There are some good points in Gilbert's article, but they are suppressed by conflating various concepts.

Evolution occurs by a number of mechanisms, the predominant one being natural selection over a number of generations - sometimes a few or several; sometimes many, many generations. Gilbert is right to say co-operation can influence natural selection as much as competition. Mutation is is common at a DNA segment level, but rarely has much effect on populations, and when it does, the effect may be negative as much as or more frequently than a positive effect.

Other mechanisms include 'genetic drift', and 'gene flow'.

It is difficult to see how biological evolution can be projected or extrapolated to modern human psychology or how it can have an effect in a few generations as many seem to want it to. These seem to be anthropological and sociological paradigms, not evolutionary ones.

The process described by the author has been going on for countless thousands of years in the case of human beings.

How much human evolution has really occurred in all of that time?

Besides which the process of evolution really occurs at the depth level first -- the invisible pattern that patterns everything.

Plus any changes that occur are already latently there at the depth level. Waiting to be brought out into the Conscious light of day.

These 3 references provide a unique Understanding of how evolution applies to, and works in the case of human beings.

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/EWB/EWB_pp416-436.html

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/ScientificProof/fiveevolutionarystatesoftrueman.html

http://www.dabase.org/unique.htm

Gilbert, it seems to me that much of you are trying to explain,
is already covered in evolutionary biology, called
the evolution of reciprocal altruism. It applies to various
social species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism

.

First page, so far so good.

Second page is a bit of mess really. Conflation of a number of completely different concepts under the umbrella of 'competition' doesn't help, more on this later. Conflation of concepts of human society and biological concepts that use the same term, but have different meanings, eg. 'communities' is confusing.

Eco-systems don't have 'cultural heritage' Gilbert. And 'collective' in ecological terms, would really mean an emergent pattern of individual relationships. Individuals in biology don't conform to a 'collective', the 'collective' emerges from the individuals.

Some of the most important drivers of evolution are those that directly remove individuals from the gene pool. Predation is one of those drivers, it isn't really the same concept as competition as applied to ecology. Adaptation to environmental stress, eg climate, resource scarcity etc is also another concept. 'Competition' between intraspecifics, such as sexual selection and finding mates is another one. You have conflated all these into 'the individual organism competing with it’s surrounds'. I feel this is confusing, as there are many factors that drive evolution, to simply focus on two and then put everything else into one category or the other (ie, competition or cooperation) is an error.

If co-operation assists in survival and thus helps an individual in the 'competition with it's surrounds', it really isn't the antithesis of competition is it?

As for "We can see dual motivations within the individual organism: to commune with and to control its surrounds", anthropmorphic much? Biologists would probably think that the 'motivations' within an indivual organism would usually be: Eat, survive, reproduce. Just about everything an organism does is centred around these.

As a treatise for a yin-yang thing and the basis of a personal philosophy, yeah I can see it.

But please don't think it relates to science. Please.

Gilbert Holmes,

You have delivered us a veritable gallimaufry (always wanted to use that word) of examples - almost too much to take in at once.

Speaking of how we conceptualise and our penchant for cooperation, I think you will find that the desire to connect is instinctual. Therefore, interaction and imitation at the basic level of facial expression such as between a baby and its parents should be defined as cooperation.
This is why a "severely" autistic individual who does not possess this "theory of mind" cannot function in society - he/she lacks a perception and connection of "the other".
A holon is at once a complete system in itself and at the same time part of a wider system.
Man as an individual may be seen biologically as a complete system within himself - but his separateness is totally encompassed within his biological entity. All of his higher consciousness as a human in the psychological sense depends on his interaction and cooperation with fellow beings.

Yabby,

My reading of reciprocal altruism is that it is giving reasons for why essentially self-interested individuals (including humans) might be behaving altruistically. While we can see that altruistic tendencies are confusing the issue, this is still essentially the competition between individual organisms that Darwin saw.

Hi Bugsy,

Just like economics or psychology, evolution theory is more than just science. It is also philosophy. Our beliefs will effect the direction of our study and our practice of the 'science'.

"Some of the most important drivers of evolution are those that directly remove individuals from the gene pool. Predation is one of those drivers, it isn't really the same concept as competition as applied to ecology. Adaptation to environmental stress, eg climate, resource scarcity etc is also another concept. 'Competition' between intraspecifics, such as sexual selection and finding mates is another one. You have conflated all these into 'the individual organism competing with it’s surrounds'"

I suggest that you can actually look at all of these (predation, adaptation to stress, sexual selection) from the perspective of the individual organism as well as from the collectivist perspective: The individual being able to succeed in it's environment, or the pattern of the ecosystem determining what will succeed. Evolution theory to date has tended to focus on the former at the expense of the latter.

Poirot,

How people manage to interpret the concept of a holon, to which the paradox of separateness and connectedness is central, to mean that we are all ultimately connected to one another, continues to elude me.

