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Evolution Thoughts - 4/7/2006 8:44:22 AM   
LuckyAlbatross


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Status: offline 		<A href="Fossil'>http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20060406093109990001">Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals</A>

Now, I believe in evolution, I believe that creatures will express and actively use traits which will help them survive and that over long periods of time, these traits will be selected through pro-creation and become more noticed.  I believe that traits that will not help them to survive will become less prevalent amongst the creatures. 

But I don't believe there's any LINE. We're not evolving TOWARDS anything except "survival."  There's no progression here.  Sharks are still around.  Why haven't they "evolved?"  Cuz they work great like they are.  Evolution occurs when nature forces a change- it's not an independent process, and it's certainly not a linear process.

There's lots of "missing link" animals alive today- we could easily be considered one of them.  At any particular moment in evolutionary history, all the animals existing at that point in time are at the perfect state of trait expression/repression to survive and procreate.  They weren't links then- they were their own species, perfectly good at that moment.

Birds, snakes, lizards, frogs, cats, horses...it's not like there's a clear line or even tree branching going on here.  Finding a particular fossil that shows a cool mixture of many traits expressed and somehow calling it a "missing link" isn't going to convince anyone of evolution or creationism.

This doesn't really explain WHY certain species exist and others do not.  WHY have humans evolved to where we are now?  What about this makes us MORE suited to survive, when ultimately it seems like we may destroy us?  Do luddites have the right idea? 

No real answers on that.  I just get annoyed when evolutionists try and act like there's some clear progression or overall reason for why an animal evolves into something else- there isn't.  Oh, and I'm a creationist as well.

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/7/2006 3:22:14 PM   
Vancouver_cinful


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quote:

ORIGINAL: LuckyAlbatross

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20060406093109990001

But I don't believe there's any LINE. We're not evolving TOWARDS anything except "survival."  There's no progression here.  Sharks are still around.  Why haven't they "evolved?"  Cuz they work great like they are.  Evolution occurs when nature forces a change- it's not an independent process, and it's certainly not a linear process.


I agree with you on this. Any evolution that occurs, does so, simply in response to the need for survival. It has no end design in mind, it's not like an artist molding at clay to come up with something specific.

Perhaps because people perceive time as linear, we tend to see other things in that perspective as well.

At any rate, evolution can lead to things that threaten survival as well. It's not flawless. Cheetahs, for example, have evolved their remarkable ability for speed, but in doing so, have a metabolism issue that makes eating right after making a kill impossible. While they rest, hyenas and vultures move in and steal their kill. The cheetah is not capable of doing much to stop it. As gazelle numbers dwindle, and hyena numbers increase, the cheetah population is starting to decline.

Evolution is a process, like any other. Facinating but not foolproof.

Cin

< Message edited by Vancouver_cinful -- 4/7/2006 3:23:57 PM >

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/7/2006 3:43:13 PM   
PrinceSitri


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quote:

ORIGINAL: LuckyAlbatross

No real answers on that.  I just get annoyed when evolutionists try and act like there's some clear progression or overall reason for why an animal evolves into something else- there isn't.


I'm a bit puzzled by that statement. Are you saying that some evolutionists believe that there's purpose operating behind the evolutionary process?


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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/7/2006 4:35:26 PM   
Lordandmaster


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Status: offline 		I think she means that evolution isn't teleological, but many people speak as though it is.  We are not evolving "toward" some kind of goal--nor are human beings the goal toward which all the failed species of the past were aiming.

Biologists tend to be very sensitive about this point and rarely fall into this trap anymore (except perhaps when they forget themselves and try to dumb things down for journalists).  The classic article about it is "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme," by S.J. Gould and R.C. Lewontin (1979).  You can find the text (for some reason formatted in annoying italics) here:

http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/evolution/history/spandrel.shtml

< Message edited by Lordandmaster -- 4/7/2006 4:36:47 PM >

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/7/2006 6:50:52 PM   
PrinceSitri


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Status: offline 		Thank you, both for the explanation and the link!

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/7/2006 9:08:16 PM   
LuckyAlbatross


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Status: offline 		Yeah I never used to think much about evolution until I was lucky enough to have lunch with Stephen Gould.  Very awesome person and gave me a lot of perspective.

