Life's direction

Tim Tyler said:

Here's an essay I wrote recently about life's direction.

originoflife.netdirectionOpen ↗

In it I argume that the notion that evoultion is a
directionless process whose direction at any time is
contingent on envrionmental conditions is nonsense.

That notion fails to consider the possibilty that there
are systematic regularities in the environment. Such
regularities do exist - and they provdide a definite
direction to the evolutionary process in nature.

The direction is the one you are probably familiar with me
going on about by now: that living systems are engaged in
a cumulative discovery of energy-dissipation technology -
that makes them get progressively better at indentifying
sources of energy and then degrading those sources in the
process of making copies of their genomes.

I finish the essay on a teleological note.

Often when there's a clear direction, there's a goal.

Is life like water running blindly downhill - without
thinking of the ocean - or does it have plans, objectives
and goals?

I argue in favour of the latter. If /anything/ can be said
to be goal-directed, it's biological systems - and I spell
out where I think living systems are going.
--

In his latest book of essays entitled _A Devil's Chaplain_,
Richard Dawkins has a review of Steven Gould's book _Full
House_ in which Gould attempts to treat growth of complexity
in evolution as a statistical artifact. The Dawkins review
was published back in June of 1997.

In his review Dawkins says "I shall show that if we use a
less anthropocentric, more biologically sensible, more
'adaptationist' definition, evolution turns out to be
clearly and importantly progressive in the short to medium
term. In another sense it is probably progressive in the
long term too."

First Dawkins summarizes Gould's definition of progress
"calculated to deliver a negative answer to the question
whether evolution is progressive" this way:

"a tendency for life to increase in anatomical complexity,
or neurological elaboration, or size and flexibility of
behavioral repetoire, or any criterion obviously concocted
(if we would only be honest and introspective enough about
our motives) to place [censored] Sapiens atop a supposed heap."

Dawkins then gives his own definition of evolutionary
progress:

"a tendency for lineages to improve cumulatively their
adaptive fit to their particular way of life, by increasing
the numbers of features which combine together in adaptive
complexes."

Furthermore, "by this definition adaptative evolution is not
just incidentally progressive, it is deeply, dyed-in-the-
wool, indispensibly progressive. It is fundamentally
necessary that it should be progressive if Darwinian natural
selection is to perform the explanatory role in our world
view that we require of it, and that it alone can perform."

Dawkins points to the evolution of the vertebrate eye as an
example of this kind of progress, from a primitive light
sensitive spot in the earliest ancestors, to the modern eye
with variable focus, tracking, high resolution and wide
color sensitivity. The eye has been a steady ramp-like climb
up the sheer cliff of Mount Improbable.

Another example is the coevolutionary arms races between
predatory and prey species, the prey progressively becoming
less easy to catch, the predator in return progressively
becoming better able to catch it. These arms races can last
for millions of years.

Dawkins adds "But there was no global progress over the
hundreds of millions of years, only a sawtooth succession of
small progresses terminated by extinctions. Nonetheless, the
ramp phase of each sawtooth was properly and significantly
progressive."

At the end of the review, Dawkins' passes judgement on
Gould's _Full House_:

"...because of the cumulative character of coevolutionary
arms races over the shorter term, Gould's attempt to reduce
all progress to a trivial, baseball-style artefact
constitutes a surprising impoverishment, an uncharacteristic
slight, an unwonted demeaning of the richness of
evolutionary progress."

[email hidden]

<< The direction is the one you are probably familiar with
me going on about by now: that living systems are engaged in
a cumulative discovery of energy-dissipation technology -
that makes them get progressively better at indentifying
sources of energy and then degrading those sources in the
process of making copies of their genomes.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Now you are talking my language that I've talked about
for years.

The sun cycle is a non random energy source.

No chemical system can be built on a random environment.

Non random Life is built on the non random sun- heat cycle.

Tim Tyler said:

Here's an essay I wrote recently about life's direction.

originoflife.netdirectionOpen ↗

In it I argume that the notion that evoultion is a
directionless process whose direction at any time is
contingent on envrionmental conditions is nonsense.