"All of his higher consciousness as a human in the psychological sense depends on his interaction and cooperation with fellow beings."

For me, if I might get a little metaphysical, identity is what defines the space between the paradox of separateness and connectedness. We are not one or the other but both. All consciousness, from the blade of grass to the human being is essentially of the same form, just differing in degree. We are all both motivated to control our surrounds and to commune with them.

I wish I had read this article or something like it in school. Survival of the fittest then implied survival of the strongest - male animals fighting other males for territory or for females and the strongest winning. Then some decades later I saw the documentary 'Kangaroos - faces in the mob' which was a clear case of evolutionary advantage for something else. Kangaroo females who nurtured their young the best, in association with 'aunts', survived. It wasn't strength that determined who was fittest (well, maybe still for the males), it was the ability to nurture, not alone, but with the help of other females. Some lessons for humanity I'm sure.

Gilbert Holmes,

If you want to investigate the concept of holons, you should probably go to the originator of the term, who was Arthur Koestler - in his book "The Ghost in the Machine".

Koestler describes the way that "everything" is hierarchically ordered. This hierarchy, he proposed as being like the structure of an inverted tree.

Here's a quote:
"A "part" as we generally use the word means something fragmentary and incomplete, which by itself would have no legitimate existence. On the other hand, a "whole" is considered as something complete in itself. But "wholes" and "parts" in this absolute sense just do not exist anywhere. What we find are intermediary structures or a series of levels in an ascending order of complexity; sub-wholes...In speech, phonemes, words and phrases are wholes in their own right, but parts of a larger unit. So are cells, tissues, organs - families, clans, tribes."

Gilbert, it explains why cooperation and altruism evolved as
worthwhile characteristics, from an evolutionary point of view.

We can study that further in primatology. Chimps who share their
food, are more likely to have other chimps share food at a later
date. We can show that various primates feel empathy for instance.
Or as another poster pointed out, raising the offspring is another
one.

Chimps cooperate to hunt in packs. Its in all their self interest
to do so. But at the end of the day, altruism is once again
grounded in self interest.

I like Professor Louis Bounour's quote

'Evolution is a fairy tale for grown ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless.' He writes this as part of "How evolution became a scientific myth'. Not much has changed as we hear supposedly intelligent people trying to tell us what the future climate will be after making up big stories about the past. Thankfully more and more are starting to doubt the evolution myth despite decades of brainwashing dogmas. The big bang theory is absolutely laughable.

Gilbert Holmes alleges that Darwin made a significant error, but does not identify it or prove it.

He alleges that Darwin is guilty of a kind of conceptual “separatism”. Darwin does not use this term, and never denied that evolution depends on the organism and its environment. He examined things from the point of view of the individual organism at the margins of subsistence, yes. But that is precisely the reason for his eminence. If he had approached his subject as Gilbert or Marx did theirs, he would have got things backassward as they did.

GH may think there is a higher significance to the biological taxa – apart from their descent from a common ancestor – but he doesn’t say what it is. GH may think there is a higher significance to the biological community – apart from its contribution to the survival of species – but doesn’t say what it is.

Having failed to establish his premise, it’s all downhill from there as GH gallops over evolutionary biology, to metaphysics, to economics, to psychology, to systems theory.

GH alleges the “extremes of the separatism described above and the “collectivism”, espoused by theorists such as Marx…”

(Marx actually admired Darwin so much that he asked if he could dedicate “Capital” to him.) But GH has not established any extremes of separatism, nor any meaning, let alone any virtue or necessity, to collectivism.

Marx obviously did not add anything to biological theory. And the reason he failed to add anything but errors and fallacies to economics was precisely because his theory of value considered things in vast collective lumps, like “labour” and “the working class”, rather than in the individual units considered by individual actors.

To allege the “dual drivers behind natural selection:
• the individual/self-interest/survival of the fittest/genetic heritage; and
• the community/benevolence/mutual aid/cultural heritage.”
is mere shameful garbled confusion.

GH’s half-baked homespun theory is neither fish nor fowl, an ugly amalgam of non sequiturs and unverifiable, unfalsifiable syrup, leading to an excuse to get the state to order people to do whatever GH wants and call it balance.

Dear Runner,

Professor Louis Bounour never said that. Prove that I lie. Links to creationist websites don't count.

Poirot, I am quite happy with Koestler's definition. He is describing both the separateness of the distinct entity and the interconnectedness of the whole. It seems to me that your interpretation of the holon is in support of a 'collectivist' position, conveniently forgetting the separateness. In your opposition to the 'cult of the individual', You would not be the first to do this.

"I think you will find that the desire to connect is instinctual. Therefore, interaction and imitation at the basic level of facial expression such as between a baby and its parents should be defined as cooperation."

