The Survival of the Fittest Model is Not the Fittest Model of Evolution
I just want to pull this thread into a new OP for two reasons. I have been crashing Wayfarer's OP and Pneumenon's OP which is not fair on them, and secondly just in case there are some biologists or anybody else out there who might not know this discussion is happening and wants to join.
A couple of day's ago Rich and Metaphysician Undercover alerted me to the idea of Creative Evolution, or the Creative Mind. It is very appealing.
It suggests that the primary driver for evolution to occur is not a Survival of the Fittest Model but rather a Creative Evolution Model. That life actively strives to throw out new variants and in doing maximises its survival. This is different to Survival of the Fittest where variants are not encouraged by evolution but become useful nonetheless in times of great change.
I have posted part of the thread (which I cleaned up a little to make clearer) that I think explains the position best. It uses divergent evolution - where one species has branched into many various species over time to illustrate the example.
"I take your point that divergence can be accounted for in the Survival of the Fittest model, but under a Survival of the Fittest model I would be looking for where is the selection pressure to do so was when delicious leaves and grass were already in abundance. The ancestor possums weren't attacking each other so there was no need to seek out new niches to live in. There's no adaptive advantage here. There's only maintaining the status quo, so why risk reshuffling of the DNA too much.
I guess the Survival of the Fittest model would contend there is equal adaptive advantage for the kangaroo, wombat and koala, so they were all selected for. Normally the environmental forces would have wiped the variants out of existence, except in this case there is a lack of them (your global constraints). The mutant variants got lucky and be damned with thoughts of adaptive advantage.
When a species is well adapted to its environment though the Survival of the Fittest model would suggest that DNA should be trying to minimize the amount of variant alleles in the population to help ensure its continued survival. It should be increasing the conserved regions of DNA, constraining itself so that it sticks with a winning combination. Allele diversity in the population should fall, or at the least the increase should only be a gradual creep.
The Creative Evolution Model would contend also that a lack of global constraints enabled the survival of a diverse progeny. It would suggest though, that rather than being an aberration of nature that somehow got out of its intrinsic DNA constraints, it instead would have been almost impossible to stop the variance from arising because variance is the sole driver of life. The organism would have been looking to maximise its amount of variance. For this model to work there would need to be a highly conserved (constrained) portion of DNA and a highly recombinant area. We would expect the allele count in the population to rise rapidly until new species are born."
A couple of day's ago Rich and Metaphysician Undercover alerted me to the idea of Creative Evolution, or the Creative Mind. It is very appealing.
It suggests that the primary driver for evolution to occur is not a Survival of the Fittest Model but rather a Creative Evolution Model. That life actively strives to throw out new variants and in doing maximises its survival. This is different to Survival of the Fittest where variants are not encouraged by evolution but become useful nonetheless in times of great change.
I have posted part of the thread (which I cleaned up a little to make clearer) that I think explains the position best. It uses divergent evolution - where one species has branched into many various species over time to illustrate the example.
"I take your point that divergence can be accounted for in the Survival of the Fittest model, but under a Survival of the Fittest model I would be looking for where is the selection pressure to do so was when delicious leaves and grass were already in abundance. The ancestor possums weren't attacking each other so there was no need to seek out new niches to live in. There's no adaptive advantage here. There's only maintaining the status quo, so why risk reshuffling of the DNA too much.
I guess the Survival of the Fittest model would contend there is equal adaptive advantage for the kangaroo, wombat and koala, so they were all selected for. Normally the environmental forces would have wiped the variants out of existence, except in this case there is a lack of them (your global constraints). The mutant variants got lucky and be damned with thoughts of adaptive advantage.
When a species is well adapted to its environment though the Survival of the Fittest model would suggest that DNA should be trying to minimize the amount of variant alleles in the population to help ensure its continued survival. It should be increasing the conserved regions of DNA, constraining itself so that it sticks with a winning combination. Allele diversity in the population should fall, or at the least the increase should only be a gradual creep.
The Creative Evolution Model would contend also that a lack of global constraints enabled the survival of a diverse progeny. It would suggest though, that rather than being an aberration of nature that somehow got out of its intrinsic DNA constraints, it instead would have been almost impossible to stop the variance from arising because variance is the sole driver of life. The organism would have been looking to maximise its amount of variance. For this model to work there would need to be a highly conserved (constrained) portion of DNA and a highly recombinant area. We would expect the allele count in the population to rise rapidly until new species are born."
Comments (215)
Quoting MikeL
That idea, perhaps, has a precedent in the very ancient notion of the 'pleroma'. Whilst that word has subsequently taken on a number of religious or esoteric meanings, it was originally associated with the saying that 'nature abhors a vacuum'. The idea was that, as being was greater than non-being, then the divine intelligence would tend to produce whatever thing could possibly exist, as the non-being of that thing was an imperfection. So the 'pleroma' manifested as the idea of the 'principle of plenitude', and came to be associated with the Goddess Fortuna, who used to carry the Horn of Plenty, from which the abundance used to spring forth:
So such ideas have an ancient provenance. Alas, they're not of much appeal to scientific biology, but they're very interesting from the viewpoint of cultural studies. (Might be worth perusing the Wikipedia entry on 'orthogenesis' too.)
In fact, what is here called the 'creative evolution model' has been the subject of biological investigation for quite some time now, insofar as it's becoming widely acknowledged that variation is not wholly explained by natural selection alone, but a host of other, interlocking evolutionary mechanisms. The key difference is that in the biological models, 'creativity' is not some kind of primordial ontological force (as with vitalism), but a product or outcome of evolution. The key term used here is evolvability: this being the capacity of a biological system to engender novel heritable traits, a capacity that can be selected for in evolution.
How this works can be pretty complex, but the abridged version is that a hell of a lot happens in the 'space' left by the looseness ('baggyness') of natural selection which, when taken together, all help to produce variation. The mechanisms that underlie these happenings don't get as much popular press as natural selection - genotype networks, phenotypic plasticity, biological robustness, sexual selection, to name a few - but the cool thing is that if you study them, you realize that they harness the looseness of natural selection so that they work 'with' and not against it to drive evolution. The long and short of it is that natural selection needs to be understood as one component among an entire assemblage of evolutionary mechanisms which, only when taken together in complementary fashion, constitute the full picture of how evolution works.
(Some references: Andreas Wager - The Arrival of the Fittest, Mary Jane West-Eberhard - Developmental Plasticity and Evolution, Richard Prum - The Evolution of Beauty).
I would be interested in comparative allele comparisons using the two ideas, so long as we could agree on a baseline. I think someone should be able to test the theory.
This is not true. Survival of the fittest is not only a model, it's a factor that does try to eliminate variance, but there are other factors.
It's a little sneaky to say that creativity was selected for, although it made me smile. Survival of the Fittest swallows Creation. That would have made a better title for the OP.
There is a distinction though between the two which is in the opening OP. In a situation where an animal can diverge evolutionaryly, without interference, does the current model of evolution predict increased conservation of successful alleles or increased prevelance of alleles in the population?
The trick is to think in terms of genotype and phenotype instead of simply alleles, because what matters is not just any variation, but heritable variation. Moreover, it's important to think at a population-level, rather than at the level of genetic sequence because the looseness of natural selection allows for a crap ton of unexpressed genetic variation which is 'hidden' from selection pressure, across a 'fit-enough' population. This ability for variation to 'hide' from selection pressure is in fact what allows so much variation to take place in the first place. Check out this paper by Andreas Wanger that addresses what I think your concerns are. From the abstract:
"Mutational robustness and evolvability, a system's ability to produce heritable variation, harbour a paradoxical tension. On one hand, high robustness implies low production of heritable phenotypic variation. On the other hand, both experimental and computational analyses of neutral networks indicate that robustness enhances evolvability. ... To resolve the tension, one must distinguish between robustness of a genotype and a phenotype. I confirm that genotype (sequence) robustness and evolvability share an antagonistic relationship. In stark contrast, phenotype (structure) robustness promotes structure evolvability. A consequence is that finite populations of sequences with a robust phenotype can access large amounts of phenotypic variation while spreading through a neutral network. Population-level processes and phenotypes rather than individual sequences are key to understand the relationship between robustness and evolvability." (my bolding).
https://youtu.be/MtgLklXZo3U
Anyway, here is Sheldrake's take on the belief system of science: Naturally the scientists sitting on TED's Board and representing the funding interests had it banned promoting 1.3 million views.
https://youtu.be/JKHUaNAxsTg
But what would make some variant useful under the CEM, if not great environmental change?
It seems that you are arguing that mutations crop up as the result of some intelligence, instead of the random miscopying of genes.
Most mutations are a hinderence to survival, and are rejected in the current environmental conditions and most other conditions that exist on Earth, past, present, and future. So where is the intelligence in that? Is there an intelligece behind the changing of environments throughout Earth's geological history? You'd have account for that change and the cause of it. Is it the same intelligence evolving organisms, or are there two intelligences - one that controls the evolution of organisms, and one that controls the changing environment and both are in a never-ending battle against each other?
Usefulness is not the guage of creativity. Creativity is interesting onto itself. Most of my life is spent creating. This is why I study the arts. It is precisely the same creativity that a child feels when playing with blocks.
"Mutations" are just experiments. "Let's see what will happen if I do this?"
Life is no more complicated than observing what is actually on occurring. Of course, out of a desire to be creative, one can create all kinds of explanations. However, one creates all kinds of issues in ones life if one chooses to deny and suppress the creative/intelligent aspect that permeates the whole of life.
