On 09 Sep 2013, at 11:58, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Hi Alberto,
On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Alberto G. Corona <agocor...@gmail.com
> wrote:
I think that there are real progress that can be even measured in
terms of
entropic order. That a man embodies more structure and organization
than a
bacteria is objective and measurable, and it is a product of more
emergent
levels of evolution. In concrete the human being includes the
eucariotic
level, the multicelularity level and human society level, that are
aggregations of coordinated individuals to achieve an individuality
of an
higher level. These levels are absent in bacteria .
Ok, there's an arrow of complexification, that's undeniable. I'm not
convinced that Darwinism alone explains that. One of the reasons for
my scepticism is the failure of ALife models to replicate unbounded
complexification. My favourite attempt in this domain is the Echo
model by John Holland -- which is beautiful but didn't work in this
sense. There's also Tierra/Avida, where you get a lot of interesting
stuff but no unbounded complexification.
One idea I heard but don't know whom to attribute to is this:
evolutionary complexification is just an artefact of the simplicity of
the initial state. The idea being that the laws of physics inherently
contain a "pressure" towards a certain level of complexity and that
evolution is just following the path of least resitance, in a way. It
is then conceivable that there is a state of equilibrium that we
haven't reached yet and that complexification will halt at some point.
This is wild speculation, of course, but I like to ponder on this
hypothesis.
Of course the universal dovetailing has unbounded complexity, but
evolution (including the rise of the physical laws) is observed only
in the first person selective selection.
Bruno
What is not true is that human beings are more "adapted" than
bacteria. That
is not true. Because there is no objective and absolute measure of
adaptation. It ever depends on the concrete environment, and varies
a lot.
Humm... I think ecologists are able to estimate the likelihood of a
species going extinct. I'd argue that this could be taken as a measure
of adaption.
Telmo.
2013/9/9 Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com>
On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com
>
wrote:
On Sunday, September 8, 2013 4:42:02 PM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote:
Sent from my iPad
On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 chris peck <chris_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
"Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a
metaphysical
research program".
I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no
reason
whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of
science' to
be
concerned in the slightest.
On 08.09.2013, at 22:28, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes I know, fans of Popper are not concerned in the slightest with
their
hero making that moronic statement, and Popper called himself a
philosopher;
and that is exactly how philosophy gets a bad name.
People misunderstand Popper here.
Apparently even Popper misunderstood Popper because, to his
credit, he
admitted he was wrong about Darwin; most other philosophers would
rather eat
ground glass than admit they were wrong. It's just a pity that
it took
this
great philosopher of science 119 years after the publication of
"The
Origin
Of Species" to figure out that Darwin was a scientist. I guess
philosophers
are just slow learners
Furthermore, in regarding natural selection as untestable he
followed
in the footsteps of many Darwinists.
Should a good philosopher be following in somebody's footsteps or
should
he tell him he's going in the wrong direction?
It was quite common to think that the concept of 'survival of
the
fittest' involved circular reasoning and was therefore
tautological.
ie.
'fittest' is defined as 'those that survive' and so 'survival
of the
fittest' amounts to saying 'the survivors survive'.
Darwin gave a new meaning to the word, "fittest" means passing
on more
genes that endure (survive) to the next generation than somebody
who is
less
fit.
Darwin knew nothing about genes.
Yes, and evolutionary fitness has nothing do with the quantity of
winning
genes - this is a Eugenicist misinterpretation of evolution.
Fitness is
about the circumstantial appropriateness of mutations, not about
hereditary
supremacy. A sudden climate change makes entire classes of 'more
fit'
genes
'less fit' over night. Evolution is not a race or striving for
success
through superior engineering - that is utter horseshit.
Yes. A common error is to equate evolution with progress -- one sees
that a lot in mainstream use of the terms. I believe that
neo-Darwinism is a great scientific theory, and that it does explain
the origin of biological complexity, namely humans. But it is easy
to
misinterpret it or take it too far. For example, by saying things
like
"human beings are more evolved than bacteria" which is nonsense.
Telmo.
Thanks,
Craig
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