I agree that the desire to connect is instinctual. But so is the desire to control our surrounds. The baby is probably largely acting out of natural empathy (trying to commune/cooperate with us) but may also be trying to manipulate us to it's own advantage (control us/compete with us). I think it's both. Yabby would certainly favour the latter. (I wonder if he/she's a strong disciplinarian!)

I don't mind The Big Bang Theory either runner, it's quite funny.

Yes, I can see why you like that weird quote from an obscure French scientist. It never existed and was made up by religious folk, who keep repeating it over and over again, so it must be true so there.

Gilbert Holmes,

I don't have a problem with Koestler's ideas either. Why do you see my position on this as collectivist (in the political sense)?
Can you explain to me how a human being who has "never" had any interaction with another of his species could have a higher human consciousness or nature? (I say "higher" to differentiate between those and the more basic drives). There can be no fundamental separateness which goes beyond an individuals physical and biological dimensions. He exists as a complete biological system, however,from there on in he is part of a family, clan, tribe and so on and so on. To be human is to exist psychologically and emotionally as part of a larger entity.
I disagree that the connection between a baby and its parents is for competition. All the interactive components inherent in the reading and recognising of facial expressions are vital to the infant in establishing an idea of himself - especially in relation to other humans. All to do with connection - not separateness.

popnperish, Tuesday, 19 October 2010 2:29:36 PM

The term survival of the fittest was coined by Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Charles Darwin's, as a metaphor for natural selection. Darwin used it - survival of the fittest - in the 5th or 6th edition of "On the Origin of Species", so it has been often misused ever since.

Interestingly, Spencer also coined the pejorative phrase "Social Darwinism", another source of confusion as it was first used by economists and then others.

Gilbert, for a start economics is not science, let alone ‘more than science’. Economics is at best a theoretical description of an abstract human social interaction. That it uses mathematics to try and provide these theoretical descriptions (which are rarely tested) does not make it science. This fools a lot of people.

Evolution theory is science. It is used to formulate hypotheses about the world, which are then tested. That is what a scientific theory is and what it is used for. It is not philosophy.

Philosophical or political constructs that are built around the theory are not science in any sense of the word. While I agree, to a point, about how our ‘beliefs’ may affect the direction of our study, if anything science is the practice of challenging and often destroying our ‘beliefs’ and then updating them to make them fit with new data, not reinforcing them. That is, if by ‘beliefs’ we really mean our theories of how the world works.

There is no ‘new paradigm’ here. All I can see is that you have taken pretty much all the mechanisms whereby negative natural selection can take place and lumped under the banner ‘competition’. Cooperative social behaviour as well as mutualism or symbiotic biological phenomena and anything that might be a ‘beneficial’ interaction (i.e. positively affects selec tion) between two individual organisms get lumped under the banner ‘cooperation’. In this way you can shore up your own personal philosophy by radically and erroneously simplifying what is in reality an exceptionally complex pattern of interaction.

I really get the feeling that you were thinking pretty much of only human beings and society when you wrote this piece. You have made me agree with Peter Hume and this makes me very uncomfortable.

Does it help to know that I agree with you too Bugsy! ;-) That'd be a first.

Bugsy,

Physics is a science too, but we eventually had to abandon Newtonian physics in the light of a better idea.

"All I can see is that you have taken pretty much all the mechanisms whereby negative natural selection can take place and lumped under the banner ‘competition’. Cooperative social behaviour as well as mutualism or symbiotic biological phenomena and anything that might be a ‘beneficial’ interaction (i.e. positively affects selec tion) between two individual organisms get lumped under the banner ‘cooperation’."

That is not true. I do not make such a simple delineation. As Yabby, Peter Hume and Darwin would insightfully tell us, we can understand cooperative behaviour from the perspective of (competitive) individuals. What I am saying is that we are also able to look at all behaviour (including competitive) from the collectivist perspective, and that it makes more sense if we look from both directions.

"I really get the feeling that you were thinking pretty much of only human beings and society when you wrote this piece."

I am a metaphysical philosopher. In this, I believe that there is a consistent pattern (a relatively simple pattern rooted in polarity) by which all of nature is bound. While it is true that political and economic philosophy have been the main direction of my studies over the last couple of years, evolution theory has been a favourite subject for a long time.

Peter Hume,

Have you got a reference for Marx asking to dedicate Capital to Darwin? I read somewhere that he'd asked him to write a forword to one of his books but never found the reference again.

Marx did like Darwin. I presume that Marx thought that humans are somehow able to overcome their competitive, animal nature and become loving, cooperative beings. (a major flaw in his thinking.)

Poirot,

I look at four primary motivations for all conscious beings: Toward sensual pleasure, toward being in control, toward empathy and toward fairness. As humans, we just have more of the more conscious aspects of those. Is that higher?

We do live in communities, but we are also individuals.