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/7/2006 10:05:20 PM   
ScooterTrash


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Status: offline 		I think I know where you are going with this
quote:

We're not evolving TOWARDS anything except "survival."  There's no progression here. 
That's what I would say to be a fairly accurate statement, if you mean we aren't destined to BE something in particular. In my opinon, it is environmentally induced change..if our environment changes enough to justify some adaptation, then we would evolve to make the new "whatever" work. Sharks likely haven't changed much because for all practical purposes, their environment hasn't changed. Theoretically, going by that, if global warming is something other than someone's theory, eventually we would learn to adapt to whatever climate changes occur from that, assuming the entire rock we stand on doesn't crack in half or something..lol. Of course at some point adapting or evolving if you will would be too slow to keep up with the changes and as with other animals who did not make it, we would simply cease to exist and another species might in fact adapt better, and live on.....who knows, all theory I suppose, but that's my take on it. 

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/7/2006 10:38:35 PM   
MistressLorelei


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quote:

ORIGINAL: ScooterTrash

 That's what I would say to be a fairly accurate statement, if you mean we aren't destined to BE something in particular. In my opinon, it is environmentally induced change..if our environment changes enough to justify some adaptation, then we would evolve to make the new "whatever" work. Sharks likely haven't changed much because for all practical purposes, their environment hasn't changed. Theoretically, going by that, if global warming is something other than someone's theory, eventually we would learn to adapt to whatever climate changes occur from that, assuming the entire rock we stand on doesn't crack in half or something..lol. Of course at some point adapting or evolving if you will would be too slow to keep up with the changes and as with other animals who did not make it, we would simply cease to exist and another species might in fact adapt better, and live on.....who knows, all theory I suppose, but that's my take on it. 


Well said.... this is how I see it too.  Survival of the fittest...  that which adapts best to its environment (be it climate, predators, change in food supply, etc) survives, what doesn't adapt with its environment is history.


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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/7/2006 11:10:57 PM   
Lordandmaster


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Status: offline 		Well, I almost agree with that; what complicates all this is that not all evolutionary change is adaptive.  (That was, after all, one of the main points of the Gould & Lewontin article.)  What about a peacock's feathers?  That's a relatively costly "adaptation" because it makes the bird much more vulnerable to predators.

"Survival of the fittest" is not a Darwinian phrase at all and seriously misrepresents his concept of evolution.  (It goes back to Herbert Spencer, who lived about a generation later than Darwin and was essentially misapplying Darwin's ideas to economics.)  What's wrong with the phrase (aside from the fact that it has allowed Social Darwinists and racists to pretend that it's all right to kill off the allegedly "unfit") is the inherent teleology.  In part because so much of our cultural thinking in the West is teleological, we often impose teleological ideas onto evolution; we just seem to have a hard time imagining a process that isn't progress.

"Survival of the fit enough to survive and procreate" would be closer to the truth.  Darwin's own term was "natural selection," which biologists still favor and is, in its humble way, much more precise.

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/8/2006 7:44:56 AM   
philosophy


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Status: offline 		seems to me that the phrase 'survival of the fittest' is entirely the problem here.......its origin as a way to justify social eugenics should not be ignored. In my opinion it represents some awful intellectual half way house between evolution and creationism, managing to sidestep the compassion present in both ideas.
somewhat tangetially, if people play any pc games they may be aware of how situations can be emergent, not scripted.......set up a sufficiently complex situation and miracles happen all by themselves and no-one is responsible

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/8/2006 8:32:21 AM   
Amaros


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Status: offline 		Although not widely accepted, there is theorized to be a sort of "virtual teleology" at work from certain perspectives. The evolution of an intelligent, tool using, bipedal generalist (humans) is theorized to be an inevitability in any ecosystem that is around long enough - for the simple reason that there is a niche available for such a creature, and eventually, something will evoleve to fill it. The teleology at work here is along the lines of "nature abhors a vacuum" - i.e., if a given niche exists, something will eventually evolve to exploit it - because it's there.