From just logical reasoning we know the survival of the fittest to be true. The reason for your situation is that it doesn't quarantee that only the fittest survive, and not only because the fittest one can't exist as fitness is a spectrum. The less fit an individual is, the less likely it is to survive, and the more variance there is, the more there are unoptimal individuals. Thus, as the species in stable conditions approaches their optimal form, the weaker the survival of the fittest as a force driving them towards that stage of existence gets.
Meanwhile, randomness is independent of everything. It always remains equally random. Therefore the species approaches the stage of equilibrium with such variance that the sum of forces is zero.
I'm not saying that the creative evolution is wrong, though, but if an explanation is correct, it must be compatible with other explanations proven correct.
Again, it's not survival of the fittest but survival of the adequate. And as for other factors, again, to list: sexual selection, niche construction, phenotypic plasticity, developmental robustness, evolvability, genotype networks, genetic 'mutations', gene flow, symbiogenesis, horizontal gene transfer, artificial selection, population isolation - all of these and more can and do 'factor' as relevant mechanisms of evolution.
All of these definitions come without any definition. What is fittest? What is adequate?
The terms are self-defining. It is adequate until it no longer is.
All of life is an experiment and we learn from it. Stephen Hawkings had survived those doctors who pronounced his early death. Life is going forward without knowing what will be unfold. There is no fittest or adequate, just experimentation.
The term is relational of course - what is adequate depends on the environment in which a species finds itself. The idea is that evolution has contingency built into it - all life is indeed an experiment, 'going forward without knowing what will happen'. This is just the lesson of evolution.
All to admire the innumerable variations of all life that inhabits all environments both internal and external. The creative mind, as in football plays, comes up with an enormous variety of ways to play the game, and like a good football player, is always adjusting as the play and game unfolds.
In a sense, as even the adequate have a possibility of surviving, but in the long term the fittest have a greater possibility of that, which is what the term surivival of the fittest means. Not that everything except the best dies within a generation.
Quoting StreetlightX
Most of these fall under the roofs of either randomness or fitness, as an example the artificial selection which I considered mentioning. I should also mention that I meant factors to specifically the variety of specimen within a species, but there are indeed some I hadn't considered.
Good points.
Are people confusing Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651) and Charles Darwin (Origin of the Species, 1859)? I wonder if people are thinking, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" when the hear the phrase, "survival of the fittest".
"Survival of the fit enough" is carried out in very, very slow motion over long periods of time. It isn't carried out with the speed and violence of a no-man zone. "Nature is red in tooth and claw" was written by Tennyson in a verse memorial to a close poet-friend (In Memoriam, 1851). He was addressing the conflict between science and religion. Ideas about "evolution" had been percolating for a couple of decades, and he references the conflict in the poem.
"Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all"
is another famous phrase from the poem.
Nature is red in tooth and claw because some animals are meat eaters, and it tends to be what we think of as peace-loving benign vegetarians who are preyed upon.
On a more genuine discussion side, I so far agree with StreetlightX: it’s not about being fittest. Evolutionary models, when addressed on their own right, hold that all life is equally evolved. Quite a different take/paradigm than our cultural mindsets of “more and less evolved that some other”, never mind the mindset of most evolved, or most fit.
It is as much ideology to proclaim evolutionary equality or multiplicity as it is to assert winners and losers. There is so far only one species that could anthropomorphise an entire planet. We and our domestic animals, our selectively bred crops, dominate the biomass of the Earth. We are more evolved in having broken through to a higher grade of sociocultural evolution.
It might not make us fitter in the long run if we can't find the sustainable balance within that. But biology can see grades of evolution and doesn't have to answer to what are essentially political projections coming from left and right.
Remember also that Bergson was speculating long before the machinery of DNA was discovered. So after DNA, you have a problem that the ability to replicate or clone a code was just too good.
Selection pressure required that the coding machinery evolve that kind of self-protecting stability just to ward of DNA parasites - snip out the rogue genetic sequences that would insert themselves and get replicated as junk.
So there were a host of adaptations just to make DNA a robust, non mutating, cloning device.
Therefore, of course, there had to be the counter evolutionary pressure to expose DNA to selection pressure. Controlled evolvability also had to evolve. In complex multicellular life, this was achieved for example by a separation of the germ-line. You had sexual reproduction and specialist cells - sperm and eggs - to generate the requisite degree of mutational variety.
Tricks like doubling the chromosomes and having a gene shuffling recombination meant that every individual gene could be tested by the environment individually - not possible to do in bacteria with a simple genome ring that just has to copy the whole gene kitset as one go, risking the loss of as many good genes as bad ones.
Sexual reproduction with doubled chromosomes also means offspring can inherit 0, 1 or 2 doses of any particular gene - copies from both mother and father. So again a way of concentrating the variety in a way that blind natural selection really has some information to dig its teeth into.
So Bergson was right in a handwaving speculative way. Something had to counter natural selection's ability to remove inheritable variety. There had to be a creative element to match the destructive element. It takes two to tango, yin and yang to produce the third thing of an equilibrium balance.
If one is willing to stretch the definition of "consciousness" as being a process of intelligent self making, then organisms do contribute to their evolution by making a choice about how much they need to expose themselves to the vagaries of environmental chance. They play a game of risk and reward which has some optimal balance.
So at the species level, you could say organisms are "conscious" of their world in that they make adaptive shifts over "mental durations" that span many millenia. It is not completely metaphoric because what brains do is also the same kind of "in the moment" adaptive response, fed by creative ideational variety, with the aim of being optimally tuned to learn from the vagaries of life.
But I fear saying that as people then want to go back to strict either/or. Either biology is dead physics or it is alive spirit - as in Bergson's elan vital. My own position is that life and mind are something else - semiotic/dissipative process organised hierarchically over many timescales or durations. (Again, Bergson was essentially right with his cone of memory, but cast that in spiritualist rather than semiotic terms).
Anyway, for a holist or systems metaphysics, it is just expected that any process is formed by its complementary nature. So natural selection would have to be countered by a matching capacity for creative (that is, intelligently tuned) variety production. And since we found out all about DNA, how that smart balancing act is achieved by biological life has become richly understood.
Then we are all just experiments? Humans are simply the current fancy of some intelligent designer and when it grows bored it will eradicate us in favor of something more interesting.
Does knowing that you are merely an experiment make you feel better about yourself than knowing that you are the result of exponential random mutations over eons?
The mind experiments and comes up with enumerable variations, and variations within variations. Everyone is experimenting continuously, all of the time, and everyone is continuously adapting. We all have minds and they are always active. The physical manifestations are just one aspect of the experiment. Everything comes and everything goes. There is nothing more fitter or less first than others.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The preposterous story of magical mutations that just happen out of thin air and which magically work. Even biologists are running away from. But they can't run to far because then they would have to admit that once again they are all wrong, which would upset the devotees if these magical myths of "it just happens .... over very, very, long periods of time". Behold the wonders of "it just happens".
Evolution is exactly as it seems. Minds, all minds, experimenting, learning, and constantly adapting. Let's just call natural selection a nice tale created by minds for the exactly the same reasons Genesis was created - to fulfill a need.
Jerry Fodor made a very similar claim about biologists en masse giving up the idea of adaptation. The LRB, which published a precis of his book about Darwin, received more than a few letters from evolutionary biologists saying this was hogwash, that there is no such flight from adaptation. The debate is worth reading and skimming.
https://www.nature.com/news/does-evolutionary-theory-need-a-rethink-1.16080
and another:
Quoting Rich
"Magic" isn't a scientific term. However it is a term used by the religious. Magic is the basis of all religion, actually - not science.
Mutations happen randomly, not magically. "Random" simply means that we don't yet understand the mechanism that causes genes to not make perfect copies of themselves sometimes. There could be numerous causes: radiation, disease, etc., but magic is not one of them.
Natural selection is everywhere. It is the reason planets have the shape they have, as well as organisms. It also has an influence on your mind - as you adapt (learn) to new conditions - acquiring new knowledge and rejecting old knowledge in favor of the new. Natural selection is simply an environmental feedback mechanism that shapes the individual constituents of the environment - one of which is your mind.
Well that's the point, isn't it?
Quoting Harry Hindu
An yes, the it just happens explanation.
Natural selection is just a nice story, without a shred of evidence, that appeals to those seeking fitter and not fitter. The Nazis loved it.
A brief survey of life will reveal that everyone is living, everyone is dying, some a bit earlier than others and some a bit later than others. No big deal either way and as far as humans are concerned, much sooner than turtles and trees. That's about it after billions of years. Lots of variety and as always lots of surprises. The one thing I haven't figured out is why elephants haven't evolved to shoot guns back at the hunters and why we haven't evolved into cockroaches?
So the article can be summed up as saying everyone working on evolutionary theory agrees the glass has water sitting to the halfway mark, but then "violently disagrees" about whether to call that state of affairs half-full or half-empty.
Business as usual. ;)
(Back 30 years ago, the evo-devo vs modern synthesis issue was rather more controversial - folk might swear the evo-devo glass was empty.)
The more money that is available for research, the faster the theory of evolution will mutate.
Scientists on the whole can be quite creative when it comes to fundraising.
Wrong. It has plenty of evidence. You are just to frightened to look into it. It is religion and unfalsifiable philosophical claims (which would be most of philosophy) that have not a shred of evidence.