Thanks Graham (I think?), but I'm no less uncomfortable for it :P

Gilbert, yes, physics is a science. It's constantly tested and updated. But noone has 'abandoned' Newtonian physics. In fact, much of it is still exceptionally useful for day to day operations and is still taught in high schools (and universities) because it works. It just doesn't explain everything, so the bits that don't fit the data are updated with better ideas. Darwin had no idea what genes were, and so his ideas on mechanisms of inheritance are updated, not abandoned. That being said, I have no idea what your point is with that statement.

That you are a metaphysical philosopher is apparent, because you sure don't sound like a scientist.

"I look at four primary motivations for all conscious beings: Toward sensual pleasure, toward being in control, toward empathy and toward fairness. As humans, we just have more of the more conscious aspects of those. "
Well there's your problem right there...

> Have you got a reference for Marx asking to dedicate Capital to Darwin?

No I haven’t sorry and I forget where I read it. But as I recall, Marx asked Darwin if he could dedicate Capital to him, and Darwin declined.

I think the reason why Marx admired Darwin so much was because of his achievement in explaining such an extraordinarily big, complex and variable body of facts with a natural, parsimonious and evolutionary explanation. And of course Marx aspired to do the same with another big, complex and variable body of facts, namely economic history. Also, evolution from ‘lower’ to ‘higher’ stages was very much in vogue in the 19th century. The reason Marx claimed that his was “scientific” socialism was because he purported to have discovered a historical law, by which earlier economic systems inexorably gave rise to later ones, primitive communism leading to feudalism, feudalism to capitalism, and capitalism to socialism. But it wasn’t science: it was his mere opinion.

I really think the competitive/co-operative dichotomy that you are trying to establish across a broad range of disciplines is a furphy.

Remember, Darwin spent 20 years actively seeking out as many objections to his theory as he could find, and taking account of them, before he published. He didn’t just ignore valid objections and push on regardless as you are doing.

What is mistaken in Genesis’s, your and Marx’s theories, is what Darwin got right. Grand schemes, and evolutionary schemata, are no good unless they can accurately take account of how they arise out of individual actions. In evolutionary theory, there is a need to understand the actions of individual organisms at the margins of subsistence. In economics, there is a need to understand individual actions dealing with individual units of resources at the margins of utility.

This is not to belittle the importance of groups, collectives, associations, societies. But to understand them first and foremost from the point of view of collectives, rather than the individual bodies that comprise them, is like trying to understand the heavens first and foremost as constellations. It’s a fallacy.

Gee Bugsy, watch out, the rot is setting in. First you’ll agree with me on this, and then you’ll agree with me on that, and before long the next thing you know is, you’ll be against aggressive violence on principle.

I know how Bugsy feels. I've had a couple of experiences lately where Peter and I have agreed with each other....most unsettling indeed, Lol.

Gilbert,

I really think you should try and obtain a copy of Koestler's "The Ghost in the Machine". It deals mostly with hierachal order, but he covers a lot of ground in general, including evolutionary theory,etc. He also concentrates of the self=assertive verses the self-transcending or integrative tendencies in human behaviour - from both biological and social angles.

talk about error built on miss-conceptions

darwin said a population of 1000 pigeons
would gradually devolve to the genus mean
[the bluebarred rock-dove [+ wildtype]

darwins finches waver betweeen long beaked and short beak
dependant upon if the season is dry/wet

next [Isaac Newton''atoms that move around bumping into one another"..clearly atoms surrounded by electrons neutrons etc
cant bump together....either your decieved/decieving.. or he is

next traits dont dominate the environment
the enviroment favours certain traits
to better survive or fail

"paradox and polarity as central to nature"
is plainly using absurd buzzword's

polarising the parradox
..under a skin of psuedo-science spin

what genetic laws ..are in play within p&p?

same with "social organisation and high levels of freedom"
when we NEED ..supress freedoms ..to create social harmony.
policing morals...lol... means freedom to who...
fat/cat elites ..social oppertunists ..bankers ..securities traiters ..polititions..?

progression in nature..?
[not in our days]

"thesis” and the “anti-thesis”,
[do you count your delusions
as thesis or anti-thesis]

your artyicle is typical media pap
selling the deluded on evolution as science fact..!

i thought you might have actual fact...lol

instead read the same ol regurgitated spin/pap

then throw in jung lol and 'anima/animus, extrovert/introvert systems theorists, ..nature being composed of holons; ..which simultaneously form a part* of larger holons....TALK ABOUT A LOAD OF CCCCRAP

who you trying to fool?

duel rivers of deciete
is more like it

evolution... the joke you have when you only got THEORIES

Bugsy, you're so quick to criticize!

Metaphysics is totally applicable to science; evolution theory definitely is philosophy, as is physics.

I am happy with the concept of natural selection. My point is that it is generally looked at from the perspective of the individual, when the drivers behind it can equally well be looked at from the collectivist perspective. Both is true, but neither is true to the exclusion of the other. (Just thought I'd repeat myself because you didn't seem to think about what I wrote before you criticized me in your last post.)

