Dear old bald guy with big eyebrows (aka Nick)..
I'm becoming an old bald guy myself with earlobes that are sagging and a
nose that continues to grow despite the rest of his face not so much. I
look forward to obtaining eyebrows even half as impressive as yours!
Now *there* is some personal evolution! To use a particular vernacular,
"You've got a nice rack there Nick!"
I really appreciate your careful outline of this topic, it is one of the
ones I'm most likely to get snagged on with folks who *do* want to use
the world evolution (exclusively) to judge social or political (or
personal) change they approve/disapprove of. I appreciate Victoria
asking this question in this manner, it is problematic in many social
circles to use Evolution in it's more strict sense.
I have been trained not to apply a value judgment to evolution which of
course obviates any use of it's presumed negative of devolution. At the
same time, there are what appear to be "retrograde" arcs of
evolution... biological evolution, by definition, is always adaptive to
changing conditions which may lead one arc of evolution to be reversed
in some sense.
When pre-aquatic mammals who evolved into the cetaceans we know today
(whales and dolphins) their walking/climbing/crawling/grasping
appendages returned to functioning as swimming appendages. One might
consider that a retrograde bit of evolution. That is not to say that
being a land inhabitant is "higher" than a water inhabitant and that the
cetaceans are in any way "less evolved" than their ancestors, they are
simply evolved to fit more better into their new niche which selects for
appendages for swimming over appendages for land locomotion.
Nevertheless, is there not a measure of "progress" in the biosphere? Do
we not see the increasing complexity (and heirarchies) of the biosphere
to be somehow meaningful, positive, more robust? Would the replacement
of the current diversity of species on the planet to a small number
(humans, cows, chickens, corn, soybeans, cockroaches) be in some sense
retrograde evolution in the biosphere? Or to a single one (humans with
very clever nanotech replacing the biology of the planet)? In this
description I think I'm using the verb evolve to apply to the object
terran biosphere.
Since I was first exposed to the notion of the co-evolution of species,
I have a hard time thinking of the evolution of a single species
independent of the biological niche it inhabits and shapes at the same
time. In this context the only use of "devolve" or "retrograde
evolution" I can imagine is linked to complexity again... a biological
niche whose major elements die off completely somehow seems like a
retrograde evolution... the pre-desert Sahara perhaps? The Interglacial
tundras? The inland seas when they become too briny (and polluted) to
support life?
I know that all this even is somehow anthropocentric, so maybe I'm
undermining my own position (that there might be a meaningful use of
evolution/devolution).
- Steve (primping the 3 wild hairs in his left eyebrow)
Dear Victoria,
The word "evolution" has a history before biologists made off with it,
but I can't speak to those uses. I think it first came into use in
biology to refer to development and referred to the unfolding of a
flower. The one use I cannot tolerate gracefully is to refer to
whatever social or political change the speaker happens to approve
of. As in, "society is evolving." The term devolution comes out of
that misappropriation. One of the properties that some people approve
of is increasing hierarchical structure and predictable order. The
development of the British empire would have been, to those people, a
case of evolution. Thus, when parliaments were formed and government
functions taken over by Northern Ireland and Scotland, this was called
Devolution.
Perhaps most important in any discussion along these lines is to
recognize that the use of the term, "evolution", implies a values
stance of some sort and that we should NOT take for granted that we
all share the same values, if we hope to have a "highly evolved"
discussion (};-])*
Nick Thompson
*---old bald guy with big eyebrows and a wry smirk on his face.
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
http://www.cusf.org <http://www.cusf.org/>
*From:*friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com]
*On Behalf Of *Victoria Hughes
*Sent:* Monday, May 09, 2011 8:26 PM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] What evolves?
A couple of other questions then:
What is devolution? Is that a legitimate word in this discussion, if
not why not, etc
and
Does evolution really just mean change, and if so why is there a
different word for it?
ie:
If evolution means 'positive sustainable change' who is deciding what
is positive and sustainable?
One could argue that aspects of human neurological evolution have
'evolved' a less-sustainable organism, or at least a very problematic
or flawed design. The internal conflicts between different areas of
the brain, often in direct opposition to each other and leading to
personal and large-scale destruction: is that evolution? if so why, etc
Just because we can find out where in our genes this is written, does
that mean it is good?
There is often a confusion between description and purpose.
I'd vote for option C, in Eric's paragraph below: ultimately it must
be "the organism-environment system evolves" or there is an upper
limit to the life-span of a particular trait. Holism is the only
perspective that holds up in the long term.
This is another one of those FRIAM chats that brush against the
intangible. We sure do sort by population here, and we evolve into
something new in doing this. I am changed for the better by reading
and occasionally chiming in, sharpening my vocabulary and writing
skills in this brilliant and eclectic context.
I determined evolution there. Does a radish get the same thrill?
Oh, my taxa are so flexed I have to send this off. Thanks for the
great phrase, NIck-
Victoria
On May 9, 2011, at 5:41 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote:
Russ,
Good questions. I'm hoping Nick will speak up, but I'll hand wave a
little, and get more specific if he does not.
This is one of the points by which a whole host of conceptual
confusions enter the discussion of evolutionary theory. Often people
do not quite know what they are asserting, or at least they do not
know the implications of what they are asserting. The three most
common options are that "the species evolves", "the trait evolves", or
"the genes evolve". A less common, but increasingly popular option is
that "the organism-environment system evolves". Over the course of the
20th century, people increasingly thought it was "the genes", with
Williams solidifying the notion in the 50s and 60s, and Dawkins taking
it to its logical extreme in The Selfish Gene. Dawkins (now the face
of overly-abrasive-atheism) gives you great quotes like "An chicken is
just an egg's way of making more eggs." Alas, this introduces all
sorts of devious problems.
I would argue that it makes more sense to say that species evolve. If
you don't like that, you are best going with the multi-level selection
people and saying that the systems evolve. The latter is certainly
accurate, but thinking in that way makes it hard to say somethings
you'd think a theory of evolution would let you say.
Eric
On Mon, May 9, 2011 06:25 PM, *Russ Abbott <russ.abb...@gmail.com
<mailto:russ.abb...@gmail.com>>* wrote:
I'm hoping you will help me think through this apparently simple question.
When we use the term /evolution/, we have something in mind that we
all seem to understand. But I'd like to ask this question: what is it
that evolves?
We generally mean more by /evolution /than just that change
occurs--although that is one of the looser meaning of the term. We
normally think in terms of a thing, perhaps abstract, e.g,. a species,
that evolves. Of course that's not quite right since evolution
also involves the creation of new species. Besides, the very notion of
species is controversial <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/species/>.
(But that's a different discussion.)
Is it appropriate to say that there is generally a thing, an entity,
that evolves? The question is not just limited to biological
evolution. I'm willing to consider broader answers. But in any
context, is it reasonable to expect that the sentence "X evolves" will
generally have a reasonably clear referent for its subject?
An alternative is to say that what we mean by "X evolves" is really
"evolution occurs." Does that help? It's not clear to me that it does
since the question then becomes what do we means by "evolution occurs"
other than that change happens. Evolution is (intuitively) a specific
kind of change. But can we characterize it more clearly?
I'm copying Nick and Eric explicitly because I'm especially interested
in what biologists have to say about this.
/-- Russ /
Eric Charles
Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
