Evolution without adversity?

[Dust and Ashes]

This is completely unrelated to the whole creation/evolution debate and is purely a question about evolutionary science.

Are there or have there been many studies on how evolution is affected by a "paradise" environment where there is no adversity to drive change? I mean suppose the environment is ideal for the life forms and doesn't change for millions of years will the life forms enter some form of evolutionary stagnation dead end or will they change in different ways and become more perfectly adapted to an already ideal environment?

I know it requires a lot of speculation but it's something I've been wondering about lately and thought I'd ask. Thanks.

 

[shernren]

I don't really know; it all really depends on how you define "adversity". Evolution merely requires that variation in traits produce difference in reproductive success. Or in English if a particular variation helps the individuals who carry it reproduce faster, then evolution tells us that this variation will spread throughout the population.

I don't really think it requires "adversity" as we understand it. Even in an ideal environment there will be particular niches for which there will be specialized evolved forms to exploit them. An obvious example is that many land animals will probably not be able to participate directly in the marine ecosystem, and thus there would be a differentiation between traits for terrestrial life, traits for amphibious lilfe and traits for aquatic life.

Evolution merely requires reproduction and variation. But reproduction in any naturalistic framework implies some sort of physical death.

 

[chaoschristian]

This is completely unrelated to the whole creation/evolution debate and is purely a question about evolutionary science.

Are there or have there been many studies on how evolution is affected by a "paradise" environment where there is no adversity to drive change? I mean suppose the environment is ideal for the life forms and doesn't change for millions of years will the life forms enter some form of evolutionary stagnation dead end or will they change in different ways and become more perfectly adapted to an already ideal environment?

I know it requires a lot of speculation but it's something I've been wondering about lately and thought I'd ask. Thanks.

This is just a beginning of a thought, but the first question that comes to mind after reading your post is "Would life in this 'paradise' be static?" And the next question is, "Why?"

In a static environment would evolutionary processes work?

I think its been shown that change does happen to populations of bacteria isolated in the static environments of petri dishes, wherein those environments are ideally suited to the bacteria in question - little paradises in effect.

 

[relspace]

This is just a beginning of a thought, but the first question that comes to mind after reading your post is "Would life in this 'paradise' be static?" And the next question is, "Why?"

In a static environment would evolutionary processes work?

I think its been shown that change does happen to populations of bacteria isolated in the static environments of petri dishes, wherein those environments are ideally suited to the bacteria in question - little paradises in effect.

I interpret the word "static" to mean steady state.

No life would not be static. Competition is not the driving force of evolution, that is a Marxist distortion. Variation (otherwise known as the creativity of living things) is the driving force of evolution.

No the evolutionary process would not work in a static environment. Life requires a far from equillibrium environment to work at all. Far from equillibrium environments foster all kinds of chaotic processes (of which life is one example). So an evironment where life exists will cease to be a static one.

But it is a mistake to think that evolution is an automatic process that occurs without interference. The process is highly sensitive to happenstance and I believe that the likely course of events in purely random environment will not produce much progress in the process of evolution. Living things have the innate capacity for creativity and learning but without "encouragement", I believe it tends towards repetitive cycles of extinction. In other words, i believe it tends to get stuck in dead ends. All the real progress in evolution occured in the unlikely circumstances of small populations teetering on the brink of extinction, where eventual extinction is the most likely outcome. I believe that evolution worked because God was a participant. This suggests some interesting tests doesn't it? They have been tried and so far all such attempts (to reproduce the beginnings of life) have failed.

 

[gluadys]

I interpret the word "static" to mean steady state.

I think life itself destroys a steady state, as you suggest later. In any paradisal situation, however defined, a population will grow. As it grows, in each generation it will require more resources to sustain itself in paradisical conditions. Eventually it will run into a shortage of resources, a shortage of energy to sustain growth. Whenever and however that state is reached, some means will need to be introduced to limit use of resources in order to maintain a sustainable population.

No life would not be static. Competition is not the driving force of evolution, that is a Marxist distortion. Variation (otherwise known as the creativity of living things) is the driving force of evolution.

Funny, I always thought of that as a capitalist laissez-faire distortion. I agree that competition is not the only way to limit use of resources or restrict population growth. Some form of rationing can be used for resources; and some form of discouraging at least some of the population from reproduction.

But it is a mistake to think that evolution is an automatic process that occurs without interference.

Agreed. This is a stumbling block for many when trying to grasp evolution. Mutations don't cease, of course, so variations continue to be created. But new variations may be consistently rejected through purging selection such that the species remains relatively static through many millions of years. There is no automatic force which requires a species to adopt new ways.

I believe that evolution worked because God was a participant.

I have finally begun to learn about process theology. This is exactly the concept of evolution that is presented by process theologians. I have always considered it axiomatic.

 

[relspace]

I think life itself destroys a steady state, as you suggest later. In any paradisal situation, however defined, a population will grow. As it grows, in each generation it will require more resources to sustain itself in paradisical conditions. Eventually it will run into a shortage of resources, a shortage of energy to sustain growth. Whenever and however that state is reached, some means will need to be introduced to limit use of resources in order to maintain a sustainable population.

Actually when I first wrote this post I included just such a claim that forcing the situation to be static would exterminate life. But I deleted it because I decided that perhaps I was over-reaching. It may be true but I have not convinced myself 100% that it is true. Just having a non equillibrium situation resolves the problems you mention so it is only effective to arguing that it cannot exist eternally not that it cannot exist at all.

Funny, I always thought of that as a capitalist laissez-faire distortion. I agree that competition is not the only way to limit use of resources or restrict population growth. Some form of rationing can be used for resources; and some form of discouraging at least some of the population from reproduction.

You are right. The Marxist term is conflict not competition.

Agreed. This is a stumbling block for many when trying to grasp evolution. Mutations don't cease, of course, so variations continue to be created. But new variations may be consistently rejected through purging selection such that the species remains relatively static through many millions of years. There is no automatic force which requires a species to adopt new ways.

Nice explanation. Thanks for the input.

I have finally begun to learn about process theology. This is exactly the concept of evolution that is presented by process theologians. I have always considered it axiomatic.

I have heard the term. But I thought it was associated with Alfred North Whitehead and I studied His work and I don't find much that is salvageable in it. His stuff may be an improvement on Plato but insufficient to make it fly. I prefer Aristotle.

 

[Deamiter]

I think it was scientific American (or New Scientist?) that published an article about one of the most plentiful organisms in the world -- some ocean creature,as a physicsist I didn't care much -- but I do remember that it was SOME single-celled organism in the oceans.

These organisms don't really compete with other organisms and they have an extremely plentiful food source (sunlight if I recall correctly). The interesting thing is that they have an extremely streamlined and short genome with the majority of their genes fixed in the population. The hypothesis was that because they compete for little else and the population is so huge they are selected based primarily on how efficiently they can reproduce. The smaller the genome, the less energy goes into reproducing it, so even otherwise beneficial mutations are weeded out in favor of more efficient reproduction.

I guess this is my example of an animal paridise, at least on the scale of the population. The population is so huge (worldwide in the oceans) that there is no significant selection based on predators, and there is little competition for sunlight as it's abundant and free. They're not overcrowded, nor is their environment changing to drive evolutionary changes. So they live in this "perfect" environment where, on the first order at least, the only selection is biased toward the smallest possible genome. But even here, you end up with evolution since in the absense of ANY external selecting factors, the organisms that can reproduce more efficiently will become exponentially more common in the population.