Post #133,699
1/5/04 4:31:03 PM
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As I said, this I do not know about
Peking Man aka Homo Erectus was a significant discovery. Googling for it, Teilhard (note spelling, you have flipped ei to ie) was not the discoverer or even the main researcher on it, but was involved in early research.
Again, I shouldn't comment much more because I don't know anything about him other than a few short summaries that I found through Google. I doubt that (given my beliefs, etc) I'd agree with his views, but I might find myself respecting his views as a reasonable position for someone with his prior beliefs.
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #134,504
1/9/04 11:35:53 AM
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As long as this thread won't die
I guess I shouldn't have framed the discussion in terms of Tielhard per se, as we get off of the response that I was trying to elicit. Tielhard's religious views don't interest so much (ok, ok, this is the religion forum but i digress).
More interested in whether there's a scientific reason evolution exists. Is it globally goal-directed?
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Post #134,509
1/9/04 11:46:54 AM
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I see no evidence of a global goal direction
Co-evolutionary trends can cause the appearance of such in some lineages. But globally I don't see evidence for it.
And certainly if, say, we were the goal, then the process has been incredibly inefficient at arriving in us. See the Eiffel tower description that I gave elsewhere in the thread.
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #134,520
1/9/04 12:23:43 PM
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Meandering along
So, I guess the scientific reasoning is we can not see an end-game, or know the macro direction of the process. We can simulate, manipulate, and/or estimate evolution within a local environment with known conditions/stimulations.
Not really arguing for or against a anthropomorphic viewpoint. Just wondering where the boundaries of scientific reasoning on the subject of evolution. Most discussion seems to be oriented towards where the universe has been (creationism, paleontology, etc...).
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Post #134,521
1/9/04 12:33:29 PM
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Re: Meandering along
First, there is no "theory of evolution", the way there is a "theory of the electron" or even a "theory of continental drift". Evolution is a principle - that genetics operates in jumps due to random mutations, to produce life forms that are better adapted to survival in a particular environment. The better adapted life is more robust and more likely to pass on beneficial mutations to later generations. This is so simple and so perfectly explanatory that there is no serious doubt about it.
An actual theory of evolution would require the ability to predict what sorts of mutations would occur and be favored in a given population. As far as I know (and I'm very weak in biology) this does not exist.
To make an analogy, evolution is to biology as vorticity is to weather.
-drl
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Post #134,528
1/9/04 1:09:07 PM
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Which touches on a different concern I've had....
This is so simple and so perfectly explanatory that there is no serious doubt about it. In a totally different direction, I've always had the concern that Darwin & Evolution have been elevated beyond the significance they deserve - exactly because it elicits such a defensive response from religious fundamentalism. Sometimes I cringe when I see scientists explaining behavior attributable to "evolution" that I don't see as being any more meaningful as attributing that behavior to an "all powerfull force". Creationism is a non-starter for myself (as it is for many - if not most with a Catholic background (due in some measure to Tielhard)). But the attributions to evolution seem a bit overcompensating in the other direction. The weakness to evolution is not that it can't disprove creationism, but that it's usefullness in modeling (and thus prediction) are not excatly concise.
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Post #134,533
1/9/04 1:22:31 PM
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Exactly!
The differences between men and apes are far less significant than, say, between sea lions and deer, because men and apes live in similar environments.
As far as I'm concerned, the mechanism of evolution is irrelevant to the argument against creationism. The latter is wrong because it is not useful, the way the epicyclic explanation of planetary motion is not useful. Science works because it rigorously discards rigid, useless concepts in favor of flexible, useful ones.
I don't understand why religious people who at least pay lip service to science are incapable of asking the right question - what exactly is it about men, who are after all animals, that makes them special? What border was crossed that enabled men to become aware? It's not just a matter of being more clever. Even bees are clever.
-drl
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Post #134,586
1/9/04 4:11:04 PM
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Your knowledge is insufficient
When evolution is combined with game theory, it can make concrete predictions about what behaviours we expect to see in which populations, and why.
One of the first non-trivial predictions of this form was detailed by Edmond O. Wilson, and it involved the treatment of ant larvae depending on gender, and depending on whether the workers or queen were in control of the colony. (The workers are normally in control, except in slaver ants, and there only if there are few workers and many slaves.) Because of a quirk of ant genetics, 2 daughters share 3/4 of each other's genes, while a daughter only shares half with a parent, child or full brother. Hence one expects favourtism towards sisters, and IIRC game theory predicts that they will get fed more by a ratio of 3/1. This prediction is born out in observation. The queen, of course, has no reason to favour one over the other, and so when she is in control you expect an even ratio. And in slaver ants, the treatment of larvae varied as expected.
Incidentally this quirk is why ants and bees tend to form colonies. The daughters do a better job of passing on their own genes by helping mom have more daughters than by having their own daughters. The result is a colony with one queen, hordes of sterile daughters, and a smaller number of fertile sons and daughters.
If you talk to people in fields like ecology and animal behaviour, the ability to make predictions like these directs a lot of their research.
(There are other ways that evolution matters for prediction. For instance research on the role of genetic diversity in rapid evolutionary responses was utterly critical to figuring out how to breed better crops in the "Green Revolution" that started in the 60s. But those results are about theories of how evolution might progress, and are not consequences of its having progressed for a while.)
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #134,591
1/9/04 4:18:42 PM
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Fascinating - I stand corrected!
As I said, I'm very weak in biology :)
-drl
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Post #134,590
1/9/04 4:16:55 PM
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The boundaries are broader than you might think
See my response to Ross for some examples. Along the historical line, see research on genetic clocks (much of which is more preliminary than you will see claimed in popular reports) and research on cladistics (which has multiple times now has lead to successful predictions that there should be an ancestor that looks like X, and it might be likely to be found somewhere around Y at time period Z.)
Of course all of that discussion tends to take place out of the public eye because following it takes a lot more knowledge than most people have, and you can't even begin to present that stuff until the basic assumption of evolution has been accepted.
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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