Quoting RichIf you had a better understanding of evolution by natural selection, the answers would be easy. I'm sure you understand how difficult it is to have an intelligent conversation with someone who doesn't have the slightest idea of what they are talking about.
How about a Superlative Gene Theory that explains why Billionaires are the superior race? Any chance for funding?
The difference of course for science is that it also has the self-regulating mechanisms for calling time on unproductive bullshit. As a model of the world, it has to meet certain objective criteria. It ain't just entertainment.
More money begaths more theories. A Genesisl story of a different sort.
So what is your point? - That any idea that is funded is hogwash? - That making any explanation for ours and the universe's existence is a waste of time? What is it exactly that you are making an argument for?
These pesky ESS evolutionary scientists you complain about turn out to be explaining exactly what you are complaining about. Fancy that.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/09/opioid-crisis-responsibility-profits/538938/
https://merryjane.com/news/insys-therapeutics-charged-with-deceptive-practices-in-opioid-scandal
Materialism is fundamental to these drug scandals. The industry needs to propagate the myth that chemicals are beautiful things because that is all humans are. They just find people who are willing to take money to create appropriate myths. Cigarette makers use to do it all the time.
What I do know is that it contained nothing about "survival", "fittest", "adequate", etc.
Of course, a book published in 1979 is not going to be up to date now with evolutionary theory. But I doubt that anything has changed since then that now demands the use of, and a fight over the biologically-correct use of, words like "fittest".
The author even illustrated evolution as he defined it at work without "survival" being a factor: lower birthrates in wealthy countries.
So your argument is:
1. If biologists did not tell them so, people would not believe they are only chemicals.
2. If people did not believe they were only chemicals, they would not believe that chemicals are beautiful things.
3. If people did not believe chemicals were beautiful things, Big Pharma could not sell them addictive and destructive chemicals.
4. Big Pharma wants to sell people addictive and destructive chemicals.
Therefore,
5. Big Pharma funds biologists to tell people they are only chemicals.
SSRI's are a famous Big Pharma example of selling the public on the notion that depression is due to a lack of a particular molecule.
Scientists working on evolutionary theory could only wish they might get a sniff of some of that Big Pharma dosh.
I'm not sure. Think I rushed it.
Better might be:
4. If Big Pharma did not fund them, biologists would not tell people they are only chemicals.
5. Big Pharma wants to sell people addictive and destructive chemicals.
Therefore,
6. Big Pharma funds biologists.
Should probably try a version that isn't all counterfactuals ...
Quoting Harry Hindu
I agree in times of great environmental changes you want a genome that is actively throwing out a lot of diversity, not one that has the occasional mutant which just by chance may be able to allow life to scrape through at just the right time - talk about a lucky coincidence, time after time after time after time. Life should buy a lottery ticket with that kind of luck.
After all the devastatingly close calls life on this planet has had, and every time has bounced back to occupy every niche we can imagine, it was not because there was a lucky one-off mutant that should not have occurred, which being unfit and on the verge of being wiped out, suddenly was made king of the castle. It is because variety is being spat out all over the place all of the time and regardless of what you do to the environment, life will spit out the combination it needs in short order (at least 99.99% of the time).
Quoting Harry Hindu
If I recall correctly there are regions of the DNA in some cell types where copying errors are (seemingly purposefully) high. I believe it is the regions of antibody creation. Rapid, random variation is very much required to find the best match for the antigen. Those mutations that don't cut the mustard are not selected for. Not all mutations are random copying errors without purpose.
Purpose of course does suggest an intelligence, and is it such an abstract notion to suggest that life is intelligent? Is it incorrect to suggest that life may have some control of the regulation of the DNA transcription and translation that....it regulates.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You're suggesting the mutations serve no purpose most times and are therefore wasteful. Most soldiers on the wall overlooking the enemy territory never see an enemy soldier or come under fire. Where's the intelligence in that? That's wasteful.
Actively spitting out variety of genetic combinations at a high level also allows organisms to find their snug little niches in the environment much quicker then waiting for some accidental mutation. Take as an illustration a bacterium next to a volcanic pond. Creative evolution would see a rapid increase in allele population around metabolism until the bacterium is able to metabolise sulphurous gases.
By contrast the Survival of the Fittest model, which is conservative by definition (mutations are unplanned accidents that most times it does not want even though they have repeatedly allowed survival) asks us to believe that a random copying error out of all the possible millions of random copying errors that may have occurred suddenly allows the metabolisation of sulphurous gases. To me the Survival of the Fittest model asks us lower our intellectual reasoning to the point that there really isn't any.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Well here you've blown out the scope of the argument in order to find an advantageous foothold I think. You've presupposed my answer to your intelligence question was yes, and then created a strawman to know down. Let's quickly look at the question though. Is there an intelligence behind the universe? Is that your question? Maybe there is Harry, maybe there is.
Are there two intelligences? Maybe, I can take one intelligence and blow it out into bubbles, each bubble with its own restraining properties, trying to hold form while bumping into the other bubbles. Of course, when they all pop again, you have the same intelligence you started with.
Hi Blue Banana, I think you started by trying to argue Survival of the Fittest and ended up lending weight to Creative Evolution.
"The more variance there is, the more there are unoptimal individuals."
- Yes, and the more there are optimal individuals. Think of boxing, take a crowd of a thousand young men, different sizes, weights, coordination levels, fitness levels. Most of them won't be able to box well at all, but a handfull will probably show a lot of promise. Compare this to random sampling 100 young men.
"As the species in stable state conditions approaches their optimal form, the weaker the Survival of the Fittest as a force driving them forward towards that stage of existence gets." - right, you are suggesting conservation of the allele diversity in the population, which I am arguing we should expect to see in the survival of the fittest model. So, how does that fit into divergent evolution where this 'approaching optimal form' says: 'You know what, stuff being a possum, I want to be a kangaroo.'
I agree with your post, Apokrisis. I agree you need conservative and creative elements alike to succeed and you need regulation over them. In the DNA this would be expressed as conserved regions and more recombinant regions.
We know that certain cells can generate high levels of recombinant alleles in certain sections of the DNA, such during antibody production, while maintaining the integrity of the cell.
Surivival of the Fittest per se would advocate a position too conservative for life to be sustained through challenging environmental changes. That is the major problem with it. A Creative Evolution model that stresses a much higher and purposeful rate of allele creation while conserving fundamentally necessary parts of the DNA (eg through methylation) seems much more plausible.
Back to Lemark for a short second- we briefly mentioned him the other day. It has just occurred to me that a Creative Evolutionary model seems to favour a Lemarkian interpretation that experiences throughout a lifetime can affect heritable DNA. We have found life everywhere in all sorts of extreme environments, but for simplicity's sake we will go back to our pond bacteria near a volcanic vent.
Even given a massive mutation and replicative rate, to wait for a blind mutation in some section of the DNA to provide the adaptive advantages required for life to survive and thrive in hostile environments seems like an unnecessary stretch. Much less of a stretch seems to be (through promoter control for example), that the cell loosens constraint on conservative regions of DNA associated with some region causing problems for the cell (eg metabolism or cell wall structure etc), thereby increasing creativity in these regions. To me, this makes a lot of sense. What are your thoughts?
I take your point on the corruption of science. When private companies are make a fortune selling a product that science says is needed, they are not going to listen to anyone who tries to tell them different. Especially if it means reporting to shareholders that their 500 dollar a pill wonderdrug is not required
I am sure everybody is familiar with the helicobater plori bacteria which is responsible for stomach ulcers. How the pharmaceutical companies didn't want to know about his discover because they were making an absolute fortune of selling all sorts of anti-stress medications and treatments. It wasn't until he actually drank the bacteria, gave himself stomach ulcers and then took routine antibiotics to cure himself that the scientific community were forced to sit and look.
The cost blow out on drugs that cost less than two dollars to make and are sold at ridiculous prices is shameful.
This behaviour though, appears relatively isolated to Big Pharmaceutical I think, although you may know differently.
The scientific community in the main are just like us and love to argue the hell out of everything. I was once in the room when a German scientist presented his findings and data to a Research School. I was impressed. He was very confident and self-assured. Then, when he was done, they picked him apart. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Huge heated arguments flaring up and quietening down, people standing up out of their seats to proclaim differences and demand evidence. At the end he was bumping into things as he was walking about justifying his position. But it was all good. Science is still rigorous, it's just the inflexible dogmatic narrow minded scientists like Dawkins that I personally want to rail against.
I haven't read your paper in a lot of detail yet, I will save that for the weekend, but on the face of it calling Natural Selection 'baggy' is really just saying that Survival of the Fittest didn't really fit isn't it? You have had to invoke creativity to make up the shortfall?
Do you know of any studies that have looked at predictive models of conservative vs non-conservative expression of alleles in isolated populations such as occurred in Australia?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'didn't really fit' - fit what? For what purpose? Just remember that 'survival of the of the fittest' is just a phrase used to nominally designate a theory. It isn't the theory itself. For the most part it isn't even a very good nomination in my opinion, precisely because it misleads so easily (an undergrad friend of mine just told me the other day in fact that the first thing she was told by her biology professor was that 'natural selection is not survival of the fittest'). Furthermore, the baggyness of natural selection isn't a bug, but a feature: it works to drive evolution because of it's looseness, not in spite of it.
Can't speak for the studies you're looking for, unfortunately. Also, Re: the paper, just read the Introduction and the Discussion, unless math is your thing.