Peter Hume wrote, "Grand schemes, and evolutionary schemata, are no good unless they can accurately take account of how they arise out of individual actions. In evolutionary theory, there is a need to understand the actions of individual organisms at the margins of subsistence. In economics, there is a need to understand individual actions dealing with individual units of resources at the margins of utility.

This is not to belittle the importance of groups, collectives, associations, societies. But to understand them first and foremost from the point of view of collectives, rather than the individual bodies that comprise them, is like trying to understand the heavens first and foremost as constellations."

In my opinion, it's not first and foremost from the point of view of collectives, but equally from the collective and the individual perspective.

The assertion of the individual perspective, across a range of subjects (as you do) is what has been done by the dominant paradigm of the last 400 years. Time for a shift.

Gilbert Holmes,

You said, "Bugsy, you're so quick to criticize!
Metaphysics is totally applicable to science, evolution theory definitely is philosophy, as is physics."

You seem to identify yourself as a "metaphysical philosopher " in the same manner as Adrian Mole identified himself as an "intellectual".

Where does the genetic mutation occur? It occurs in one of the many systems that comprise a particular biological individual. It doesn't occur spontaneously in the "collective" sense. It is passed on genetically to the next generation from that one individual, and so on and so on.

Poirot,

"You seem to identify yourself as a "metaphysical philosopher " in the same manner as Adrian Mole identified himself as an "intellectual"."

I am sure Adrain has some good quotes. I earn my income as a carpenter, so in order to sound intellectually impressive, and hopefully convince myself one day that I can take myself seriously, I need to use a title that few people understand.

"Where does the genetic mutation occur? It occurs in one of the many systems that comprise a particular biological individual. It doesn't occur spontaneously in the "collective" sense."

No, but the pattern of the environment (the collective) will determine which mutations are successful. Using Darwin's famous example, in an area where there was a lot of industrial pollutants being released into the atmosphere, darkening the sky, darker winged moths were less visible to predation from below than their lighter winged cousins. This encouraged a significant darkening of the moth species' wings over just a few generations. Before the arrival of the industrial revolution, the dark-wing mutation would have been hunted down and destroyed.

"There can be no fundamental separateness which goes beyond an individuals physical and biological dimensions."

As I tried to suggest previously, our motivations as separate conscious organisms have a physical aspect, leading us toward sensual pleasure: to eat, lie in the sunlight etc, as well as a mental aspect: toward being in control or our circumstances rather than frightened. (leads to competitive relationships, pecking orders, heirarchies)

Likewise our motivations as organisms that exist within a connected community have dual, more physical and more mental aspects: toward empathy instead of isolation (physical) and toward what is fair instead of unfair (mental).

Gilbert,

You have an enquiring mind, which is already "impressive".

I suppose the Adrian Mole quip came across as a put down. What I meant was that Adrian "was intelligent", but he gave himself the title to enhance the notion in his own mind - as you have done - and fair enough.
I see nothing to stop you making a philosophical breakthrough - except that you seem to disdain and reject the ideas of those who may be more knowledgeable than you in "certain areas". As if you yourself possess the be all and end all of knowledge in those areas. (It's something we're all guilty of at times, but then most of us don't profess to be philosophers). Your attitude to Bugsy is a case in point (he obviously knows a thing or two about science). You dismiss him as being "quick to criticize". You seem to make light of historically recognised "great minds" as if they were somehow slip-shod and careless. You did it with Marx and now you're doing it with Darwin.
A little deference wouldn't go astray.

"The assertion of the individual perspective, across a range of subjects (as you do) is what has been done by the dominant paradigm of the last 400 years. Time for a shift."

No Gilbert, individuals are where many scientists, especially in ecology are only starting to study a lot more. In ecology I think you will find holistic viewpoints trying to make sense of such things as 'communities' and 'populations' the 'environment' organisms live in etc, all those seaparate ideas you lump under 'collective' or 'collectivist', have actually been around for a long time. Try and go and look at some of the older ecology literature. Perhaps some reviews. It's only recently really that individuals have really been focussed on, but mostly they aren't, at least in that field. Even population genetics doesn't focus on indviduals.

There is no new paradigm here. I can understand that you don't know a lot about what is going on in current or possibly even relatively recent science, as there is a LOT going on, so much so that no one person can cover it. I struggle to keep up myself.

But as a personal philosophy, sure why not?. I've seen a lot worse. But if you really want some rough an tumble and to have your ideas challenged, submit a paper to your favourite philosphy journal. I'm sure they will tell you what you need to know in no uncertain terms.

