OK. To return to my original question, what is it to which one would apply the concept of "fitness - variable conformance of DNA-stuff to its context, and change from one moment-perspective to another"? I'm less interested in the term than in the process and in what we want to say goes through that process. I'm also open--in fact I prefer--not to require that the answer necessarily have anything to do with DNA--although that's certainly not disallowed.
-- Russ
On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:47 AM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
Russ,yes, I would assert that evolution in the Darwinian context is an abuse of metaphor. I would attempt to find a term that implied something closer to "DNA stuff filling dynamically changing voids in the non-DNA-stuff material context thereby yielding the perception of different forms."This would remove all appearance of direction and certainly of any kind of value - leaving only the issues of fitness - variable conformance of DNA-stuff to its context, and change from one moment-perspective to another.davewOn Tue, 10 May 2011 11:15 -0700, "Russ Abbott" <[hidden email]> wrote:Dave,I don't understand how you would apply those points to the term when used in its Darwinian context. It sounds like you would say that "Darwinian evolution" is a misuse of the term. Is that what you are saying? If so, is there another term you would substitute? If not, how do you put your points together with that use of the term?-- Russ
On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:05 AM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
minor points1- evolution takes a singular subject - some individual thing evolves.2- what originally evolved was a book or scroll - i.e. it unrolled - hence it evolved; or a flower - which unfolded hence evolved.3- a human evolves - according to homunculus theory of embryology - by unfolding - first level of metaphoric conscription of evolution as unrolling.4- things go awry when evolvution is metaphorically applied to the plural - e.g. taxa, species. To make it work the plural must be reified as singular.5- an error of a different sort is made when evolution is applied to society or some other multi-component system which is singular and therefore can evolve (unfold) in the original sense of the word. The error is forgetting that there is really only one system (The Universe if it is granted that there is only one, or The Infinite Infinity of Universes of Universes if you want to go all quantum on me) - all other named systems are arbitrarily defined subsets that are still part of the whole - an encapsulation error.6- yet another error is made - as Nick points out - when a subjective value scale is super-imposed on the sequence of arbitrarily defined stages or states, e.g. when the last word of the book is more profound than the first simply because it was the last revealed - or the bud is somehow less than the blossom because it came first in a sequence). [Aside: Anthropology as a "scientific" discipline filled hundreds of museums with thousands of skulls all carefully arranged in rows in order to prove that the brain contained within the skulls reached its 'evolutionary' apex with 19th century northern European males.]7- devolution - if allowed at all - would reflect a similar superimposition of values in a curve instead of a straight line - e.g. the bud is less than the blossom but the blossom devolves into a withered remnant of less value than either.dave westOn Tue, 10 May 2011 11:03 -0600, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:Steve:
This is sort of fun: Which is more advanced; a horse’s hoof or a human hand.?
Answer: the hoof is way more advanced. (Actually I asked the question wrong, it should have been horses “forearm”)
Why? Because the word “advanced” means just “altered from the ancestral structure that gave rise to both the hoof and the hand.” That ancestral structure was a hand-like paw, perhaps like that on a raccoon, only a few steps back from our own hand. The horse’s hoof is a single hypertrophied fingernail on a hand where every other digit has shrunk to almost nothing. Many more steps away. Humans are in many ways very primitive creatures. Viruses are very advanced, having lost everything! Our Maker is given to irony.
Nick
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 10:12 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What evolves?
Dear old bald guy with big eyebrows (aka Nick)..
I'm becoming an old bald guy myself with earlobes that are sagging and a nose that continues to grow despite the rest of his face not so much. I look forward to obtaining eyebrows even half as impressive as yours! Now *there* is some personal evolution! To use a particular vernacular, "You've got a nice rack there Nick!"
I really appreciate your careful outline of this topic, it is one of the ones I'm most likely to get snagged on with folks who *do* want to use the world evolution (exclusively) to judge social or political (or personal) change they approve/disapprove of. I appreciate Victoria asking this question in this manner, it is problematic in many social circles to use Evolution in it's more strict sense.
I have been trained not to apply a value judgment to evolution which of course obviates any use of it's presumed negative of devolution. At the same time, there are what appear to be "retrograde" arcs of evolution... biological evolution, by definition, is always adaptive to changing conditions which may lead one arc of evolution to be reversed in some sense.
When pre-aquatic mammals who evolved into the cetaceans we know today (whales and dolphins) their walking/climbing/crawling/grasping appendages returned to functioning as swimming appendages. One might consider that a retrograde bit of evolution. That is not to say that being a land inhabitant is "higher" than a water inhabitant and that the cetaceans are in any way "less evolved" than their ancestors, they are simply evolved to fit more better into their new niche which selects for appendages for swimming over appendages for land locomotion.
Nevertheless, is there not a measure of "progress" in the biosphere? Do we not see the increasing complexity (and heirarchies) of the biosphere to be somehow meaningful, positive, more robust? Would the replacement of the current diversity of species on the planet to a small number (humans, cows, chickens, corn, soybeans, cockroaches) be in some sense retrograde evolution in the biosphere? Or to a single one (humans with very clever nanotech replacing the biology of the planet)? In this description I think I'm using the verb evolve to apply to the object terran biosphere.
