Complexity and social Evolution

[Thunderbird]

Chapter 19: POSTDARWINISM of Kevin Kelly’s 1994 book “Out of Control” (mentioned in my previous post), in which Kelly possibly coins the term “postdarwinism”, quotes Lyn Margulis’s description of classical Darwinian Evolution as “totally wrong”.

In summary, and response to what I perceive as this thread’s original post’s call to action: when starting a revolution, it’s important to be sure the revolution has not already started. Scientific revolutions are, to a great extent, insider events that require considerable effort for outsiders to follow as spectators. Assisting in this effort is a large part of what hypography is about.

 

Interesting, but off topic.

[Eclogite]

Interesting, but off topic.

I believe this post is very much on topic, since it addresses your original assertion that "From this point of view, the traditional Darwinian models, although correct, are in fact outdated, in that they do not provide or translate into a social relevancy concurrent to the needs of common people."

 

As CraigD has explicitly stated and as I implicitly observed in my last post, your understanding of what constitutes Darwinism may be flawed. If that is the case, then calls for a revolution of evolutionary thought and overthrow of the Darwinian paradigm (which is what you appear argue for) would, or could, be ill founded.

 

This would not necessarily negate your arguments for a different approach to social problems and opportunities, but it would certainly place them in a different context. Briefly then, that is why I think CraigD's post goes right to the heart of this thread.

 

Returning to the new strand that has emerged, I have given your paper a superficial reading. I shall read it with more care shortly. My initial impression is that there is nothing fundamentally new here. You make the rather obvious, but all too often ignored point that cause and effect should not be ignored in the penal system. All power to you in driving home this vital observation and getting changes made to the system, but I currently fail to see why we need to have a revolution in evolution to achieve this.

[Thunderbird]

I believe this post is very much on topic, since it addresses your original assertion that "From this point of view, the traditional Darwinian models, although correct, are in fact outdated, in that they do not provide or translate into a social relevancy concurrent to the needs of common people."

 

and if you keep reading I go in a totaly different direction than what CraigD

has posted, He and you are ignoring that this thread is about complexity.

 

As CraigD has explicitly stated and as I implicitly observed in my last post, your understanding of what constitutes Darwinism may be flawed. If that is the case, then calls for a revolution of evolutionary thought and overthrow of the Darwinian paradigm (which is what you appear argue for) would, or could, be ill founded.

This is not what I said. I have said darwinian models need to be updated utilizing the science of complexity to make it more relevent to socity, not overthown.

 

 

 

Returning to the new strand that has emerged, I have given your paper a superficial reading. I shall read it with more care shortly. My initial impression is that there is nothing fundamentally new here. You make the rather obvious, but all too often ignored point that cause and effect should not be ignored in the penal system. All power to you in driving home this vital observation and getting changes made to the system, but I currently fail to see why we need to have a revolution in evolution to achieve this.

 

You are making my point by not acknowledging what this thread is about.

Something you cannot grasp. The science of complexity.

[HydrogenBond]

When I think of evolution I normally picture biological systems with genetic advancements creating better and better animals. Humans in cultures are biological systems. Is culture advancing due to genetics, or are genetics advancing due to culture? Did a genetic mutation result in the US Constitution, sort of like an animal whose genes mutate for the ability to use a stick? Or did this change social originate in the human brain and then alter the landscape of selective advantage, so real evolution could finally occur? When it comes to humans the brain appears to lead genetics. If genetics was in the lead, it should have taken millions of years before we got where we are. Now the human brain has made it possible to directly tweak the genes at will. Or was that due to a mutation that occurred in human that allowed human to manipulate genes, with this original mutation so strong that it allows some tweaking of minor genes?

 

If the human brain can lead or outpace the slower pace of genetics is it possible that even other animals with brains, have used that brain to help advance genetics? They had smaller brains with less capacity so the advance would be slow. This could then be mistaken for mutations leading.

[Thunderbird]

When I think of evolution I normally picture biological systems with genetic advancements creating better and better animals. Humans in cultures are biological systems. Is culture advancing due to genetics, or are genetics advancing due to culture? Did a genetic mutation result in the US Constitution, sort of like an animal whose genes mutate for the ability to use a stick? Or did this change social originate in the human brain and then alter the landscape of selective advantage, so real evolution could finally occur? When it comes to humans the brain appears to lead genetics. If genetics was in the lead, it should have taken millions of years before we got where we are. Now the human brain has made it possible to directly tweak the genes at will. Or was that due to a mutation that occurred in human that allowed human to manipulate genes, with this original mutation so strong that it allows some tweaking of minor genes?

 

If the human brain can lead or outpace the slower pace of genetics is it possible that even other animals with brains, have used that brain to help advance genetics? They had smaller brains with less capacity so the advance would be slow. This could then be mistaken for mutations leading.

 

Genetics is coded information, when I think about evolution, I think about the history of an organism. A story written in the fossil record, a story about form and function.

 

I have been accused by eclogite of not understanding Darwinian models. The fact is I understand them as a lens to see life though, not just as text to be parroted as a well tread map.

 

From another thread:http://http://hypography.com/forums/philosophy-science/14182-limited-non-trivial-assumption-fallacy.html#post207642

 

 

Tell me if this fits into induction theory;

 

When we first started studying dino fossils, the beds were most always found within environmental layers indicating a warm swampy region. The early conclusion were drawn that large dino must have been swap dwellers, when in fact the reason was that’s just happens to be the right conditions for a depositional fossil beds to form.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This addresses an issue I've had with tetrapod evolution.

In current thinking the transition from fish to amphibians is characterized in artist renderings as a swamp dwelling creature grasping submerged branches, then crawling out of an estuary, swamp or lowland river system.

This scenario seems to me unlikely, in the fact that there would not be an sustained adaptive pressure to exit laterally outward from this environment onto land into smooth transitional phases.

 

 

 

 

A more likely scenario is for the tetrapod to migrate into the upland stream systems to spawn seasonally in a parallel direction with the river system.

This seasonal migratory path would provide a sustained cyclical pressure to advance upland as far as possible into the protected pools in the river bed that would be separated, yet connected by ever smaller streams of water. This upland streambed environment would provide the ideal spawning environment and also a smooth cyclical transitional pressure to migrate further into the highlands to reproduce in the protected pools void of the large predatory fishes.

Utilizing the theory of inductive reasoning Tetrapod evolution may have been misinterpreted because just like in the case of the dinos, fossils of the Tetrapods were only preserve in lowland areas of deposition, While the highlands were in a constant erosional phase leaveing behind a very scant environmental/fossil records.