Consequently, it is likely that should extraterrestrial life exist under roughly similar conditions to Earth, there will likely be a roughly analogous counterpart to humans. Similarly, extraerrestrial life will likely be carbon based and not too disimilar to terrestrial life - a simple function of the probilities of physics and design efficiency - if the stressors are similar, the successful adaptations of lifeform to those stressors will also likely be similar.

This functions as sort of a virtual teleology, in the sense that certain traits are neccesary to exploit certain niches - bipedalism is the most efficient form of locmotion, and a more efficient means of regulating body heat is neccesarry in a nomadic, bipedal predator who must hunt by running down prey - Apes don't have sweat glands, and the spread of this particular mutational adaptation  was key in  success of human morphological adaptation.

In fact, it's the gathering  side of things that likely stimulated neural and social development in humans, as it requires extensive and minute knowledge of seasonal changes, edibility, location, etc., stimulating development of episodic memory and cognition, while communicating these things to ones offspring or compatriots requires increased efficiency in mimetic, lexical and grammatical memory, i.e., language.

There is even a theory that the outsized human brain originally evolved as a "radiator", to dissipate heat, and that changes in cerberal complexity are only peripherally related to changes in brain size - in fact, complexity and brain size are only peripherally related: are cats smarter than birds or men smarter than women? No, cerberal efficiency is related to the density of the neural net and the complexity of the external folds that channel neural impulses.

All that is required are stressors to increase selection pressures for inheritance of these mutations or marginal enhancements, and rapidly changing climatic conditions formed those stressors in this instance.

Finally, there is what might be called "teleolgical" theory of social evolution, which posits that cultures will evolve toward more social and just systems - this isn't really teleological in the design sense, but rather a statistical function of games theory: given that all members of an organized human cutural system benefit from social cooperation, and given that contrarily, competition in this system will result in unequal distribution of resoures in that system, this stressor will cause the system to nevertheless evolve toward more democratic and just forms for the simple reason that the "have-nots" are always going to outnumber the "haves" and the promotion of social justice will always be to their individual advantage.

It's this statistical probabiliity that has perhaps presented some observers with the illusion that there is a "logical positivism" at work, and to associate it with religion, since religion happens to be one of those institutions that tend to focus consensus on social justice, and even acelerate it's promotion - when it isn't doing the opposite.

"Eventually", is of course, a relative term in evolution, physical or cultural, and it can mean decades, centuries, or even millenia, and may happen faster among some cultures than others, there being a number of diferent social proccesses at work.

I find it interesting that you can be a creationist and an evolutionist at the same time. 8,

< Message edited by Amaros -- 4/8/2006 8:52:41 AM >

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/8/2006 9:29:53 AM   
asyouwish72


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quote:

seems to me that the phrase 'survival of the fittest' is entirely the problem here.......its origin as a way to justify social eugenics should not be ignored. In my opinion it represents some awful intellectual half way house between evolution and creationism, managing to sidestep the compassion present in both ideas.


The phrase "survival of the fittest" actually predates eugenics movements by about 50 years, although it was certainly used by those movements. It was actually coined by an economist named Herbert Spenser, who was a contemporary of Darwin's, and did not appear in "On the Origin of Species" until some of the later editions. Evolutionary biologists generally just stick with the term "natural selection" (Darwin's original phrasing) although this is troublesome in that it can imply that there's some agent doing the selecting, whereas it's actually just chance. Organisms that are best-adapted to their environment produce more offspring than other, less well-adapted ones, and by this means the adaptive traits in question increase in prevalence in the population.

Also it's worth reiterating, as a number of people have previously mentioned, that there is no "line" or "plan" of evolution- animals are not evolving "into" any particular goal, they just adapt themselves to what ever environmental conditions are present at that time. A case in point is the tired old "man descended from apes" argument- This is entirely wrong. Both man and other primates share some close common ancestors, but we've just evolved to fill different niches. It's mostly vanity to say we're more advanced; really, we're just different.

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/8/2006 10:12:11 AM   
Lordandmaster


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Status: offline 		Amaros,

These are some interesting theories, but I really don't see how they could be falsified until we discover evolution on other planets.  We know of exactly one long-term example of evolution, and in that long-term example of evolution, intelligent bipeds emerged supreme.  I don't think this implies that intelligent bipeds will always emerge supreme in any ecosystem; it's certainly a fallacy to ASSUME so.  In fact, there is good prima facie evidence to doubt it.  It's widely believed that some form of microorganisms could survive, even today, within Martian rock.  Intelligent bipeds could not.

