relspace
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Variation "under the radar of selection" does produce functional genetic change in the species, which have no survival value whatsoever. I thought this was a well know fact and I don't have examples on hand so I would have to dig to look them up. Species development is not just a one way street it branches constantly (and not just because of differing environmental niches) so death is not the only selector. Species differentiation is as much caused by geographical separation and genetic change without survival value as by the death of weaker members.gluadys said:Variation certainly produces changes in organisms without selection. But does it produce change in species? Only species change is evolution.
How? How can mutational change that does not result in functional genetic change play any part at all in development?
Yes of course. Living things do things for their own reasons. This is one the emergent qualities of living things as complex systems. They are not completely determined by external factors but maintain internal states which are factors in their behavior.gluadys said:OK. This is different. Are you saying that every organism, even bacteria, is capable of intention in some sense?
Do you have any suggestion of how to ascertain the existence and influence of intent relative to the evolution of unicellular organisms?
I have been introduced to his work before, but I found it too far outside the mainstream of science to take very seriously. I have been far more influenced by the work of Erich Jantsch, James Gleich, Ilya Prigogine and quantum physics.gluadys said:Are you following in the footsteps of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin?
I hope you have no illusion here that this kind of discussion we are having here can be called science. It is at most meta-science, talking about the meaning and implications of science. It is philosophy. If you want to restrict yourself to science, I would suggest a university (or at least a scientific forum like thescienceforum.com). The basic facts are too obvious to bother testing. Everything about living oranisms is behavior according to internal states and doing things for its own reasons rather than the effects of its evironment. It part of the meaning of the word alive apart from the silly reduction of life to incidental properties in its traditional definitions.gluadys said:Or do you agree this is a philosophical hypothesis that cannot be subjected to scientific testing? In any case, that you do believe this provides some basis for your reasoning. It is not a factor I would have considered on the basis of science alone.
It might seem so and some people see this as the future of the human race. But actually it is another stage of evolution where the technology of the community compensates and becomes a part of the evolution of the species, as it did in the evolution of multicelular organisms and in the evolution of the eukariotic cell before that and I believe many time before that as well extending to a time before there was any DNA.gluadys said:Dependence on variation does not take away the role of selection as the directing and driving force of evolution. Variation alone would lead to massive genetic randomization and extinction of the species.
Now you are being insulting. Not all philosophy is stupid. Science is a very narrow way of looking at the world. It must remain so because that is part of the formula for its success. By restricting itself to mathematical descriptions (in the case of the hard sciences like physics) or a least to testable hypotheses, science can uncover a great deal of truth. But to think that this is the totality of reality is quite absurd and to restrict ourselves to it is a debilitating blindness. Religion sees in the most important matters where science is blind, but science and religion alone leave us with a rather disjointed reality, and it is the role of philosophy to seal the breach. The difference between us TE and the YEC is our willingness to extend our philosophical inquiries beyond the limits of theology and scripture all the way to the borders of science and let science inform our understanding. Perhaps you choose to leave your world disjointed only allowing science to inform your theology. But science can inform phiolosphy as well and fill the gap between between theology and science for a more complete understanding of the world around us.gluadys said:This line of reasoning derives from what you said earlier about intent as a characteristic of all living beings. Your perspective seems to be that of a Bergsonian elan vital , which was a popular and attractive philosophy. But such innate qualities of living substance have not been shown to exist on a scientific basis.
You mistaken. This is not the biology department of a university or even a science forum. We were discussing whether TEists have a theology. But life is hard compartmentalize and questions connecting science and theology will tend to run amok of philosophical questions. But I find your pretense that this is a scientific discussion to be hilarious.gluadys said:Whether they can be still considered from a metaphysical perspective is another question, and an intriguing one. However, since evolution is science, IMO it would be best to keep the metaphysical question separate from the scientific ones.
Now you are just kidding yourself. In the science forum under Biology someone put forward the opinion that the direction of human evolution was (due to increased contact between people all over the world) an increase in resistance to disease. I said this was a rather callous point of view, because the implication is obvious. Such resistance to disease by the evolution of mankind can only happen as a result of catastrophic epidemics and a decimation of the human population of the world. You may prefer the euphemism "natural selection" but it is death pure and simple. And if you do not understand that, then you do not understand evolution at all.gluadys said:I don't know that death has any role in development. This smacks of another creationist distortion of how evolution works.
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