But only one piece of unsolicited advice: when it gets rejected, edit it with the reviewers comments and resubmit (possibly to another journal). Repeat as necessary. You may not get it published, but you'll learn a whole lot more than on internet forums.

the dueality of evolution comes from those who know
only knowing.. the facts within their ..narrow area of experteaze

we have had here experts on eucalyptus genetics for egsample
KNOW all about eucalypts...but when pressed to trace the eucalyptus BACK to its 'evolution'...the macro part of the story of evolution falls appart

SEE micro-evolution...{WITHIN the genus...say of eucalyptus]
begins and ends with the eucalypt genus

MACRO-evolution ..where something NOT eucalypt
IS CLAIMED to have micro-evolved
ITS...macro evolution...INTO eucalypt
is completly theoretical...

UNABLE TO BE NAMED
unable to be found ...LET ALONE REPLICATED
thus is not science

and certainly ...not
THE NEEDED MACRO-evolution
as NEEDS be PROVED..

but hasnt

you have fallen into the trap
much as i did 30 years ago
[i did it via pigeons
thats how i found darwin]

in time i also found gregor mendel...and mendelic inheritors
[that do not have evolution as a choice ..on the mendelic ratios]

yes greggor did his RESEARCH with peas
BUT lets FACE simple FACTS
PEAS ONLY BREED PEAS

humans only breed huh?-mans
fruit-flies only breed fruitflies
[ARE YOU SEING A PATTERN HERE?]

dogs breeed dogs
catus genus only breed CATS
life COMES only from LIFE

we been decieved
by a THEORY masked as science
a NEO[new] religeon...with its own faithfull faithless..

[athiests] ..needing a god free THEORY...!
to keep the religious FAITH ..in peers ..going
as the religious parradime COLLAPSES

thus we were taught the lie...as children

recall your questions at the time
the teacher said in time you would know
but NO ONE does know

no one can PROVE the macro-evolution
no one has observed it
no one can replicate it

its NOT a science
CAUSE ITS A THEORY

REVEAL the warm/blood ,..cold blood micro change
that turned a fish ..into a warm blood fury animal

cant be validated ..by science method
thus IT NEVER HAPPEND

I guess critiquing Darwin was always going to be a challenge. At least the Marxists are used to being criticized.

No offence taken Poirot though thankyou for your concern. I think I offended Yabby with my quip about 'is he/she a disciplinarian!?' I guess that wasn't funny.

I am pretty certain about the separateness/connectedness polarity thing, and that it is applicable to evolution theory. And just like Peter Hume's idea, "Grand schemes, and evolutionary schemata, are no good unless they can accurately take account of how they arise out of individual actions.", my theory is not testable, so I am happy to assert it as a valid belief until the cows come home.

At least I am saying that it is a belief whereas Bugsy seems to think that he/she is telling the truth (all the while sneering at me for not being able to recognise it). Am I supposed to roll over and put up with it? I'm pretty sure that, while the reading might be up to date, Bugsy can't see the forest for the trees.

Your theory? What theory? You keep asserting that evolutionary theory hasn't taken x or y into account and is looking at things wrong. Or at least the scientists who work with evolutionary theory are. I think this is an error. You filter everything through your yin-yang coloured glasses. People who actually work in science do not. That is all. In fact many scientists at least try to make no assumptions as to what they will find and let the data suggest to them what is going on.

Your reading may be up to date with philosophers, but not with the scientists. I find most philosophical writing to be similar, well behind. Even Popper copped a lot of criticism in his day for not being up to date with how the scientists were thinking. Marxists are used to criticism, because Marxists still completely believe Marx. Darwin has already been critiqued and updated and recognised as the originator of the theory, but we've moved on.. Many things right, many wrong, but not natural selection. We've tested it. You're critiquing Darwin and asserting that your reading is up-to-date? Oh please.

This is how the dialectic is used in science. We look at two competing theories that can explain the data. We look at what doesn't fit in either, and so try an synthesise them in to one theory that can explain all the data at hand and then test it and replace it with something better.

It's time to test your philosophy Gilbert, you've taken one good step in publicly publishing it. But your current audience is even less up to speed on the subject than you are. Time to try exposing your ideas to people who are up to speed if you want to learn. A philosophy audience preferablyd, because scientists wouldn't even tell you why you are wrong, they'd just ignore you, which is worse.

You complain that I can't see the forest for the trees, I think you've found a couple of trees and are calling them a forest.

Time to call a forester and show them what you've found.

Gilbert, just to highlight what I am talking about, ask yourself: What does 'ecology' mean to you?
This might help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology

You've mentioned evolution, 'collectivism' and the importance of studying communities and environments etc. Yet you never mentioned ecology, not once.

Why is that?

Gilbert, I can state Darwin's theory in a nutshell. Can you state what yours is in a nutshell?

