Apparently Michel Serres and I have similar views on politicians and tax collectors.
I found this article somewhat contradictory in a way. When Serres starts out with La Fontaine's fairy tale of the two rats eating on the Persian rug, he claims that both of the rats are parasites of the farmer, and one of the rats is the parasite of the other rat. This is fine with me, and I think that everyone can agree on this take on the story.
Serres goes on to explain his theories about parasitism, though, and states that the relationship between the parasite and host only goes on one direction. The simple arrow is Serres' graphic interpretation of this idea, but I don't agree with it.
Would you say that the mother's breast is the child's prey? It's more or less the child's home. But this relation is of the simplest sort; there is none simpler or easier: it always goes in the same direction. The same one is the host; the same one takes and eats; there is no change of direction. This is true of all beings. Of lice and men.
Certain relationships involving parasites are known as being mutually beneficial, where both parties are actually good for one another. Even with this example, there are certain situations in which the parent is parasite to the child. If the parent grows old and infirm, chances are the child will have to be the one to take care of the parent. Perhaps at any one time, a parasitic relationship can only go one way, but even that is false, I think.
He does address this later in the article, by stating that the farmer "parasites the parasites". If indeed the farmer can turn around and become the parasite himself, has he not then reversed the flow from one polarity to the other?
Later on in the chapter, Serres is speaking about the "bit of noise" that the farmer creates in order to scare the rats away from their feast. In talking about this, he gets dangerously close to describing another theory altogether, which is related to Edward Lorenz's Butterfly Effect.
Serres creates a diagram of the relationship between the host, parasite, and interruption(noise) in the story, which looks like a bifurcation. He states that each of the positions is interchangeable, meaning that any one player in the story can take the place of any other, and the story won't change. However, Leibniz had already come up with this idea, and he describes the bifurcation as being the split in the story, a choice of sorts.
One feels sorry for the first[brother], whom a small circumstance, perhaps, had prevented from being saved like his brother; it is astonishing that this small occurrence could have decided his lot for all eternity.Serres likens this split, this bifurcation, to the noise in La Fontaine's fairy tale.
The bit of noise, the small random element, transforms one system or one order into another.In Lorenz's view, that one system or one order is actually a split plane of reality. The you that continues on now is the result of that choice, while an alternate you lives with the implications of that other choice, and will then have different choices to make down the road, which all split up again in the same way, creating a fractalized system of realities overlapping one another. Serres doesn't explore this avenue of thought in the article, but gets dangerously close to following down that path.
It is late, though. More to come later.