Should we? This is what we're seeing but the survival of the fittest model alone does not imply that.
Quoting MikeL
The kangaroo, for some reason, must be the fittest possibility for this to happen - probably because of existing space for it.
Study the field and what is really going on vs. what you might have been taught. You are in for a big surprise. Prepare for illusions to be shattered. It is rampant and manifests in all sorts of ways including funding biases, experimenter biases, publication biases, and inability to replicate results under most situations. You are currently operating under the science illusion. Anyone who studies the field knows about this but won't say anything. Science protects its own just like all other professions. There is no rigor.
This is how goal oriented science operates. First the desired conclusion and then "it happens" to fulfill the conclusion. Zero rigor. This is why we need more philosophers like Bergson to challenge what has become a money seeking industry.
Then why the wombat?
One other aspect of the science industry that is relevant to understand. The industry is self-selecting. There are dogmas, just as in religion (Sheldrake wasn't being simply metaphorical in his video), and if someone does not have complete faith in the dogmas, they can't find a career in the industry. You wouldn't expect to find someone who doesn't believe in Jesus in the Catholic Church would you?
BTW, I admire your curiosity about philosophical and scientific inquiry. It is rare.
Or the tens of thousands other forms of life? Natural selection is a big fail which is why scientific evolutionary theory is a hodgepodge of theories which is ever growing and evolving. A better approach would be to simply acknowledge a non-material creative mind that is continuously adapting within constraints. Of course, the brick wall is that it is non-material.
Ha ha, very good.
-Different beings have different probabilities of surviving and successfully reproducing.
-Offspring of any being at least partially inherits the traits of its parent(s).
-Definition: fitness means having traits that make it more likely for a being to survive and produce offspring.
From these we can directly deduct the survival of the fittest, unless we have very different definitions of that theory.
The mind does indeed exist at all levels of life in a single body, e.g. cells, bacteria, viruses, neurons, etc. and they work in together to adapt. This is why I practice music, Tai Chi, Qigong, sports, etc. It trains my body to work in unity so it can adapt. In sports, it makes one a better player. In health it makes one more capable to resist and to heal.
So, to come back to Divergent Evolution, should the allele diversity in the population increase rapidly in the population or become conservative to conserve those successful genes?
Understanding life is not about proofs. Thousands of years of experience with this approach has gotten us no where.
We can understand life by direct self observation and observation of what is around us, feeling, intuition and a bit of detective. Observe yourself, your mind, constantly adapting to new environments. Observe how you change as you adapt (maybe you play sports?). This is creative evolution in action.
True, but the evolution of biological organisms isn't the same thing as understanding life.
So your argument is that because of complexity of human mind, actions, culture, survival in modern society regardless of our genes etc. we choose our companions based on non-genetic traits so the survival of the fittest doesn't apply? Very much possible but I can't say the same for other animals.
If one ruminates over this statement one might find that understanding evolution is all about understanding life. That is why "natural selection" is sacrosanct to materialism, i.e. chemicals "naturally" come together and morph into life - and stay there. It is the greatest miracle ever told.
All minds are necessarily different and are on different paths. However, dog owners certainly feel very connected to them.
The Elan vital (Bergson's terminology) is nothing more than the creative will that the mind exerts. This stands in contrast to the mind's memory. If you feel you have a creative element and if you feel you have the will that you can utilize to try to manifest this creativity, then that is the Elan vital. It is only what one experiences every day.
This is not all the term implies. I obviously believe in creative mind, but not its role in evolution that creative evolution gives to it.
Quoting Rich
The materialistic explanation has been proven true. We know how those chemicals, molecules and cells are formed and what their structure is. I don't consider myself a materialist but materialistic explanations can indeed explain our physicl world.
Quoting Rich
Could you elaborate?
That's all it is. The mind is creatively adapting to changing circumstances, the mind operating at all instances of life. There is nothing more to the Elan vital.
Well this is prima facie not the case since the materialist explanation, whatever it is, is changing all the time and is nothing more than a spaghetti bowl of ideas that are tossed about as much as finding will allow. In other words, it is an outright mess without any proof and any hope for proof. But if you are satisfied with "it" (no one can describe what "it" is), then that is your choice. Personally, I never subscribe to obvious obfuscation.
The Rupert Sheldrake video I posted earlier discusses the evolution of life in a general way.
There is no proof for most of those theories because there is nothing to prove. They only describe the chaotic reality. One of the few things that can be considered proven is the existence of atoms and molecyles and how they interact with each other, and that DNA for example exists and what it is like. These basic things aren't chaotic, they aren't the spaghetti. They're the existence of the bowl and the spaghetti, which are not changed.
What facts point at that they're evolving in different directions because of their minds?
What you're saying is that you have a mind that is creative and tries to adapt, and therefore there's a mind operating at all instances of life that is also creatively adapting, which explains the evolution. Élan vital means all the three sentences, I (and majority of the people, I think) only buy the first one.
Yes, they exist and they interact in a vast number of different ways, and they even act in a non-local manner in an unpredictable but probabilistic manner. That's just about it. Just because there are electronics interacting in a TV set does not mean that the source of the pictures is inside the electronics. In fact, such a reading of the nature of electronics would be considered strange.
The question is, what is bringing habit (probabilistic behavior) and novelty into our realm of experience. It's right there for everyone to observe, our minds.
What is spaghetti is the jumble of scientific theories of biological evolution which is continuously growing, changing, and morphing into new theories as materialistic science does everything it can to deny the mind. It's pretty extraordinary to observe what people will do for money.
It's not any more complex than the nature it's trying to describe, which is pretty damn complex. That's because those theories are there to describe, not to explain. Any of the selected few explaining theories are very simple and neat.
And what observations should I make from them?
Furthermore, this can be easily proven by opening up the TV and inspecting its parts and how they work because of how advanced our technology is. We can do the same with living organisms or cells for example.
The problem is that science had become goal seeking, that is anything but the mind. The Church Inquisitor use to use the same tactics in order to preserve its dogma. Science no longer just observes and reports, now markets and creates theories for funding purposes. NGOs operate in the same way. This is euphemistically referred to as research bias.
Quoting BlueBanana
It's what you observe, not what I observe. Everyone observes differently depending upon their history (memory).
Quoting BlueBanana
Exactly. Observe the brain. There are no images. There is no memory. There are no thoughts. There are no colors or sounds. There is no instinct for survival. Ditto for TV sets. The brain is a tool of the mind as it's the TV set, the difference being that the brain has life.
If I was to continue further into the materialistic direction, I'd argue that yes there is. Look into a computer, can you see the images? No, but they're still within the computer. We already know how memories are in the brain.
Instead I'll rule the brain and consciousness out of the discussion both because they haven't been explained by materialists yet and because I don't think they can be. How about plants? From what you've said I've gotten the picture that according to you, mind exists in all living things and parts of our body, not only brain. What is that based on?
Quoting Rich
So how do you know I'll observe a proof to your opinion? What were your observations and how do they imply that the difference in mind causes differences in evolution?
Do you have any actual first hand experience on microbiology research? Afaik we know how living organisms work and there are no gaps that élan vital would fill.
There are no images in a computer anywhere. Just on-off states.Quoting BlueBanana
In another thread I linked to various studies regarding plant sentience. Differences and similarities. Quoting BlueBanana
I have no idea what you will observe. However, in life, developing skills in observation, curiosity, and questioning (skepticism) can be very rewarding and helpful.
I had friends who will because they could no longer stomach it. Most of their time was devoted to developing marketing pitches for fundraising purposes. Their superiors had to be paid their grand salaries for doing absolutely nothing in some way, right? Cure for cancer was always good.
That form the image. With TV you had a point because the images aren't stored in the TV but they come from outside it. Why couldn't the mind, images or memories be stored in the brain as electric signals or chemicals?
Quoting Rich
So if you din't know that I'll observe an answer to my question, why the advice? Could you give the answer?
Quoting Rich
Ask those friends whether a movement of a signal in a nerve can be explained by the chemicals interacting with each other or whether there's a need for a force that isn't explained by science.
It is the mind that forms the image. The computer like the TV set like the brain are receiving/transmission tools, but the brain is living and this can adapt.
Quoting BlueBanana
Results are always unpredictable. It is the nature of life that it develops differently. But, observing all the batteries of dogs, may provide some interesting insights and new ideas.
Quoting BlueBanana
My friends didn't believe in any of this but a job is a job - until you quit. Academia and research is all politics.
If the computer is the receiver, what sends the image? Nothing, it exists in the computer, just in another form.
The computer sends some pixels to an output device that arranges the pixels in a manner that the programmer's mind chose. The observer's mind than looks at the representation and forms an image in the mind.
Let me assure you, because it seems you are not familiar with computer electronics, there are no images in the computer or the TV set. It is all formed in minds. Did someone tell you differently?
Back to the subject, why can't memories exist as electric signals in the brain and be transformed into memories as we perceive them by the brain?
There are on and off bits. How they are interpreted once they are projected into some output device, based upon some human developed program, is up to each individual mind. If one just looks at some electronic component, there is absolutely no image and again, I invite you to observe.
Really?
Would you like to pitch biological evolution (roughly as currently understood) against creationism over in the science (or religion) department?
I'll open a new post referring to your claim, if asked, and if you promise to show evolution the door (or justify your claim I mean). Might include a poll.
Per se, abiogenesis is a hypothesis, and evolution is established.
