhood to call the playmate who gives us an apple or a stick of
candy and later takes it back.
The conferences between the colonists and the Indians were
attended with much formality and ceremony. At a conference held at
Easton, Pennsylvania, October 16th, 1758, there were present the
governors of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, gentlemen of their
councils, Indians and interpreters.
Governor Francis Bernard of New Jersey spoke to the Indians,
and said:
“Brethren of all the confederated nations:
As you proposed your questions concerning Teedyescung
separately, I think proper to give you a separate answer
thereto.
I know not who made Teedyescung so great a man; nor do
I know that he is any greater than a chief of the Delaware
Indians settled at Wyomink. The title of king could not be
given him by an English governor; for we know very well that
there is no such person among the Indians, as what we call a
king. And if we call him so, we mean no more than sachem or
chief. I observe in his treaties which he has held with the
governor of Pennsylvania (which I have perused since our
last meeting) that he says he was a woman, till you made him
a man, by putting a tomahawk into his hand; and through all
of those treaties, especially in the last, held at this town, he
calls you his uncles, and professes that he is dependent on
you; and I know not that anything has since happened to alter
his relation to you. I therefore consider him still to be your
nephew.
Brethren,
I am obliged to you for your kind promises, to return the
captives which have been taken from us. I hope you will not
only do so, but will also engage such of our allies and
nephews, as have taken captives from us, to do the same.
That you may be mindful of this I give you this belt.”
After the governor had done speaking, and his answers were
interpreted in the united nations and Delaware languages, the Indian
chiefs were asked if they had anything to say. On which Tagashata
arose, and made a speech to his cousins the Delaware and Minisink
Indians, directing his discourse to Teedyescung, and said:
“Nephews,
You may remember all that passed at this council-fire. The
governors who sit there have put you in mind of what was
agreed upon last year: They both put you in mind of this
promise, and desire you will perform it: You have promised it,
and must perform it. We your uncles promised to return the
prisoners. We your uncles, have promised to return all the
English prisoners among us, and therefore we expect that you
our cousins and nephews will do the same. As soon as you
come home, we desire that you will search carefully in your
towns for all the prisoners among you that have been taken
out of every province, and cause them to be delivered up to
your brethren. You know that it is an article of this peace that
was made between you and your brethren: In conformity of
which you received a large peace belt; of which belt we desire
you to give an account, and let us know what is become of it,
and how far you have proceeded in it.”
After this was interpreted in the Delaware language, it was
observed that there were no Minisink Indians present; the
governors therefore desired that Mr. Peters and Mr. Read
would procure a meeting of the chiefs of the united nations,
Delawares and Minisinks, and cause the speech of Tagashata
to be interpreted to the Minisinks in the presence of their
uncles.
A word about the title to lands in New Jersey will be of
interest. After the English conquest of New Netherlands in
1664, King Charles II granted to his brother James, Duke of
York, afterwards James II, certain territory including New
Jersey; and the Duke of York, in the same year granted New
Jersey to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, in
recognition of, and in reward for, valiant services performed
by those noblemen for the unfortunate Charles I, father of the
Duke. It is certainly unfortunate for anyone to have his head
chopped off or be otherwise executed, and it is in that sense
alone I use the word “unfortunate” with reference to the
perfidious King. The tribunal that tried Charles I pronounced
him a traitor, murderer and public enemy. And I agree entirely
with the declaration of that illustrious martyr to liberty. Colonel
Algernon Sidney, who, speaking of the execution of Charles I,
said it was the “justest and bravest action that was ever done
in England or anywhere else.”
Lord Berkeley granted and conveyed his undivided one-half
interest in New Jersey to John Fenwick, who conveyed the same to
William Penn, Gawn Lawry and Nicholas Lucas, but in which Edward
Byllynge claimed to have an equitable interest by reason of matters
that are immaterial to this story. In this situation and on July 1, 1676,
Sir George Carteret, William Penn, Gawn Lawry, Nicholas Lucas and
Edward Byllynge, five persons, made the famous quintipartite deed
dividing the province into East and West Jersey, whereby Sir George
Carteret became the owner in severalty of East Jersey, and Penn,
Lawry and Lucas of West Jersey, subject to the same trust for
Byllynge as the same was subject (not disclosing what it was).