That notion fails to consider the possibilty that there
are systematic regularities in the environment. Such
regularities do exist - and they provdide a definite
direction to the evolutionary process in nature.

The direction is the one you are probably familiar with me
going on about by now: that living systems are engaged in
a cumulative discovery of energy-dissipation technology -
that makes them get progressively better at indentifying
sources of energy and then degrading those sources in the
process of making copies of their genomes.

I finish the essay on a teleological note.

Often when there's a clear direction, there's a goal.

Is life like water running blindly downhill - without
thinking of the ocean - or does it have plans, objectives
and goals?

I argue in favour of the latter. If /anything/ can be said
to be goal-directed, it's biological systems - and I spell
out where I think living systems are going.
--

Quoted message said:

From a reply I made 10/10/2003 to a post in talk.origins:

John Harshman said:

dkomo said:

howard hershey said:

littleblondgirl wrote:

Quoted message said:

>On the other hand, those who deny progress could easily
>be wrong.
>

Quoted message said:

No, they cannot. Where is the pattern of progress?

The pattern is that the complexity of the *most* complex
organisms in any time period has been generally
increasing over the past billion years or so. This is
compatible with the simplistic model of a random walk
away from a reflecting barrier. At any given time you'll
have a spread of organisms with varying complexities,
but the right hand side of the distribution will move
further to the right with increasing time.

The trouble with this random walk model, attributed to
Gould, is that it is mathematically equivalent to a
diffusion process, and diffusion produces a spread away
from the origin with a probability virtually equally to
one. This implies that growth of complexity in evolution
is an *inevitability*. Not even I believe that. That's
as absurd as claiming there hasn't beeen *any* growth in
complexity over a billion years and that bacteria are
the apex of evolution.

I don't see this. The inevitability in the model is merely
a statistical product of large numbers.

That's what I'm saying. Remember that some statistical
processes are virtually inevitable, meaning that they are
highly probable. The classic example is a chamber divided by
a partition which has a vacuum in one part and a gas in the
other. Then remove the partition. The final equilibrium
distribution of the gas is extremely likely to be uniform
between both partitions. But isn't this just a statistical
product of large numbers? Diffusion is a similar
statistically driven process.

Quoted message said:

Absent another barrier at higher complexity levels, why
would this model be wrong?

Because it predicts that the right tail of the complexity
curve will continue to drift to the right forever.

Quoted message said:

Or are you claiming that there is such a barrier? (Not
that I'm doubting that there could be -- surely greater
complexity has a cost, and there may conceivably be some
fixed point at which this cost exceeds benefits in all
environments.)

No. I don't see what this barrier has to do with the
inexorable movement of the right tail. If there was such a
barrier, it would *prevent* the tail from drifting.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

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If there were some natural 'force' driving organisms to
'progress' up the chain of being (a force driving
organisms toward greater complexity), why then is the
modal organism still a bacteria?

What's a "modal" organism?

Gould's term. If we think of a distribution of organisms
indexed by complexity, bacteria form the mode of that
distribution, with everything else occupying a small bit
of the right tail.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Why do bacteria still exist?

Why not? Their existence is perfectly compatible with
the defintion of evolutionary progress I gave above.

I don't think many people like that definition of
progress.

I don't have any problem with it because what life emerges
at the right end of the distribution is pretty incredible.

Quoted message said:

Inherent in the idea of progress is some sort of actively
driven process, not passive diffusion.

I think that there is such a process, call it self-
organization if you will. It is what the universe has been
doing since the very instant of the big bang, moving from a
state of pure energy, uniformity, and high symmetry where
the four fundamental forces were unified, toward states of
asymmetry, complexity, differentiation and organization. I
would be highly surprised if life on earth were exempt from
that process.

However, I also think that passive diffusion and random
walk are mixed in with any actively driven process, so that
viewing evolution in the large makes it appear somewhat
random. The trick is to separate the random factors from
the deterministic ones. Extract the signal from the noise
as it were.

[email hidden]

Tim Tyler said:

Here's an essay I wrote recently about life's direction.

originoflife.netdirectionOpen ↗

In it I argume that the notion that evoultion is a
directionless process whose direction at any time is
contingent on envrionmental conditions is nonsense.