Let's say I agree. How about any non-creative evolutionist view? And to get back to the track, is there any scenario the spaghetti bowl doesn't explain, or is the only reason for denying it that it's a bowl of spaghetti?
So in essence you have a continuous string of miracles just happening.
What is amazing is that at once, you have this society of minds creating this magnificent story, and you have larger society of minds believing it (or having great faith in it), all last the same time time denying their own minds that are participating in it. It is truly amazing to observe from the audience.
If your curiosity ends at "It just happens", and you want to deny your own mind in favor of some constantly changing stories, (I imagine this is what is the current garden variety truths), then whom am I to suggest to you otherwise. You have no mind and "It just happens". Ok. Many believe in miracles.
1) They aren't stories because they are descriptions, not explanations, and based on either our observations or common sense.
2) None of them contradicts the existence of mind.
3) Isn't a magical, unexplained existence of mind a miracle in itself?
4) When you look at how wonderful and beautiful life is, does it not feel miraculous to you?
Yes, the mind can be viewed as miraculous, I view it as simply as myself, the beginning, the middle and the end. To me, what is miraculous, more so than Genesis, is the scientific explanation for everything, i.e. it just happens. But with that said, each of us has a philosophy that we live by, which makes us different and similar.
More or less. But not really very clearly. Yet.
Quoting BlueBanana
I wouldn't go anywhere close to vegetarian sentience, but some plants, at least, can signal that they are under attack and near-by plants (same species) can receive those chemical signals and initiate defense (increase of alkaloids in their leaves, maybe).
Plants also have simple tropisms (sunflowers following the arc of the sun for instance.
Quoting Rich
There is a reason why scientists (and everybody else who does research in a university) spends so much time on fundraising: Over the last few decades legislatures have off-loaded the cost of running universities onto tuition. Tuition can't support teaching AND research, so the researchers have to work as much on finding grants to replace expiring grants. Without replacement and continuing grants, their lab work and research is pretty much closed down.
Labs can't stick up their nose at commercial entities that give grants, and they are usually interested in products. So, sometimes the tail wags the dog. But that has been true for a long time, not just recently, and not just in research.
Hi Bitter Crank, would this suggest a sentience?:
[Quote]"The ability to recognize kin is an important element in social behavior and can lead to the evolution of altruism. Recently, it has been shown that plants are capable of kin recognition through root interactions. "[/Quote]
http://www.amjbot.org/content/96/11/1990.full
It has been shown that if growing beside kin, the plants restrain their root growth so as not to monopolise the nutrients in the soil. When not growing beside kin, there is a race to claim whatever you can get as fast as you can.
This is one of the signalling types you were talking about:
ACACIA trees pass on an ‘alarm signal’ to other trees when antelope
browse on their leaves, according to a zoologist from Pretoria University.
Wouter Van Hoven says that acacias nibbled by antelope produce leaf tannin
in quantities lethal to the browsers, and emit ethylene into the air which
can travel up to 50 yards. The ethylene warns other trees of the impending
danger, which then step up their own production of leaf tannin within just
five to ten minutes.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12717361.200-antelope-activate-the-acacias-alarm-system/
But what about this signalling, which describes how caterpillar-damaged plants protect themselves by attracting parasitic wasps.
http://www.pnas.org/content/92/10/4169.full.pdf
There is this article about how the plant feeds ants so they take up residence in their bark and attack anything that tries to eat it, but then emits a chemical noxious to ants to allow pollinators to visit the flowers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8383577.stm
There are many examples of plant sentience, but this short article sums some of it up. I highly recommend you read this one. It's not very long.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8383577.stm
So, doesn't ultruistic behaviour, communication with other plants and reaction to other plants, communication with and reaction to other insects suggest that the plant is aware of what is going on? It is sentient.
Such a complex intertangling of nature could not have happened through random accidental misfirings of DNA copying. It is an example of the outcome of Creative Evolution.
Why not?
Take the ant on the acacia that feeds on the sugar that the acacia provides for it.
A random mutation in a segment of the DNA responsible for producing or transporting sugar occurs, causing sugar to pop out through the phloem onto the surface of the tree - ie the tree is bleeding sugar. It is very lucky at this point the plant, with such a hideous disease does not starve to death or get eaten by some huge carnivore.
A passing ant sees the sugar, says yum, and starts to eat it. It comes back every day to the still uneaten tree, eventually deciding to set up shop in the bark of the tree. Along comes a pollinator to the tree and the ants naturally scare it away, just like they scare away the other herbivores that have come to eat the tree... oh wait there a sec. No I forgot something.
A second random mutation occurs causing the plant to produce a noxious smell to insects- no, wait, bees are insects. Let me try again. A second random mutation occurs to the plant, causing it to produce a noxious smell to ants, but only noxious to ants, not to pollinating bees. This has the coincidentally lucky effect of ensuring the ants don't chase away the bees when they come to pollinate.
Oh, hang on. Let me just tweak that mutation a little bit, as I just realised that if the plant is producing a chemical noxious to ants they would not stay in plant. Let me try again. A random mutation occurs causing an aromatic to be produced (not deleted). The aromatic is only expressed in the flowering part of the plant and not elsewhere, at times when pollination is required.
The aromatic was a very lucky unwanted copying error of the DNA, especially when we consider that without it, the plant should have died in the first generation of ant settlers. - the mutations must have occurred within the one plant within the one generation.
So the plant now has successfully produced - sorry wrong wording - the plant has now accidentally produced two freak mutations (which should be catastrophic to the plant), one to do with expressing sugar on its surface in nice bitesize portions, the other with producing an aromatic - so a minimum of two highly dangerous mutations, both of which fit perfectly in with the environment.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Well it could, but as a miracle it tops anything in the Bible by several thousands fold. Without some theory for morphogenesis or consciousness, evolutionary theory floats on quicksand. For all intents and purposes, it should be assigned the library designation of modern mythology.
Maybe your articles explain how plants create and maintain sentience, but I will be surprised.
https://healthontheedge.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/the-human-energy-field-an-interview-with-valerie-v-hunt-ph-d/
The ideas here are spot on. I know nothing about the author or motives.
As for research funding, it is completely controlled by the medical industry and it is huge:
https://www.thebalance.com/who-funds-biomedical-research-2663193
?
It's fiction, of course; there is no new drug to cure TB and the company is non-existent. But the way things work in the story have an immensely probably and believable feel. You might like the book.
Barnes and Noble has the digital copy for $1.99, very good deal. You can download the Nook App.
Here is some of the text from one of the articles concerning the chemicals the plants release. It reinforces the question of whether evolution is creative or simply accidental mutations.
"Selective deterrents
The repellent chemicals are specific to the ants. In fact, they attract and repel different groups of insects.
"[The chemicals] don't repel bees, even though they are quite closely related to ants. And in some cases, the chemicals actually seem to attract the bees," says Dr Raine.
The researchers think that some of the repellents that acacias produce are chemical "mimics" of signalling pheromones that the ants use to communicate.
"We put flowers into syringes and puffed the scent over the ant to see how they would respond, and they became quite agitated and aggressive" he explained.
"The ants use a pheromone to signal danger; if they're being attacked by a bird they will release that chemical that will quickly tell the other ants to retreat."
Dr Raine says this clever evolutionary system shows how the ants and their plants have evolved to protect, control and manipulate each other.
The ants may be quick to swarm, bite and sting, but the harmless-looking acacias have remained one step ahead."
This in reference to the previous statement:
Quoting MikeL
Got it. Thanks. (I was confused because I hadn't seen the earlier reply.)
So how does creative evolution handle a case like this?
There is a fundamental difference between survival and creativity with respect to temporal continuity. "Survival" implies a thing, an organism or being, which continues to exist through time. "Creativity" implies a beginning of something new, with the new thing created existing through time. So "creativity" recognizes a discontinuity between the old and the new, a separation between what is created, and the thing which did the creating, while "survival" does not allow for such a separation because continuity is essential to survival.
This is what I see as the principal deficiency in describing evolution in terms of survival. There is no being, or thing which survives, they all die. There is no survival. Evolutionary theory attempts to get around this problem by assuming the real existence of an abstract thing, a variety, or species, which survives. But there is really no such thing which survives. Therefore the concept of "creativity" better handles this problem of temporal continuity. It allows death to the old and birth to the new, through the mentioned separation and discontinuity, without clinging to the illusion or false hope of survival.
Mind persists and is continuous. There is no discontinuity. Physicality persists but morphs. Analogous would be waves moving in and out of oceans.
In terms of survival, the mind is just figuring out, by experimentation, how to survive.
That's easy for you to say, "mind persists and is continuous", but I cannot say that I have the same mind as you, nor is my mind the same as my mother's or father's or brothers' or sisters'. So I really cannot agree with you.
There is a difference between the persistence of waves and the persistence of the ocean. While not precise, the analogy is sufficient for creating the image. The persistence of my mind throughout one physical life and possibly more is quite obvious and my total experience. I have no idea how your mind might be constantly stopping and restarting in a discontinuous manner.
Well, insofar as the phrase "survival of the fittest" has any use, it's just this: you don't get to reproduce if you don't survive. Evolution is about populations; not individual organisms. The concept of species only comes into the theory as the question of whether two populations can interbreed.
Do you have a different understanding of evolution by natural selection?
We all die. No one survives, that's the point. Some breed some don't. Or are you defining survival as successful reproduction? Having children is not my idea of surviving. I think it's called procreating.