William Penn acquired this interest in New Jersey before he
obtained any in Pennsylvania, and several years before he visited
America the first time. Sir George Carteret, owner of East Jersey,
pledged himself to purchase lands from the Indians from time to time
as required by the settlers; and Penn, the dominant owner of West
Jersey, found the practice of acquiring title from the Indians an old
and established custom, and followed it. In 1682 the legislature
passed an act in which it was provided that no person should buy
lands from the Indians without a written authorization of the
Province, the grant to be to the proprietors who would reimburse the
purchasers. In practice, however, the deeds always appear to have
been made to the purchaser, who bought of the proprietors on
presentation of the deeds to them. The actual title to the soil was
derived from the King of England who claimed it by right of discovery
and conquest. The Indian title was a possessory one, that of an
occupant only, and was not of the fee, and “fee” means the absolute
ownership. Taking deeds from the Indians, therefore, was a sort of
buying one’s peace in the possession and occupancy of the soil in
which the grantee had the fee. The Indians had no ownership in
“severalty,” which means that they did not own lots or tracts whereon
they dwelt themselves or which were in possession of their tenants,
but the ownership of the land, such as it was, was common to the
tribe.
Perhaps you would be interested in knowing the contents of an
Indian deed. I shall insert one in this paper. It appears by recital and
covenant in it that the Indian grantors claimed that they were the only
true, sole and proper owners of the land conveyed. The deed was
made by certain Indian sachems to certain of the council of
proprietors of West Jersey. It is recorded in Liber AAA of Deeds in
the office of the secretary of state, at page 434, etc., and is taken
from the record verbatim et literatum, as follows:
“To all person to whome these presents shall Come we
Caponohkamhcon Chekanthakainan Kelelaman Hokontoman
all Indian Sachemas and the onely sole and proper owners of
the tract of Land hereafter described and by these presents
bargained and sould send Greetings Know ye that we the
said Indian Sachemas for and in consideration of fivety
fathom of Wampum thirty blew matchcotes thirty Red
mattchcotes Eight inglish cotes twenty white blankets twenty
stroudwaters thirty shirts fourty pare of Sotckings twenty one
Kettles Tenn Gunns Twenty Hoes Twenty Hatchets fivety
knives thirty Tobacko Boxes thirty Tobacko tongs thirty
Lookeing glasses one Pound of Read Lead one rundlett of
Gun Powder fourty barrs of Lead one pound of Beads one
hundred tobacco pipes five hundred fishookes five hundred
Needles one hundred and fivety awles sixty flints twnety paire
of Scissors and fiveteen Gallons of Rum to us in hand paid by
Mahlon Stacy Samuell Jennnigs Thomas Gardiner George
Deacon Christopher Wetherell John Wills John Hugg Jun
Isaac Sharp and John Reading all of them members of the
Councill of Proprietors for the time being within the westerne
division of the Province of New Jersey The Receipt of all
which said goods above mentioned We the said Sachemas
doe hereby acknowledge and therewith to be fully contented
satisfied and paid have granted bargained and sold aliened
Enfoeffed Released and confirmed and by these presents doe
fully freely and absolutely Grant Bargaine and sell Alyene
enfoeffe Release and confirme unto the said Mahlon Stacy
Samuell Jennings Thomas Gardiner George Deacon
Christopher Wetherill John Wills John Hugg Isaac Sharpe and
John Reading and to ther heires and Assignes forever all that
tract or parcell of Land Situate above the falls of Delawar and
lying and being within the Westerne division of the province of
New Jersey aforesaid being Limited and bounded in manner
following That is to say Begining at the River Dellawar at the
mouth of a westarne brooke called Laokolong as from thence
along the old Indian purchase line which was formerly made
by Adlord Bowde to the white oake tree standing by the side
of an Indian Road Leading from Arhelomonsing unto
Neshaning or Coponockons wigwam and so from the said
