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Jamie quoted Judith: ....We
rarely ever question whether our original conceptualization of how the universe
works was adequate or whether we would still agree with it
today....
I understand this position as
'scientific' brainwashedness in the best tradition of injerent reductionism.
Lately (and not least advanced by RR) we changed opinions (eg. into an
endogenous impredicativity etc.) and a total interconnectedness of natural
happenings.
I disagree with Jamie's 'offer'
(if I got it right in the 4th reading):
" That's pretty much how I see the history of
[evolution]." (I see evolution as history).
"We think that [the process of evolution is nature adaptively trying different systemic reactive measures, then waiting to see what measures/nes-species succeed and which fail, resulting in the settling of] new species and relationships [that resolve the old problems .." Nature does not "try" anything.
Does not produce "challenges". Nature is the natural system of them all, in (by?
of?) which changes 'occur and interfere', what we try to decipher in snapshots
of models we identified, taken (and mostly misunderstood) from time to time.
*
I salute Jerry for his
addage:
"Today's biologists are material reductionists. (Yesterday's as well - tomorrow's?????)
Everything in life is reducible to substance i.e. the ability of cell's self repare that controls aging process is reducible to segment of protein...." Sounds to me as Jerry had an idea of how to identify
"life". I don't. We know (?) what our model of 'life' does, what characteristics we assign to it, but I have yet to find a
workable IDENTIFICATION of it (just like 'energy',
'mass', etc. etc). R and M do not identify. Better than any other I heard to
characterize "what?" - OK, we all have an idea what we mean by 'life', I
pretty much arrived at an origination of it (extending the Cairns Smith clay
theory into colloidal propagation with interacting organics and phasing out
anything like "autocatalysis").
I also salute Judith's words: Ju:
"You're not talking about a car engine anymore,
you're talking about a car engine-- in a car, being used to perform a function
(for which it was created by human beings), and interacting with the rest of the
universe. It's a complex universe. As soon as you move away from discussing the
organizational aspects of the engine, itself, you are into different
territory."
However: applied to 'bio', it elevates the idea from the
reductionist biological sciences into natural systems, interconnected
limitlessly with "the rest of the world". Causes belittling, processes extending
and transcending any model-boundaries. Making it a "Turing NON computable"
Rosennean complexity.
Judith today:
"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."
Right on! "when it is applied to biological
systems". The reductionist science that
is.
Applied to nature it is the interconnected change from Big Bang (if we
believe in it) to the Big Crunch when the universe smoothens back into the
unlimited symmetry of the plenitudinal invariance, from which it was derived by
the inevitable complexification of the infiniteness.
But that is another narrative (mine), not the "official"
physical-cosmologist one.
So I don't use 'evolution' restricted to the model of biology. In which
case - the carbon-water or other (bio)marvels and us included - the unrelenting
changes e/affect everything into variations of the functional assemblages. Call
them in this narrow field: species. Not "in order to", but "as a result of" and
the changed formats are either successful in the changing environment, or
they perish. All within our model-characterization of a 'species'. So much about
"natural selection". "We" are Aristotalian "more" than whatever is
enclosed in our skin (even if I include menatlity, pesonality). We carry
the interconnections of the total. We are natural systems, in our function there
are aspects of the "maximum model" activity.
Darwin was a genius, he picked a tiny segment -
yet the most interesting to humans - and planted his ideas restricted to it. His
choice still governs the thinking and horizon if the 'postDarwinist' and
'nonDarwinist' evolutionary scientists.
To illustrate the language-difference I am
referring to: "adaptation" of bacteria to certain antibiotics has nothing to do
with them developing resistance: they die out except those variations
(originally maybe present in a negligible proportion and not specifically
studied differentiation) which are immune to that particular antibiotic. Then,
getting rid in the habitat (your body) of the bulk population: the resistant
variants take over and proliferate. What the pathologist sees: Those SAME(!)
bacteria are now resitant.
Neandertals did not "adapt" to the post-glacial
world to become sapiens sapiens, the CroMagnons killed them off and took the
habitat. They were the 'new breed' variants, better equipped to the changed
environment. That's evolution! Ha ha. How did they evolve? by impact of
innumerable effects from all around. They responded to impact in varied,
ie. changed characteristics (eg. more flexible brainfunction among
them).
*
These are ideas I speculated on over the past
few years. RR "anticipated" such positions and would have surely stepped ahead
of his written formulations of the last decades of the 1900s. Is this my 'heretic' thinking? Only the BIG religions (with
huge cruel political power) could maintain older texts (Bible, Talmud, Quran)
without further advancement. In science we appreciate the foundations and step
forward upon them. Newton is honored, but his clockworld has been advancing
now into post-quantum thinking.
Judith, you asked for opinions about evolution.
Here is one.
John M
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