It's what the word means in the context of the survival of the fittest though.
Hi Srap, that is what I am trying to figure out. That something other than blind dumb luck allows evolution to continue to progress through time, I have little doubt of. What to prove and how to prove is what I'm wrestling with. Maybe you can help.
The first method, the one I alluded to earlier was about proving creativity. That living organisms love to throw out a wealth of variants, just for the hell of it. To be expressive. I thought we might be able to test this idea using divergent evolution. In Australia, after its geographical isolation the possum was king. It had no predators. Therefore without a driver to change - it could reproduce successfully as a species ad infinitum.
In the normal model of evolution I would therefore expect the genome to become very conserved. It would not want to mess up a winning survival combination. If creativity was the driver here I would expect the allele (variant genes that code for the same thing, eg blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes) number in the population would rise rapidly. There should be a stark contrast.
The drawback with this though, as I now see it, is that there is no driver for constraint either in traditional evolutionary models. If every variant is also able to reproduce successfully then divergent evolution will occur. The test hits a speed hump. I haven't yet tried to resolve this.
One thing that springs to mind though is to invoke a valley between two hills. On one hill is the possum and on the other the kangaroo it will change into. The problem is that in order to reach the kangaroo morphology it must pass through the valley - which is a valley of all the less desirable traits that must occur for a possum to become a kangaroo.
To prove this postulate, you could see if indeed mutations were higher in these regions, but it would not definitively establish intentionality. That is what we need to prove. I was working on this idea in another post but someone decided they wanted to grandstand and has trashed the OP for now. (If we could figure out how to establish intentionality in anything in science, we could apply it to other areas as well such as establishing that the universe was intentionally created.)
The question becomes how can we demonstrating that the changes in the plant were intentional. One way to reason might be that the environment influences the higher order features of the plant during is life - such as geotropism, so why not also affect aspects of the germ line during the lifetime. That the germ line could be affected by experiences was first proposed by Lemarck a couple of hundred years ago and has no support.
Another way might be to test the ratio of actual successful adaptive mutations against predicted successful mutations. If mutations really were random we would expect a staggeringly high number that would be fatal to the plant - reducing its chance of survival.
The idea that was put forward by the trasher of the OP suggested initially was that we need to invoke the environment in a closed loop with the plant. I am still working through this idea as well, I haven't considered it in any real depth yet.
Look into genotype networks! This is exactly the challenge it aims to ameliorate:
http://www.molecularecologist.com/2015/02/bigger-on-the-inside/
A teaser, from the above article, on how to skip the valley (add dimensions!):
Well that's the point, it's a misleading use of the word. We commonly think that "survive" means to stay alive. But in "survival of the fittest" it means something different, it refers to successful procreation. So the discontinuity of life, the fact that there is a separation between parent and offspring, is glossed over, and hidden by that misleading use of "survival".
Quoting StreetlightX
How creative. But how does the being know to proceed through the other dimension? Does it somehow anticipate or foresee getting to the other side, and create a passage through the other dimension, in that direction? I think we can exclude complete randomness, and we can exclude survival, as the means. So what is left, how is the passage through the other dimension found?
So the survival of the fittest is incorrect because it's incorrectly named?
But there is only one living creature. Species are only several steps of genetic diversity away from each other. We differentiate one species from the next because they can't mate. That's it. But that just reflects their distance from each other in the nodal network. They are all the same.
Wow. This is huge.
Ha, this is a wonderfully provocative way of putting it, but I think it's pushing the semantic boundaries a bit to say that all species are ultimately 'the same'. The philosophical danger lies in the denial of novelty: the genotype network must not be thought of in terms of a set of pre-existing possibilities that is here and there instantiated depending on environmental contingencies (Bergson's critique of possibility, if you're familiar with it, would be applicable). This would be a kind of evolutionary philosophy of emanation. Instead, the network itself needs to be something that is differentiated in time, itself shaped by the process of actualization such that it too, comes into being - co-eval, as it were - with the differentiation of species. This would be a evolutionary philosophy of immanence, rather than emanation. This is pretty abstract, but I hope it makes sense.
In narrow ways Sheldrake and Robbins have been able to expand and expound on his ideas (Whitehead I'm afraid went off the deep end), but no one that I have found has been able to do much better. So the best way to understand Creative Evolution is to immerse yourself in it and observe it from within. You have to really feel it because you are part of it. I do this via the arts, e.g. Tai Chi, Qigong, drawing, dancing, singing, writing, and also sports and most importantly health practices. Reading about it or debating it just will not do. You have to practice it.
Understanding Creative Evolution is a life time study since you are an active participant. Begin by creating and enhance your creativity process by sharing Bergson's open words and ideas. Also, it is very interesting to sit back at times and observe the creative process of others. The mass movement to turn humans into robots is quite a show.
There is a mass movement to turn robots into humans too, so maybe they'll meet in the middle somewhere. Bionically limbed, digitally minded, arguing between the two who is the more real.
No one really believe in the robotic movement or determinism. It is the Emperor with No Clothes. People pretend because of economic interests, most especially in that dehumanization is like slavery. In turns people into disposable commodities. How else could the medical industry be allowed to kill tens of thousands of people each year with impunity? Can you imagine any other industry be allowed such luxury?
Be that as it may, becoming fully and truly creative in your life brings meaning and joy so wishing you much luck and happiness on your journey.
Quoting Rich
It sounds like you're saying goodbye or marking a milestone. You going away for a while?
That's really not a bad starting point in my opinion. The first three billion years of life on Earth is single-cell organisms. The last billion is multicellular, and the cells of any one multicellular organism are not that different from the cells of another. DNA, ribosomes, microtubules, membranes, all the machinery developed over three billion years is common to everyone.
To understand the adaptive landscape we need to stop thinking about individual organisms and start considering entire populations. A possum, in order, to become a kangaroo would need to undergo several hundred or thousand mutations. This would require that every mutation was either positive or neutral. There could be no negative mutations, as this would wipe out the organism.
The key is to understand the variability in the population. The Genetic Drift can now occur, with mutations being wiped out but successul combinations surviving. In this way the seemingly impossible divide between the possum and the kangaroo can be bridged.
When we consider that a series of mutations has occurred to create the kangaroo, we must also remember that the kangaroo is now a different species. Life on this earth is a colllection of species, and thus the genetic map that is overlaid on the adaptive landscape can be thought of as continuous, just as it is continuous for the kangaroo and possum.
We should also consider that the adaptive landscape changes over time. It rises up and collapses again. So where before there may have been a bridge that allowed the possum to slowly evolve to the kangaroo, that bridge has now probably collapsed.
Do you want me to go on or am I confusing you to much?
Through this consecutive action through time we can step our way carefully toward being a kangaroo. We can claim to have walked along a ridgeline, skirting the valley, in order to arrive safely at our destination. This is genetic drift. The genome has drifted slowly toward the kangaroo, wombat etc all at the same time.
I'm not sure this is the right way to look at it, although I'm far from being an expert. There isn't a one-to-one map between an organism's features and its genome. How and whether a gene is expressed depends on lots of factors, including other genes. Mutation is the factor we're most interested in, and carries the greatest share of the randomness burden, but in addition to environment (including the developmental environment) there's the shuffling of genes in sexual reproduction.
Quoting MikeL
I think again that's assuming all changes in the genome show up immediately in way that can be readily judged based on the current environment. Suppose part of a population carries an unexpressed gene that's useful when the environment changes, and part of that sub-population carries a variant of another gene that allows that useful gene to be expressed, then they'll end up winning.
Anyway, I agree with almost everything in your last two posts. Did you think I wouldn't for some reason?
Heh. I've garbled the science by the way I'm using the word "gene" but I think what I was trying to say is okay. Trying to unrust.
I mean differentiated rather in the sense of symmetry groups, where groups are defined (read: differentiated) by their invariance under rotation. If one imagines the adaptive landscape 'beginning' as entirely flat - that is, as entirely symmetrical - then speciation - the distribution of peaks and troughs across the now differentiated landscape, breaks that symmetry. Paths that were once available now become closed off: phylogeny now becomes path-dependant, closing off certain evolutionary possibilities.
However because the landscape is multidimensional, paths closed off by speciation in one dimension may open up paths along other dimensions. What is at stake here is the creation of new possibilities. In other words, the adaptive landscape is not just a series of possibilities but a series of changing possibilities, which are themselves dependent upon the actual paths of speciation. Because these paths themselves are contingent (upon the changes in actual environment), the adaptive landscape cannot be seen as a simple set of pre-existing possibilites which are then realized by the random walk of evolution or not. Possibilities themselves are subject to change such that the landscape evolves along with the species that populate it.
This is why I think the checkerboard-of-lights image is not quite right: such a image locates change only at the level of the species, which move across a board of fixed lights. The trick is to imagine the lights themselves warping the board as they flicker across it. Again at stake here is the necessity to secure the the possibility of novelty: if the board is fixed, it becomes possible, in principle, to exhaust the 'combinations' of lights turned on and off across it. But evolution is not just a matter of combinatorics: one must think the coming-into-being of the network itself.
Another more technical and precise way to put it is that the topology of the network - the relations between nodes, and not just the distribution of the nodes across the network itself - is subject to change, contingent upon the actual path(s) of evolution. It's this reflexive movement upon the very space of possibility itself that marks the difference between an emanative and immanentist account of evolution.