Lam

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/8/2006 5:01:38 PM   
Tristan


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quote:

No real answers on that.  I just get annoyed when evolutionists try and act like there's some clear progression or overall reason for why an animal evolves into something else- there isn't.


I read an interesting article concerning 13 evolutionary branches of a single species in the fossil record.  More than half of those evolutionary branches turned out to be a simpler form of the original.  The conclusion was that not only does evolution not move in one direction, it seems to favor the simpler over the complex.  I think adaption is a more acurate way to describe evolution. 

quote:

What about a peacock's feathers? 


If I remember correctly, Darwin also wrote a book about sexual selection that addressed things like human skin color and peacock's feathers.  He believed that both natural selection and the sexual selection of mates drives the evolutionary process.

quote:

I don't think this implies that intelligent bipeds will always emerge supreme in any ecosystem; it's certainly a fallacy to ASSUME so. 


I think it is the bacteria and viruses that reigh supreme.  lol.  Has the planet ever had a more effective preditor?  They will adapt to any defense within years. 

Great topic!

Tristan 

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/8/2006 5:24:55 PM   
Lordandmaster


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Status: offline 		Well, yes, but that's exactly why "adaptation" and "survival of the fittest" don't describe evolution very well.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Tristan

quote:

What about a peacock's feathers? 


If I remember correctly, Darwin also wrote a book about sexual selection that addressed things like human skin color and peacock's feathers.  He believed that both natural selection and the sexual selection of mates drives the evolutionary process.

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/8/2006 5:49:10 PM   
Tristan


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Status: offline 		Lordandmaster,

Great posts!  I looked up some of your references.  According to wikipedia, teleological means there is a designing princible behind nature.  I agree that "survival of the fittest" is not exactly what is going on with evolution.  How do you think adaption is not an acurate description?

Tristan

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/8/2006 5:59:15 PM   
Lordandmaster


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Status: offline 		Because things like large female breasts in humans, large tailfeathers in many species of birds, and so on, are not adaptations to environment.  In fact, many peculiarities like these IMPEDE a creature's chances of survival.  But the creatures survive anyway, because they have adapted to their environment well ENOUGH to survive.  That's all you need.  No teleology, no perfection.

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/8/2006 6:26:44 PM   
Tristan


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Status: offline 		Yep, there are all kinds of physical traits that are not perfect, but good enough to allow survival.

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/9/2006 6:31:35 AM   
philosophy


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Status: offline 		......i wonder how much of the confusion about the theory of evolution is down to a human desire to see a reason behind things, we are pattern seeking animals......it seems to me that this is why people seem drawn to the idea of intelligent design. It gives an answer to the question, why. We dont do well with random, even Einstein didn't like the idea that things aren't ultimately predictable, God doesn't play dice apparently. Maybe not only does he play dice, but he's in the same state as scrodingers cat, not alive or dead but indeterminate.

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RE: Evolution Thoughts - 4/9/2006 6:56:08 AM   
ScooterTrash


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster
Amaros,
These are some interesting theories, but I really don't see how they could be falsified until we discover evolution on other planets. 
I agree, this is interesting but the key point is IF they are carbon based forms of life. I think it would be somewhat presumptuous of earth bound species to assume this is the norm, when it may in fact it may be the oddity. But I do agree that some outside intervention into the "process" could come about due to social changes, not always only environmental.
quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

Because things like large female breasts in humans.....

Darned, I like this particular adaptation, mutation, whatever it is...lol.
quote:

ORIGINAL: philosophy

......i wonder how much of the confusion about the theory of evolution is down to a human desire to see a reason behind things, we are pattern seeking animals......it seems to me that this is why people seem drawn to the idea of intelligent design.

I would have to agree that this is why so many have a problem with evolution as a whole, it doesn't seem to have a set pattern, it doesn't necessarily repeat, so it escapes some form of conformity that gives everyone that warm fuzzy feeling of having figured it out.

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