corner along by A line of marked trees North and by East or
thereabouts along by the bounds of Hoyhams land untill it
meet with a branch of Rariton River called Neshaning and so
down the same unto the mouth of a brooke or Runn called
Peescutchola and so along the Northermost branch of the
same along by the bounds of Nymhainmans alias
Squahikkons land unto an Indian Towne called
Toquemenching and from thence along the Indian Road
Leading to Sheroppees plantation called Asinkoweerkong
North and by west or thereabouts by trees markt along the
road and from Sheroppees plantation along a line of marked
trees North west and by North to a runn on the back side of
Ohoeming and so downe the same untill it empties it selfe into
a branch of Rariatn River called Caponanlong and so up the
said brooke by the bounds of aquatoons land untill it devides
it selfe into two branches and soe from the said forks by a line
of marked trees south west and west south west by the land
of Chekanshakaman untill it meet with a brooke called the
upper Neshasakowerk and soe downe the same to the mouth
thereof emptieing it selfe into Dellawar river and so downe the
said River to the mouth of Loakolong being the place of first
beginning togeather with all and Singular the Mines Minerals
Woods Waters Fowleings Fishings Huntings and all other
Royalties franchises powers profitts Commodities
Hereditaments and appurtenances whatsoever to the said
tract of land belonging or in any wise appertaining and all
estate Right title interest use possession propertie Claime and
demand whatsoever of us the said Indian sachamas of in and
to the said granted land and premisses and every part thereof
with apurtenances full and free liberty at all times hereafter
soe the above said Indian Sacchamas our heires successors
and Subjects to hunt fish and fowle uppon the unimproved
land within the above described tract of land Alwayes
excepted Reserved and foreprised To have and to hold the
above described tract of land and granted premisses and
every part thereof with the appurtenances unto the said
Mahlon Stacy Samuell Jennings Thomas Gardiner George
Deacon Christopher Whetherell John Wills John Hugg Isaac
Sharpe and John Reading there heires and assignes forever
to the onely proper use and behoofe of themselves and the
rest of the english proprietors within the said westerne
division of the Province aforesaid who have subscribed and
are concerned in and shall contribute their respective
proportions towards this present purchasers to their severall
and respective heires and assignes forever more And We the
said Indian Sachemas for ourselves our heires and
successors severally and respectively doe covenant promise
and grant with the said English proprietors above mentioned
and their heires and assignes severally and respectively by
these presents that we are the onely true sole and proper
owners of the abovesaid tract of land and granted premisses
and now have good right full power lawfull and absolute
authority to grant bargains and sell the same in manner
abovesaid and also that the same premisses is and are free &
cleare of and from all and all other former Gifts Grants
Bargaine Sales and all other incumbrances whatsoever made
done or at any time preceeding this date committed or
suffered by us the above Indian Sachemas or by any others
whatsoever with or by our Consent knowledge or
procurement and we the said Indian Sachemas for ourselves
our heirs and successors severally and respectively all the
above described tract of land and granted premisses with
every part thereof with the appurtenances unto the said
english Proprietors and their heires and assignes severally
and respecitvely against us the said Indian Sachemas and
our heires and successors severally and respectively and
against all other Indian or Indians whatsoever Claimeing or
pretending to Claime any right Title or interest of in or to the
same shall and will warrant and forever defend by these
presents in witness whereof We have hereunto fixed our
hands and seales this eleaventh day of November Anno Dom
1703:
Coponakonkikon: X his marke (L. S.).
Hurkanntaman: X his marke (L. S.)
Chekanshakaman: X his marke (L. S.).
Kelalaman: X his marke (L. S.).”