*I think I offended Yabby with my quip about 'is he/she a disciplinarian!*

Not really Gilbert, nothing much offends me, but the following
did amuse me:

*so in order to sound intellectually impressive, and hopefully convince myself one day that I can take myself seriously, I need to use a title that few people understand.*

Perhaps you are learning from the french philosophers, they are
experts at impressive sounding gobbeldygook. I can't remember
the name of the well known scientist right now, perhaps somebody
else can. He was aware of this habit, so purposefully wrote
a paper full of gobbbeldygook, but with impressive language.
Sure enough it was published in one of the journals.

.

Bugsy, "..you never mentioned ecology, not once."

Fair comment. As the link suggests, ecology is the "..study of the relation of living organisms to each other and their surroundings." Upon reflection, I think it would have been good to include a discussion of 'ecology' in the article. Next time!

So if we combine ecology wth the study of the evoltion of organisms from the perspective of the individual, we would be approaching the dual drivers of natural selection that I spoke about? You almost sound like you like my idea!

The combination of these two to date may be covering most of the territory as far as the scientific study is concerned, but I still don't think that we have quite got our heads straight.

How many theorists are advocating the idea that our tendency to evolve in communities, and our tendency toward altruism can best be understood in terms of an essential connectedness between us? Kropotkin doesn't have many friends in the field. Instead we get ideas like reciprocal altruism and 'the selfish gene' which try to explain away benevolence in terms of an underlying separateness and selfishness.

I am not saying that those ideas are wrong, it's just that they only represent half of the picture, much like Freud gave us the 'motivations of isolation' and Smith gave us competition as the driver of a healthy economy.

Shifting our perspective will alter the way that we undertake our study and practice of all three of these 'sciences'. It is a new paradigm!

“How many theorists are advocating the idea that our tendency to evolve in communities, and our tendency toward altruism can best be understood in terms of an essential connectedness between us?”

It’s a question of explaining by reference to facts and reason, rather than to mystic concepts.

When you say ‘our’ tendency I presume you mean humans.

Let us assume that “an essential connectedness between us” is the best way to explain our tendency to evolve in communities and toward altruism. Okay. Now your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to explain how this can be reconciled with the *fact* that we are biological organisms built by replicating molecules, namely DNA.

There’s no point in positing an essential connectedness if it has no basis in fact. That would be mere mystic guff.

But if it has a basis in fact, then it’s got to come out of a particular species of biological organisms, namely humans.

Let’s suppose that a particular individual, motivated by this sense of the common good, were to favour others at his own expense. Then at the margins of subsistence, this kind of behaviour would tend to die out.

The only way this conclusion could be avoided is if the individual *benefited* from his altruistic behaviour. That’s what evolutionary psychology and economics explain.

But you don’t want those explanations, because they are based on fact and reason and individual self-interest.

You want a mystic communal sit-around-the-campfire-and-sing-Kumbaya-type explanation based on a mystical Moloch called society.

Only problem is, so far you seem completely incapable of explaining what your theory is in a way that reconciles with fact or reason. You have neither refuted Darwin’s theory nor proved, or even explained, your own.

Good post Peter, you've sent me into a deep meditation and I don't know where to begin.

"When you say ‘our’ tendency I presume you mean humans."

No, I actually mean that all organisms have that tendency to evolve in communities and toward altruism. As for communities, they are readily observed from the simplest organism to the most complex.

Concerning altruism, that would fit under what I called the motivation toward fairness a little earlier. It results from consciously trying to figure out how to fit in; and we don't need a lot of consciousness to achieve it.

A lot of behaviour such as finding water, feeding, mating etc is best understood as organisms trying to find sensual fulfillment (1st primary motivation that I mentioned earlier). We can look at competition for resources in relation to this, but the more active competition will arise when an organism is able to recognise a competitor and tries to dominate that competitor to it's own advantage. (2nd motive - to control) My science is weak but I suspect that we would be able to recognise this kind of active competition even between such unintelligent organisms as plants.

The third primary motive (empathy) is that it feels good to connect and feels bad to be isolated. (different to sensual feelings and hard to quantify.) I suggest that this empathy exists in even the simplest organisms, recognizable especially within an intra-species community. It is a small step from here to say that actively trying to fit in (through being fair) will be one of the first acts of consciousness of any living organisms.

In this, I suppose that you can recognize an individual benefitting from being a nice member of the community, but it's not driven by self-interest. I think that somewhere in there we can find the answer to my mission: Separate biological organisms existing within communities.

Gilbert

It’s back the front for several reasons.

>A lot of behaviour such as finding water, feeding, mating etc is best understood as organisms trying to find sensual fulfillment (1st primary motivation that I mentioned earlier).

That’s like theorists who said that the function of the orgasm is to give pleasure. The function of a behaviour can’t be to give pleasure. It’s the other way around. Behaviours give pleasure because they are functional. Drinking, eating, making love – these give us pleasure because a) they promote reproductive success, and b) all the ancestral organisms that didn’t get pleasure from them died out.

>No, I actually mean that all organisms have that tendency to evolve in communities and toward altruism.

