The problem is that he looks at evolution backwards from the end result, implying that Darwinism is teleological (which it is not, despite the fact that many such as Herbert Spenser have tried to make it so). He assumes that creatures are currently on top of a skyscraper (with very complex organisms, etc.) and then asks how we could have gotten here blindly. But the exact nature of point B was not predetermined; evolution is an historical, not a teleological, process. We might have ended up with completely different creatures, even with our planet lacking complex organisms. It's more like we stagger starting at one point in the unfamiliar city and we could end up _anywhere_. We might end up at the top of a skyscraper, but which skyscraper it was not predetermined. Once we get to the top of whatever building we end up, it make _look_ like that was the only option, but it wasn't. History is contingent.
^^^^^ CB: Yes, however one thing that is likely is that we wouldn't end up where we started, because things change. Nothing stays the same. That's dialectics. The environment will change, and therefore select new traits as adaptive to the changed environment. So, since our planet started out with simple organisms, it was likely from the beginning that there would be a change to complex organisms or ,I suppose, even simpler organisms. I'm not sure about the latter though, because the first organisms might have been minimally simple to get a "lift off" as organism. Also, there is some possibility that some of the characteristics of later developed species are more generally adaptive to a wider range of environments, than the first. For example, the first organisms reproduced by cloning. Sexual reproduction developed after two billion years or something. Sexual reproduction gives a wider variety in offspring than cloning, since cloning replicates the parent organisms, and sexual reproduction gives different mixtures of the two or more parent organisms. Greater variety in offspring gives a higher probablity of adaptation to the new environments that will inevitably arise. So, whereever sexual reproduction is in that metaphorical city, "we" were likely to end up there. Vive la difference ! So, we might not have ended up on top of the skyscraper, but we probably wouldn't end up on the side of the city where we started. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