Each nation had its boundaries, the lands within which were
subdivided between the tribes. These boundaries were generally
marked by mountains, rivers and lakes, and encroachments on their
lands by neighboring tribes were resented as a sort of poaching on
their hunting and fishing domains. There were, however, Indian
paths which were common highways through the territory of the
various tribes, which, later, in numerous instances, were widened
into public roads, many of which exist unto this day. The Indians
freely traveled by these paths from the ocean to the interior,
especially to the ancient council fires at Easton, Pennsylvania.
By 1757 the Delawares had become comparatively few and a
conference was held at Crosswicks with the view of settling matters
in difference between them and the inhabitants of the colony, and the
legislature appointed commissioners with power to inquire into the
matter. Another conference was held at Crosswicks in 1758, at which
Teedyescung, King of the Delawares, was present with a large
number of Indians, and progress was made. The Delawares asked
that a tract of land in Burlington county be bought for their occupancy
for which they agreed to release all their rights to lands in New
Jersey. The legislature appropriated £1600 to carry that project into
effect and a tract of land of about 3,000 acres was purchased for the
purpose. This place was called “Brotherton” and about 200 Indians
located on it. In 1822 the remnant of the Delawares removed from
New Jersey, the legislature appropriating some $3,500 for the
purchase of their new homes and transportation to them. In 1832 an
appropriation of $2,000, asked for by the Delawares, was made in
final extinguishment of all Indian claims in New Jersey which arose
out of the reservation to them of certain hunting and fishing rights in
the treaty of 1758. In acknowledgment of the benefaction of New
Jersey to the Delawares in 1822 their representative, Bartholomew
S. Calvin, himself an Indian, wrote a letter to the legislature in which
he said: “Not a drop of our blood have you spilled in battle—not an
acre of our land have you taken but by our consent. They place the
character of New Jersey in bold relief, a bright example to those
states within whose territorial limits our brethren still remain. Nothing
save benison can fall upon her from the lips of a Lenno Lenape.”
This was the valedictory of the Lenape in New Jersey; and the
haunts that knew them formerly knew them no more.
As “along the banks of the sacred Nile, Isis no longer wandering
weeps, searching for the dead Osiris,” so along the banks of the
historic Delaware, the Indian maiden no longer watches, waiting the
return of her dusky lover from the war-path or the chase. As “the
divine fires of Persia and of the Aztecs, have died out in the ashes of
the past, and there is none to rekindle, and none to feed the holy
flames,” so the camp fires of the Indians in New Jersey have
flickered and expired, never to be relighted, never again to send a
gleam athwart the nocturnal skies.
Lord Campbell concludes the introduction to his monumental work,
the “Lives of the Lord Chancellors of England,” by quoting from Lord
Chief Justice Crewe, and says:
“Time hath its revolutions; there must be a period and an end to all
temporal things—finis rerum—an end of names and dignities, and
whatever is terrene—for where is Bohun? Where is Mowbray?
Where is Mortimer? Nay, which is more and most of all, where is
PLANTAGENET? They are entombed in the urns and sepulchres of
mortality!”
And I ask: Where are the Lenni Lenape?
Teedyescung, Oraton, Mosilian and the other sachems and
sagamores of old Schéjachbi (New Jersey) have long since gone to
the happy hunting ground, and the remnant of their tribes is on a
reservation in the far West, perishing as a type and destined to
become extinct as a people.
The Indians have gone from New Jersey, never, never to return.
But we shall not forget them! While pictures are painted; while books
are printed; while children perennially play Indians all around us, we
shall ever be vividly reminded of those bands of roving savages
whose deeds have been rendered so popular in American story.
Transcriber’s Notes
A few minor errors in punctuation were fixed.
Page 3: “desidious trees” changed to “deciduous trees”
Page 5: “Rafineseque gives” changed to “Rafinesque gives”
Page 12: “him to vengenance” changed to “him to vengeance”
Page 15: “did not belive” changed to “did not believe”, “committd by an” changed to
“committed by an”
Page 16: “ws the “profession”” changed to “was the “profession””
Page 20: “Teedyuscung so great” changed to “Teedyescung so great”
Page 21: “woud procure a meting” changed to “would procure a meeting”
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