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This is the perfect segue! I was about to start replying to the
part of Glen's earlier post, which involved a definition of evolution as
"change over time"... and Jamie gives us another, very different, description of
the same process. And both of these descriptions/definitions are radically
different from the Rosennean view. So this is a great way to begin a discussion
on the subject, it seems to me.
Somewhere in "Life, Itself" my father wrote; "For me, it's easy
to conceive of life without evolution, but not of evolution without
life."
He considered the word evolution to have a very
specific meaning when it is applied to biological systems and that meaning
isn't applicable to inanimate systems. So, the definition of "change over time",
while perfectly correct according to the dictionary and certainly applicable to
things like the formation of snowflakes from water vapor in clouds, or diamonds
from carbon, etc, is a completely different concept from what evolution refers
to in application to living systems. My father tended to feel that the word
evolution was overused and misused, just as complexity is... and that the
current usage tends to reinforce the presumption of simplicity (that living
systems evolve just like snowflakes). He considered that a
mistake.
He (RR) also believed that, just as life is entailed,
evolution is also entailed. It's not just random accident. He could see
patterns of entailment in the evolutionary record. But he viewed the
entailments of evolution to be derived from life; life happens,
therefore evolution happens. To learn about the entailments present in the
evolutionary process, we must learn about the entailments present in living
organisms. That's the referent and the derivation, which will
be necessary in order for us to understand evolutionary
entailments. Thus, Jamie's description of evolution as an
ecosystemic process actively sculpting or changing living systems
over time to suit the balance of the ecosystem is also counter to the
Rosennean view.
My question to both Glen and Jamie would be; Where do the
entailments come from, in your respective views of evolution as a process of
change?
Judith
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