Since I was first exposed to the notion of the co-evolution of species, I have a hard time thinking of the evolution of a single species independent of the biological niche it inhabits and shapes at the same time. In this context the only use of "devolve" or "retrograde evolution" I can imagine is linked to complexity again... a biological niche whose major elements die off completely somehow seems like a retrograde evolution... the pre-desert Sahara perhaps? The Interglacial tundras? The inland seas when they become too briny (and polluted) to support life?
I know that all this even is somehow anthropocentric, so maybe I'm undermining my own position (that there might be a meaningful use of evolution/devolution).
- Steve (primping the 3 wild hairs in his left eyebrow)
Dear Victoria,
The word “evolution” has a history before biologists made off with it, but I can’t speak to those uses. I think it first came into use in biology to refer to development and referred to the unfolding of a flower. The one use I cannot tolerate gracefully is to refer to whatever social or political change the speaker happens to approve of. As in, “society is evolving.” The term devolution comes out of that misappropriation. One of the properties that some people approve of is increasing hierarchical structure and predictable order. The development of the British empire would have been, to those people, a case of evolution. Thus, when parliaments were formed and government functions taken over by Northern Ireland and Scotland, this was called Devolution.
Perhaps most important in any discussion along these lines is to recognize that the use of the term, “evolution”, implies a values stance of some sort and that we should NOT take for granted that we all share the same values, if we hope to have a “highly evolved” discussion (};-])*
Nick Thompson
*—old bald guy with big eyebrows and a wry smirk on his face.
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Victoria Hughes
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2011 8:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What evolves?
A couple of other questions then:
What is devolution? Is that a legitimate word in this discussion, if not why not, etc
and
Does evolution really just mean change, and if so why is there a different word for it?
ie:
If evolution means 'positive sustainable change' who is deciding what is positive and sustainable?
One could argue that aspects of human neurological evolution have 'evolved' a less-sustainable organism, or at least a very problematic or flawed design. The internal conflicts between different areas of the brain, often in direct opposition to each other and leading to personal and large-scale destruction: is that evolution? if so why, etc
Just because we can find out where in our genes this is written, does that mean it is good?
There is often a confusion between description and purpose.
I'd vote for option C, in Eric's paragraph below: ultimately it must be "the organism-environment system evolves" or there is an upper limit to the life-span of a particular trait. Holism is the only perspective that holds up in the long term.
This is another one of those FRIAM chats that brush against the intangible. We sure do sort by population here, and we evolve into something new in doing this. I am changed for the better by reading and occasionally chiming in, sharpening my vocabulary and writing skills in this brilliant and eclectic context.
I determined evolution there. Does a radish get the same thrill?
Oh, my taxa are so flexed I have to send this off. Thanks for the great phrase, NIck-
Victoria
On May 9, 2011, at 5:41 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote:
Russ,
Good questions. I'm hoping Nick will speak up, but I'll hand wave a little, and get more specific if he does not.
This is one of the points by which a whole host of conceptual confusions enter the discussion of evolutionary theory. Often people do not quite know what they are asserting, or at least they do not know the implications of what they are asserting. The three most common options are that "the species evolves", "the trait evolves", or "the genes evolve". A less common, but increasingly popular option is that "the organism-environment system evolves". Over the course of the 20th century, people increasingly thought it was "the genes", with Williams solidifying the notion in the 50s and 60s, and Dawkins taking it to its logical extreme in The Selfish Gene. Dawkins (now the face of overly-abrasive-atheism) gives you great quotes like "An chicken is just an egg's way of making more eggs." Alas, this introduces all sorts of devious problems.
I would argue that it makes more sense to say that species evolve. If you don't like that, you are best going with the multi-level selection people and saying that the systems evolve. The latter is certainly accurate, but thinking in that way makes it hard to say somethings you'd think a theory of evolution would let you say.
Eric
On Mon, May 9, 2011 06:25 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:
I'm hoping you will help me think through this apparently simple question.
When we use the term evolution, we have something in mind that we all seem to understand. But I'd like to ask this question: what is it that evolves?
We generally mean more by evolution than just that change occurs--although that is one of the looser meaning of the term. We normally think in terms of a thing, perhaps abstract, e.g,. a species, that evolves. Of course that's not quite right since evolution also involves the creation of new species. Besides, the very notion of species is controversial. (But that's a different discussion.)
Is it appropriate to say that there is generally a thing, an entity, that evolves? The question is not just limited to biological evolution. I'm willing to consider broader answers. But in any context, is it reasonable to expect that the sentence "X evolves" will generally have a reasonably clear referent for its subject?
An alternative is to say that what we mean by "X evolves" is really "evolution occurs." Does that help? It's not clear to me that it does since the question then becomes what do we means by "evolution occurs" other than that change happens. Evolution is (intuitively) a specific kind of change. But can we characterize it more clearly?
I'm copying Nick and Eric explicitly because I'm especially interested in what biologists have to say about this.
-- Russ
Eric Charles
Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listservMeets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's Collegelectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
| Free forum by Nabble | Edit this page |