Should also have explicitly said there's not a single genome to find its way around the valley. You get whatever you get when some part of the population's gene pool makes it over there.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah, that's precisely the idea Srap Trasmaner. The latency in the DNA you speak of also enables further penetration along the ridge. It's a good point.
I understand what you mean. The adaptive landscape is itself changing through time, throwing up troughs and waves. Evolution tries to run the rise of waves. Because we can think of life as starting at Point A, we can see that it is an expanding sphere. An expanding sphere is constantly expanding its Surface Area as it expands radially. New combination of genotypes come into existence to cross the new expanse.
And while there is divergent evolution, there is also convergent and so we get rift lines between adjacent species as well, but like a maze we could trace this back radially toward the center, through our tree of life to find the junction. These rift lines can merge into one species, because there is only ultimately one organism, however, as this article points out, it is unlikely.
I think the adaptive landscape is an interesting interface too. It's spongy. When we think that there are carnivores feeding on herbivoures feeding on plants, or ants feeding on moss etc, we can see that life is not only riding the adaptive landscape, it is part of the adaptive landscape. Thus at the interface of life, the surface of the expanding sphere there are layers - heirachy.
As a seed for thought, if we were to fix our camera in cross section through the adaptive landscape as it moves upward through time, watching different layers of the heirachy expand and contract as waves and troughs form, it looks an awful lot like a quantum vacuum.
There is a very interesting question here. In the outwardly expanding sphere (through time), new areas appear like great cavities in the sphere- or as blank canvases of the adaptive landscape. Eventually they will fill with genomes. The thing is the genomes do not spontaneously appear inside the space, they must, as genetics says drift into it from the edges. This is an argument against a force of life, and a potential pandoras box I wouldn't mind exploring. Could you argue that the adaptive landscape is the force?
But the idea of genetic drift is itself no entirely accurate. A better name would be genetic hopping. Each variant is a hop further along. This is not pure semantics, as in the race toward the centre of the empty cavity by the genome, those that can jump the further the fastest will get there first and can set up shop before the others.
Here's an extract from an article on Jumping Genes - also called Transposons. Transposons are long portions of the genome that jump about from one section of the DNA strands to another, often causing deleterious effects to the organism.
"Transposons Are Not Always Destructive
Not all transposon jumping results in deleterious effects. In fact, transposons can drive the evolution of genomes by facilitating the translocation of genomic sequences, the shuffling of exons, and the repair of double-stranded breaks. Insertions and transposition can also alter gene regulatory regions and phenotypes. In the case of medaka fish, for instance, the Tol2 DNA transposon is directly linked to pigmentation. One highly inbred line of these fish was shown to have a variety of pigmentation patterns. In the members of this line in which the Tol2 transposon hopped out "cleanly" (i.e., without removing other parts of the genomic sequence), the fish were albino. But when Tol2 did not cleanly hop from the regulatory region, the result was a wide range of heritable pigmentation patterns (Koga et al., 2006).
The fact that transposable elements do not always excise perfectly and can take genomic sequences along for the ride has also resulted in a phenomenon scientists call exon shuffling. Exon shuffling results in the juxtaposition of two previously unrelated exons, usually by transposition, thereby potentially creating novel gene products (Moran et al., 1999).
The ability of transposons to increase genetic diversity, together with the ability of the genome to inhibit most TE activity, results in a balance that makes transposable elements an important part of evolution and gene regulation in all organisms that carry these sequences."
At the instant the first twinkling of a genome appeared, an invisible probability landscape (of existence through time) shot up around it and bubbled like quantum foam under a sheet. The bubbling was much slower than quantum foam though.
The crests represented survival of a genome and the troughs were annihilation. The new life did not have to traverse the landscape. It could have grown its population right where it was without any change to its genome, hoping the probability crest it was on never collapsed. (this probability landscape considered the ability of the genome organism to survive given the current state of the environment in which is found itself- and so it is called the adaptive landscape as well).
The probability landscape foretold that if you want to go from point A to point B (from a possum to a kangaroo) through alterations to the genome, here is the path- follow the ridges (crests). The population, in order to traverse the path would need to modify its genome in sequential steps. Only a certain section of the population would make each step, and if successful would balloon out into its own population.
While this is happening the probability landscape is also shifting uneasily. Crests are rising and troughs are forming. A trait that may be advantageous today (like swimming in the water) may not be advantageous tomorrow - (the water dries up).
Life spread out radially through the probability landscape by alterations to the genome as is required for movement along it. Could it see the path and direct the genome to some extent, or was its spread blind? That is a question this OP wrestles with. By invoking populations we don't need a sentience to accomplish the movement. It's like dragging a mat over the landscape, some parts will go into the dip others will go onto the crest. This does not rule out that it may have been directed.
Thus life can be thought of as a group of branching tentacles spreading from the same original genome, each genome a single step differentiated from that before or after it. Or more technically as a set of interlocking nodes: [source http://www.molecularecologist.com/2015/02/bigger-on-the-inside/]
It gets really weird when one genome is dependent on another genome for its survival. This existence of the second genome would form part of the crest for the genomic map of the first and yet would occupy a vastly different place on the actual genomic map, given that each step is say one change of the genome.
For example a herbivore may depend on the acacia plant for survival. On the genomic map they are in very, very different places - so different are their genomes. And yet the existence of the acacia means that a genome that can allow the digestion of acacia - forms the crest of the herbivore.
- OR the rise of man may send it's probability landscape into a trough.
So the very presence of each different genomic variation creates new probability waves proximally and distally in the landscape.
ONE THING IS CERTAIN - If life stopped evolving it would perish: It must mutate lest the crest it is on sink into the abyss. Is this Creative Evolution?
After all that, I think I just ended up rewording you StreetlightX.
Another way to think about this, if you're interested, is in terms of the topological properties that characterize such a landscape. Two parameters in particular are of interest: the distribution of singularities across the landscape (points of inflection, attractors, maxima, minima, etc), as well as the rates of change of the associated points in the network (dy/dx). Thinking about it this way allows us to drop the language of 'possibility', which, from the point of view of ontogenesis, is metaphysically suspect (again, remember that because possibility is itself subject to change, it cannot serve as the ontogenetic element which accounts for the topology and nodal distribution of the network; it is instead "derivative" of changes that happen 'in real time', as it were).
From a philosophical point of view I think then that it's actually useful to shift from the geometric POV to a topological POV because it allows us to focus less on already-specified 'properties' (specific genomic traits, in this case), and more on the processes by which they come into being. It's the difference between tracking continuous variation in topological form and tracking the discrete differences in already differentiated species.
Defining the singularities in a genomic landscape in a topological map would be the challenge. For example, in a topographic field the maxima would be best thought of as the crest that the genomic marbles would want to roll away from, down the sides of. The minima would be what they roll into. The valleys, from our previous discussions would be where the genomes 'want to' go (ie they would follow the path of least resistance).
You might define attractors similar to those things in the pinball machines that suck the ball onto them, or as weaker more gravity like entities gradually turning the general direction of genomic mutation. This is an appealing idea. In the case of the adaptive landscape attractors might direct genome variation directionally, so they do enter the abyss to as great an extent. I wonder what type of force could act like that on the genome that is not a maxima or minima?
The other point to consider with the rising and falling of the adaptive topographic landscape is if the marbles themselves do not fall into some type of rhythm of movement. The larger the groups of marbles, the more that they should act like a group and wash around together.
What are your thoughts on it StreetlightX?
Even with maxima and minima and attractors popping up and down at various points, unless we invoke intentionality to the movement of the genome we still end up with relatively unmoving genomes. They will shuffle about on the spot. The way around intentionality is to invoke a slope. (This slope acknowledges the presence of a Creative Force that permeates all things and is directional).
The Slope of Creativity would impose directionality on the general movement of genomes, ensuring the marbles are rolling (down hill) all the time irrespective of maxima and minima. Behind the moving genomes are the genomes of dinosaurs and sabre tooth tigers etc which have not been revisited by life.
When we invoke the Slope of Creativity, we could have our attractors tugging at the genome pools as they passed by, our maxima providing slopes to roll up and back down (evolutionary culdesacs) and our minima being dips they may become stuck in.
The Slope of Creativity would also allow an organism to approach, and crest a maxima and come down the other side without being obliterated, so long as the maxima was not too high.
It is possible even with a Slope of Creativity that some genomes get trapped at the base of a maxima or in a minima) in which case we would get very interesting flow patterns around them.
And what would happen on the lee side of a non-crested maxima? It would open up new space when the maxima gate was lowered again.
The opening and closing of the gates as the marbles rolled through the terrain would create different sets of genome clusters, moving together. This does raise the issue of potentially moving through a set of genomes previously visited if some of the singularities were the same.
I'm starting to genetically drift myself now.
I suppose this is where environmental contingencies come into play; the evolution of the eye for example - a common example of convergent evolution - is largely a response to the 'attractor' that is the nexus of movement, light, and the need to avoid predators/find food. Insofar as a range of different species meet these 'requirements', they end up acting, collectively, as an attractor for the evolution of the eye. This is amplified by the fact that - as the work on genomic networks demonstrates - there are multiple possible evolutionary toward the eye.
This is, I should add, a rigoirously anti-Platonic approach to morphogenesis, insofar as the evolution of the eye is not governed by some Ideal form which is instantiated differently across different species, but by environmental contingencies which act as attractors among a topological evolutionary space.