That notion fails to consider the possibilty that there
are systematic regularities in the environment. Such
regularities do exist - and they provdide a definite
direction to the evolutionary process in nature.

The direction is the one you are probably familiar with me
going on about by now: that living systems are engaged in
a cumulative discovery of energy-dissipation technology -
that makes them get progressively better at indentifying
sources of energy and then degrading those sources in the
process of making copies of their genomes.

I finish the essay on a teleological note.

Often when there's a clear direction, there's a goal.

Is life like water running blindly downhill - without
thinking of the ocean - or does it have plans, objectives
and goals?

I argue in favour of the latter. If /anything/ can be said
to be goal-directed, it's biological systems - and I spell
out where I think living systems are going.
--

Another oldie-but-goodie from talk.origins 10/12/2003:

howard hershey said:

dkomo <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

howard hershey said:

littleblondgirl wrote:

[I responded to this yesterday, but our local server went
out at the wrong time. So this is a partial re-creation of
my response.]

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> On the other hand, those who deny progress could
> easily be wrong.

Quoted message said:

No, they cannot. Where is the pattern of progress?

The pattern is that the complexity of the *most* complex
organisms in any time period has been generally
increasing over the past billion years or so. This is
compatible with the simplistic model of a random walk
away from a reflecting barrier. At any given time you'll
have a spread of organisms with varying complexities,
but the right hand side of the distribution will move
further to the right with increasing time.

The extent to which this is true is arguable precisely
because we do not have a real (single) metric of
'complexity'. Gould used 'size' as a rough substitute
metric for 'complexity'. If you do that (and size is a
pretty reasonable approximation of complexity), I would
think that there might be two points in time at which
there has been a *significant* change in the shape of the
curve: At and near the start of abiogenesis and at and
near the invention of multicellularity. But not long (say
a few hundred million years) afterward, I would expect
that such a curve would reach a steady-state shape. The
modal organism in all cases would remain single-celled and
bacteria-like.

Quoted message said:

The trouble with this random walk model, attributed to
Gould, is that it is mathematically equivalent to a
diffusion process, and diffusion produces a spread away
from the origin with a probability virtually equally to
one. This implies that growth of complexity in evolution
is an *inevitability*. Not even I believe that.

Nor do I. Mostly because I believe that there are forces
acting to *decrease* complexity and that these forces
*increase* in intensity with increasing complexity (forces
such as predation by unicellular rapid growers).

There is one notable exception to this: human knowledge,
which due to a feedback effect, is increasing exponentially.
That is, the more complex our knowledge becomes, the faster
that complexity seems to increase. That's why the
neurological dimension of evolution is so important. It's
the one area that appears to be still unbounded.

Of course, you could consider human culture as being outside
the realm of biological evolution. If you look only at the
physical aspects of evolution then I think your idea of
forces that oppose increases in complexity is valid.

Quoted message said:

IOW, I do not see a completely random walk. I see a state
where it becomes increasingly difficult to get *more*
complex when one is already complex. This does not
prevent getting more complex, but the conditions have to
be just right to do so. This would produce a roughly 'steady-
state' condition rather than one in which drift can
continue to the right. This is not a 'barrier' but a
softer resistance to flow to the right that become harder
the further to the right one goes.

Philosophy of Biology_ they devote a chapter to discussion
of evolutionary progress and growth of complexity. In that
chapter they briefly mention _The Major Transitions in
Evolution_ by Maynard Smith and Szathmary. In their
conception of life's history, there are a series of major
transitions and hence an inherent directionality.

Sterelney and Griffith write:

"Maynard Smith and Szathmary do not formulate their ideas in
Gould's language, but if they did, the difference would be
that they do not regard the walls of the graph as fixed over
time. The major transitions in evolution are *movements of
the walls.* Until the foundations of eukaryotic life were
gradually assembled, there was a right wall, the intrinsic
limit on the size and growth and structural complexity of
prokaryotes. In a certain timeless sense -- the sense in
which Gould operates -- the right wall was open, but for
much of its history, bacteria evolution was confined within
two walls. Similarly, after the evolution of eukaryotes,
there was another shift of the right wall, but only a shift.
The invention of the organism required a complex series of
evolutionary innovations. Until these came into existence,
there was a right boundary to complexity set by the limits
on a single eukaryotic cell...Once the eukaryotic cell

once cellular differentiation comes into existence, the
theatre in which the evolutionary drama takes place is
changed irreversibly. The boundaries change over time, and
mostly in a direction that increases the maximum possible
complexity."