They don’t. What about the snow leopard or polar bear? Lots of species do not evolve in communities. And those that do, cannot do it if it causes individuals to die out. It’s got to be beneficial to the individual first and foremost.

> Concerning altruism, that would fit under what I called the motivation toward fairness a little earlier.

It’s
a) nonsense, and
b) back the front.

Cows, jackals, kestrels, coral, algae, eucalypts: these don’t have a “motivation to fairness”.

Humans do, but we don’t have societies because we have a motivation to fairness. We have a motivation to fairness because we have societies.

We have societies first and foremost because *labour in co-operation is more productive than labour in isolation*. We have societies because we selfishly benefit more than if we did not have societies. It could not be otherwise without social behaviour dying out. Society is just co-operation by another name.

Empathy can’t just evolve out of the blue, as a feeling motivating society, benefiting others, at cost to the organism that has it. Evolution just doesn’t work that way.

You really should read:
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker
Human Action by Ludwig von Mises

I’m not asking you to agree with them. I’m asking you to understand them.

"So if we combine ecology wth the study of the evoltion of organisms from the perspective of the individual, we would be approaching the dual drivers of natural selection that I spoke about?"

Oh Gilbert, dear lord no. Your first major error is your delineation of two drivers of natural selection, 'cooperation' and 'competition', whereas the real picture is much more complex than that. The second is assuming that "science" either only looks at individuals or the "relation of living organisms to each other and their surroundings", but not both together. Oh please, it's soooo done. To study multiple levels at once? Been around for many decades mate. To look at multiple levels from below the individuals level (genetics) right up to whole landscapes. It is not easy to do at once, but it is attempted.

Sorry Gilbert, but you come across as incredibly unaware of anything except your own ideas. That you seem to be ignorant of what ecology is, and unaware that such a massive scientific field of study even existed.

The first reference in the Wikipedia entry was:

Begon, M.; Townsend, C. R., Harper, J. L. (2006). Ecology: From individuals to ecosystems. (4th ed.). Blackwell.

Sounds like a good read, if you want to write about evolution, don't read Dawkins and Darwin or (cough) Ludwig Von Mises.

Start maybe with that reference first, it sounds like a good read and then move on to something by Ernst Mayr:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_W._Mayr - has a good bibliography of his works.

Or perhaps Stephen Jay Gould:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Gould - which also has a good bibliography.

"Sounds like a good read, if you want to write about evolution, don't read Dawkins and Darwin or (cough) Ludwig Von Mises."

He's not just wanting to write about evolution. He's drawing a long bow and trying to cover biological evolution, human psychology, human society, metaphysics, systems theory, taoism, and so on, including purporting to arrive at an explanation of the civil rights movement, the environmental movement and feminism, as well as free trade versus regulated trade. And he's trying to do it based on an idea of a general polarity between the concepts of individuality/competition on the one hand, and communality/co-operation on the other.

While natural scientists may scoff at the confusion or mysticism in his thought, they themselves are some of the worst offenders when it comes to considering social and economic phenomena, constantly introducing mystic concepts through the back door by way of a supposition of the state's assumed godlike qualities. Thus the state is assumed to be a superbeing over and above selfish human interests. The state is assumed to be able to rationalise scarce resources among myriad competing values without any material explanation of *how* it's going to do it. The state is assumed to have knowledge that is literally dispersed in the subjective evaluations of millions of people and which cannot ever be centralised. The state is assumed to transcend selfish motives, as if self-interest suddenly did not affect people on applying for a job exercising monopoly coercive power; etc.

A classic example of this mysticism by modern natural scientists is the whole AGW business. Even if the climatological premises were conceded - and they are much better explained by the corruption of science by government - the community of scientists behind it have made a complete non sequitur, involving all the above irrational assumptions, reposing a blind faith in government to manage the entire climate and economy, that has no basis in reality or reason; and has been definitively refuted by Mises and the Austrian school.

Thanks for your input Bugsy and Peter especially. I am going away for a few days, but can do another post if necessary on maybe Monday night.

"Conflation of a number of completely different concepts..."

I can see that I could have been more careful to delineate how various mechanisms of evolution work while still keeping them within the basic competitive/cooperative pattern of evolution that I believe in.

I am and was fully aware that ecology exists Bugsy. I would say that the emergence of ecology could be seen as part of the emerging 'new paradigm'. The wiki link says, "The modern synthesis of ecology is a young science, which first attracted substantial formal attention at the end of the 19th century."

Peter,
"Lots of species do not evolve in communities."

Some are definitely more communal than others. There is huge diversity resulting from natural selection, but that some species do not exist in strong community and some do indicates to me an interplay between the dual drivers of evolution that I mentioned. Sometimes one will be stronger, sometimes the other.

"Empathy can’t just evolve out of the blue."

I am suggesting that empathy is one of the starting points of evolution, resulting from an essential connectedness between us.

Got to go!