Well, I see billions and billions of different living beings, and I don't see this "one organism", I think it's an unsubstantiated assumption. If I thought that this assumption answered my questions, I might make it. However, it doesn't answer the questions. How does this "one organism" foresee the other side of the valley, to inspire attempting to go around or through the valley to get there?
I can imagine the inspiration as perhaps coming from inside the individual living beings, but I cannot imagine it existing in this "one organism" because I can't see what type of existence it has. So assuming one organism appears to be a step in the wrong direction.
Quoting StreetlightX
Something isn't quite right here, and I detect a degree of inconsistency. The process is described as "closing off", or limiting possibilities, yet the claim is that what is occurring "is the creation of new possibilities". So unless we assume two distinct types of possibility, one which is being limited, and the other which is being created, it appears to be contradictory to say that closing off possibilities is really creating possibilities.
Can possibilities really be created? If it's a real possibility mustn't it have been there all the time? For instance, if I create for myself, the possibility of having a bath, by filling the tub, wasn't that possibility of me having a bath already there prior to me filling the tub? How could one actually create a possibility? Wouldn't it be more consistent to speak of creating actualities, by closing of certain possibilities?
The issue would then be the question of how do existing actualities affect future possibilities. The actuality of the assumed "being" has closed off certain possibilities, but in doing this it has somehow enhanced others. In other words, it has directed itself away from certain possibilities, and toward others, and this is manifested in the actual forms of the individual beings.
It appears like there would be a reason why the "being" would proceed in certain directions rather than others, and I do not think this reason is to found in it being shaped by the environment, for the sake of survival. "Survival" is a bland thing, it means simply to subsist, and as we see in the example of human beings, we want a lot more than to simply subsist. So the closing off of certain possibilities to create new actualities, cannot be directed by survival, because it's very clear from the case of human beings that we know we will die, therefore not survive, yet we directed our energy toward producing a certain type, or style of life, in our short time here.
The fact of non-survival is already taken for granted by the individual living being, and this is evidenced by reproduction. So what the individual is trying to do by closing off possibilities and creating particular actualities, is to either create a style of life for itself, or for its offspring. In human beings we might see the principal intent as creating as creating a certain lifestyle for oneself, the good life, or what Aristotle called happiness, but we have to still respect the existence of the intent to create a certain lifestyle for one's offspring. Which is really more fundamental?
If we are to assume what MikeL called "one organism", this anticipatory factor has to be accounted for. What I am talking about is the anticipation of the existence of the offspring. In order for the individual being to have inherent within itself, the inclination toward creating a lifestyle for its offspring, it must be already anticipating the existence of offspring. And perhaps this anticipation could validate the assumption of "one organism".
I don't think that this is true, and that's why I reject "survival" as central to evolution. I think that simple single-celled organisms could continue to exist indefinitely, survive, without evolving. But life is doing more than just surviving hereon earth, it is thriving, and so we must look beyond simple survival to see the purpose behind evolution. Life is not here to survive. If it were, it would have evolved into a very simple organism which could very strongly withstand the pressures of time, it would not have evolved into complex, sophisticated, and extremely delicate organisms, if it only wanted to survive..
This is a great point Metaphysician Undercover.
I am still trying to figure it out as I go along too. You looked at the start of a chain of logic. There is one organism in the sense that they are connected in a single nodal network called life. To put it another way, if we look at the evolutionary tree we can trace it back to a single point (well, there is that tardigrade that doesn't fit in).
Another way of looking at this point is the probability landscape of survival (the adaptive landscape) is full of related genomes that can be traced back to a single origin.
To address your question on:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think it is important to understand the context of the statement which is about the adaptive landscape. If we consider a landscape that is undulating up and down and place a ball on it. If it rolls into a dip, that is good. If it climbs a hill it will die. On the flat (left, right, backward, forwards) it is neutral. These represent evolutionary pressure on an organism. When on neutral ground there is none.
So a probability network spread out over the ground closely mirrored by the populations of genomes that follow it. Everyone will avoid the hill. But what about if the ball is caught in a bowl that is suddenly thrust upward. Everything in the bowl will die. When the bowl returns to the neutral position we have all the surrounding probability combinations that created the initial genomes inside the bowl. They will once again grow into the bowl, but they will not necessarily follow the same combination they did the first time. New possibilities are being created. Where before the combination led to tigers, now they may lead to meercats. As it gets closer to the centre of the bowl though the probability combinations close off.
I hope I didn't masacre StreetlightX's quote.
I am also having difficulty with the model Metaphysician Undercover. It works, but there are areas that I am having great difficulty getting to fit. For example the Creative Slope I spoke of - to get around your idea of intentionality, can't exist because that would mean there could be no devolution. Instead if there is a Creative Slope it would have to be at 90 degrees to the terrain (a gravity). Even invoking a spherical nodal network, I am still having problems with matching some observations of life with the idea, like how the parasite that creates the zombie snail fits in. Nonetheless, I think it's a good heuristic.
It is my understanding that kangaroos and opossums had a common ancestor, and that kangaroos did not evolve from opossums.
I'm just calling it a possum for convenience. It was a possum like marsupial ancestor at science's best guess.
This page has a good image of it
If we consider that every lifeform has a nucleic acid code (DNA or RNA), then by comparing the similarity and variance between codes we can construct a sphere (the nodal sphere) that shows how they are related. This collective tumbleweed of nodes would constitute the single entity or organism - life.
There is so much strange behaviour though and adaptations of lifeforms that suggest an active awareness of the environment rather than sequential stepping through genome combinations, that unless there is communication through the nodes of the nodal network (a biological hacking of the system) the network itself has no applicable value other than to illustrate connections. A lack of communication through the nodes would also suggest that it is not one life form, as the nodal model would suggest.
In biology I believe that if you can conceive of it, and it makes logical sense, it happens. I wonder what nodal communication would look like (gene sharing perhaps?), but true communication would mean that an outerlying node could obtain information about an inner lying node by routing through several intermediary nodes. It could then use this information to sabotage it, as parasites do so remarkably well when they hijack the inner workings of organisms.
Well, that's the heart of the matter right there. You belong to a large group of people who believe that the history of life shows the actions of an "active awareness." Others of us, including the professional consensus of living biologists, says no. We can go back and forth through the elements of evolutionary theory, but it comes down to that - you do not believe the consensus of scientific opinion. Which is fine, but it doesn't leave us much to talk about.
Well, we can talk about sports, the weather (but not global warming), Game of Thrones, your favorite recipe for Chicken Marsala, and lots of other things.
I (and I think @T Clark) don't see how you and Rich can believe in a life force, and y'all don't see how we can't.
If there's some common ground, there's a basis for discussion. What's our common ground?
Dang. I knew it was a mistake to speak for someone else.
There is the observation of the every day creative mind that is self-organizing and working to continue its existence so to create, learn and evolve. In other words, every day existence would be the evidence.
Compare this to the chemicals that spontaneously came together and created it all - the God parable. Yes this is what science it's proposing which then begs the question how much faith should we put in conventional biological science?
Quoting T Clark
If you only wanted the answers to empirical questions, I think you would not be in the Philosophy Forum. That either leaves one of two options, the first is you want to prove that everyone is wrong and science is right, or you know yourself that something is not quite right. Either way, that's great.
Prove me wrong. Show why my thinking is wrong, and I'll try and do the same back. That's the fun of the Philosophy Forum, and how we acquire a deeper and more fulfilling understanding of our world.
To begin, considering we are talking about evolution in this thread, let me ask you which you think may be the more likely purpose of life? Is life about experiencing, as Rich would suggest, or is it about reproduction so we conserve the species through consecutive generations against a changing environmental backdrop?
Neither. I'm here to fight for truth, justice, and the American way. I'm here because I like to think, write, and argue. I'm here because I am a competent recreational thinker and I want some competition. I'm here because there are so many bad ideas for me to hone my blade on. That's not intended as a reference to you or Rich. That's it - I'm here to hone the blade.
Quoting MikeL
Life is not about anything. It's life. Living is what we do and we're doing it.
Truth, justice and the American way. Cool, me too, and I'm not even an American! - Aussie. Bring it :)
"We'll save Australia, wouldn't wanna hurt no kangaroos. We'll build an All-American amusement park there. They've got surfing too!"
No, I'm GMT -5 (actually, -4 right now)
So how does evolution and the passing on of the genes fit into the picture? Why not just be and then be stamped out of existence? Why bother passing on the genetic code?
Passing on the genetic code is just something that tends to happen while you're living.
So why do animals get the urge to do it so badly? It seems like a lot of work and effort has gone into the process. But for no reason? Not even a scientific one?
They, and we, do it because we're built that way, whether we're built by God or Darwin.
From an evolutionary point of view, sex mixes up the genes, increases genetic variability. Variability is the fuel of evolution. Being able to evolve better has evolutionary benefit.
Life doesn't want to survive; each individual being does. If there's an empty ecological niche, then it's the fittest form due to the lack of competition. What I imagine when I think of the organism you described, is a simple plant of some sort duch as moss or algae. But these are also very defenseless if a more complex predator appears.
No point. Like I said, living things live. Evolution is just something that happens along the way. No purpose, not direction, no meaning. What's the point of the wind, or neutrinos, or chicken marsala? Ok, marsala chicken has a point.
A population of organisms that has greater genetic diversity is more able to change genetically in response to environmental changes better.
But why bother?
It's just the way we're built, whoever or whatever built us.