So there it is. Note the word "irreversibly." In previous
discussions of this topic I used the term "complexity's
ratchet." The movement is in general in the direction of
increasing complexity. This is also consistent with viewing
the complexity graph as *inevitably* diffusing to the right,
as any n-body random walk would
do.

While there may be some occasional local decreases of
complexity for some life forms, mammals do not devolve back
to bacteria because such a progression would violate the
irreversibility criterion.

Quoted message said:

Similarly, there are forces that prevent an already simple
organism from getting simpler (the left-hand wall).

The left wall has also shifted to the left, but only
slightly, because of the invention of viruses. There first
had to be bacteria before viruses could emerge.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

That's as absurd as claiming there hasn't beeen *any*
growth in complexity over a billion years and that
bacteria are the apex of evolution.

There is no apex in evolution. There is only local
adaptation to local conditions. Bacteria are not the apex
of evolution. They are the modal organism.

Quoted message said:

I remember the statement in Michael Crichton's _Prey_ that
wherever you find bacteria, you also find bacteriophages
that prey on them. Perhaps then, phages should be considered
the modal "organism."

[email hidden]

I recently read _Future Evolution_, which predicts that the
increasing size and intensity of the sun will make the earth
uninhabitable for life some time between 500 million and one
billion years from now. On this calculation the explosion of
complex, multicellular life on earth is already half over.
And it points up another thing lacking in you contention,
the abiotic environment is not a stationary target for the
energy dissipating strategies of life. The sun has increased
in intensity (about 1/4 I think) in 4.5 billion years. The
atmosphere has fluctuated and changed in composition. The
continents and ocean basins have formed and moved about on
the face of the planet.

Even if humans seed distant planets with life, and
thereby extend the existance of life to the age of the
galaxy or universe, the major consideration for this
pioneer life will be the particular, fluctuating
conditions they find themselves in, not the ultimate
energy dissipating strategy. And suppose life does go
on developing its energy dissipating capability, it
will still be confined to a small minority of the
universe's planets. If you say that life can free
itself from planetary, abiotic environments, then
maybe life can and has freed itself from other aspects
of the abiotic environment. To the extent that life
frees itself from the abiotic environment your
argument for a direction of life's arrow founders.

"dkomo" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Tim Tyler said:

Here's an essay I wrote recently about life's direction.

originoflife.netdirectionOpen ↗

[snip]

Quoted message said:

Another oldie-but-goodie from talk.origins 10/12/2003:

howard hershey said:

dkomo <[email hidden]> wrote in message

news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

howard hershey wrote:
>
> littleblondgirl wrote:

[snip ... this is a partial re-creation of my response.]

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

>> On the other hand, those who deny progress could

easily be wrong.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> No, they cannot. Where is the pattern of progress?

The pattern is that the complexity of the *most*

complex organisms in

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

any time period has been generally increasing over the

past billion

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

years or so. This is compatible with the simplistic

model of a random

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

walk away from a reflecting barrier. At any given

time you'll have a

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

spread of organisms with varying complexities, but the

right hand side

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

of the distribution will move further to the right

with increasing

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

time.

The extent to which this is true is arguable precisely

because we do

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

not have a real (single) metric of 'complexity'. Gould

used 'size' as

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

a rough substitute metric for 'complexity'. If you do

that (and size

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

is a pretty reasonable approximation of complexity), I

would think

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

that there might be two points in time at which there

has been a

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

*significant* change in the shape of the curve: At and

near the start

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

of abiogenesis and at and near the invention of

multicellularity. But

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

not long (say a few hundred million years) afterward, I

would expect

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

that such a curve would reach a steady-state shape. The

modal

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

organism in all cases would remain single-celled and

bacteria-like.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The trouble with this random walk model, attributed to

Gould, is that

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

it is mathematically equivalent to a diffusion

process, and diffusion

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

produces a spread away from the origin with a

probability virtually

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

equally to one. This implies that growth of

complexity in evolution

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

is an *inevitability*. Not even I believe that.

