UFO UpDates Mailing List
From: Dennis Stacy <dstacy@texas.net>
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 15:07:49 -0600
Fwd Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 09:40:48 -0500
Subject: Re: Are we Alone?
>Subject: Re: Are we Alone?
>From: Mark Cashman <mcashman@ix.netcom.com>
>Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 18:17:01 -0500
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>>From: Graeme Best <graemebest@hotmail.com>
>>To: updates@globalserve.net
>>Subject: Re: Are we Alone?
>>Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 03:33:47 EST
>>Paul Davies article in Melbourne Age
>>But even if life obligingly pops up on other earth-like planets,
>>there is no known law that compels it to develop in the
>>direction of intelligence. Evolution is ruled by blind chance.
>>The popular notion that life emerges from the slime and then
>>strives for advancement has no scientific basis.
>Neither does the above author's notion that evolution is ruled
>by "blind chance". Evolution is the cumulative selection of
>natural variation. Every evolutionary model leads to organisms
>of greater complexity over time. This strongly suggests the
>potential for the evolution of intellignce in any evolutionary
>system.
>Mark Cashman
Mark,
Are you calling Paul Davies a liar?
Just joking!
But for those on the list who may not know who he is, Davies is
presently Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of
Adelaide, South Australia, and the author of more than 20 books,
including About Time, Are We Alone? and The Last Three Minutes,
several of them bestsellers. He won the 1995 Templeton Prize for
Progress in Religion.
That said, a couple of quick comments. In his article in The
Anomalist 5 referenced earlier, Mike Davis summarized Darwinian
evolution under a table called "Earth as a Closed System (Old
Axiomatic Framework)." Newton's Guarantee and Lyell's Principle
are also summarized, but let's concentrate on the summary of
Darwin as follows:
a) Biological evolution follows Lyell's gradualistic pace of environmental
evolution. "Nature never progresses by leaps."
b) Extinction and speciation, as a result, are uniformitarian in scale and
rate. Natural selection fine-tunes adaptation.
c) Evolution, therefore, has a subtle, progressive logic.
This seems to be saying pretty much what you're saying above.
The picture changes dramatically, however, when the Earth is viewed as an
open system, resulting in Davis's New Axiomatic Framework. In this table
the section on some of the latest thinking about evolution is found under
the heading, "Vernadsky's Legacy (Gaia dances with Shiva)," where we find
the following:
a) The biosphere is adapted, via the evolution of biological
cooperation, to chaotic crises of its planetary environment.
Nature usually proceeds by leaps.
b) Mass-extinction events are non-Darwinian factories of natural
selection. At its extremes, evolution is a punctuated
equilibrium between autonomous dynamics of environmental and
genetic change.
c) Natural history, like planetary history, is characterized by
its irreversible and unpredictable contingency.
Put politely: Shit happens and on a grand scale.
Lyell and Darwin subsumed the Earth as a sort of peaceful
paradise (or closed system) in which life (and evolution) simply
went about its merry way, resulting in ever higher and complex
lifeforms.
Increasingly, that appears not to be the case.
New evidence is suggesting that not only does evolution not take
place in an Earthly vacuum, but that external inputs (in the
form of the occasional, largescale disaster) act as necessary
impetuses for reaching the next level -- provided, of course,
that you aren't killed in the process.
This is what is meant when Davies, Davis, Gould and others speak
of blind chance and contingency. You can't guarantee when and to
what degree the external influences are going to arrive, or
enter into the overall, local equation.
In fact, I find an interesting parallel here with the story of
Adam and Eve. Would life evolve in a perfect paradise of
constant temperature and no stress, etc., or would you need to
have your butt kicked into a changing world in order to grow?
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Anyway, I don't know what models of evolution you're looking at,
but you might try some of the newer ones.
Or maybe even an older one...
Here's what Charles Fort had to say
about Darwinism, circa 1919, in The Book of the Damned:
The fittest survive.
What is meant by the fittest?
Not the strongest; not the cleverest --
Weakness and stupidity everywhere survive.
There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing
does survive.
"Fitness," then, is only another name for "survival".
Darwinism: That survivors survive.
Fort, ever the crusty curmudgeon!
But at least he recognized the role contingency, or blind
chance, plays in evolution.
Dennis Stacy
http://www.anomalist.com
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