Nor do I. Mostly because I believe that there are

forces acting to

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

*decrease* complexity and that these forces *increase*

in intensity

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

with increasing complexity (forces such as predation by

unicellular

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

rapid growers).

There is one notable exception to this: human knowledge,

which due to

Quoted message said:

a feedback effect, is increasing exponentially. That is,

the more

Quoted message said:

complex our knowledge becomes, the faster that complexity

seems to

Quoted message said:

increase. That's why the neurological dimension of

evolution is so

Quoted message said:

important. It's the one area that appears to be still

unbounded.

Quoted message said:

Of course, you could consider human culture as being

outside the realm

Quoted message said:

of biological evolution. If you look only at the physical

aspects of

Quoted message said:

evolution then I think your idea of forces that oppose

increases in

Quoted message said:

complexity is valid.

Quoted message said:

IOW, I do not see a completely random walk. I see a
state where it becomes increasingly difficult to get

*more* complex

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

when one is already complex. This does not prevent

getting more

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

complex, but the conditions have to be just right to do

so. This

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

would produce a roughly 'steady-state' condition rather

than one in

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

which drift can continue to the right. This is not a

'barrier' but a

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

softer resistance to flow to the right that become

harder the further

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

to the right one goes.

Introduction to

Quoted message said:

Philosophy of Biology_ they devote a chapter to discussion

of

Quoted message said:

evolutionary progress and growth of complexity. In that

chapter they

Quoted message said:

briefly mention _The Major Transitions in Evolution_ by

Maynard Smith

Quoted message said:

and Szathmary. In their conception of life's history,

there are a

Quoted message said:

series of major transitions and hence an inherent

directionality.

Quoted message said:

Sterelney and Griffith write:

"Maynard Smith and Szathmary do not formulate their ideas

in Gould's

Quoted message said:

language, but if they did, the difference would be that

they do not

Quoted message said:

regard the walls of the graph as fixed over time. The

major

Quoted message said:

transitions in evolution are *movements of the walls.*

Until the

Quoted message said:

foundations of eukaryotic life were gradually assembled,

there was a

Quoted message said:

right wall, the intrinsic limit on the size and growth and

structural

Quoted message said:

complexity of prokaryotes. In a certain timeless sense --

the sense

Quoted message said:

in which Gould operates -- the right wall was open, but

for much of

Quoted message said:

its history, bacteria evolution was confined within two

walls.

Quoted message said:

Similarly, after the evolution of eukaryotes, there was

another shift

Quoted message said:

of the right wall, but only a shift. The invention of the

organism

Quoted message said:

required a complex series of evolutionary innovations.

Until these

Quoted message said:

came into existence, there was a right boundary to

complexity set by

Quoted message said:

the limits on a single eukaryotic cell...Once the

eukaryotic cell

existence,

Quoted message said:

once cellular differentiation comes into existence, the

theatre in

Quoted message said:

which the evolutionary drama takes place is changed

irreversibly. The

Quoted message said:

boundaries change over time, and mostly in a direction

that increases

Quoted message said:

the maximum possible complexity."

So there it is. Note the word "irreversibly." In

previous

Quoted message said:

discussions of this topic I used the term "complexity's

ratchet." The

Quoted message said:

movement is in general in the direction of increasing

complexity.

Quoted message said:

This is also consistent with viewing the complexity graph

as

Quoted message said:

*inevitably* diffusing to the right, as any n-body random

walk would

Quoted message said:

do.

While there may be some occasional local decreases of

complexity for

Quoted message said:

some life forms, mammals do not devolve back to bacteria

because such

Quoted message said:

a progression would violate the irreversibility criterion.

Quoted message said:

Similarly, there are forces that prevent an already

simple organism

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

from getting simpler (the left-hand wall).

The left wall has also shifted to the left, but only

slightly, because

Quoted message said:

of the invention of viruses. There first had to be

bacteria before

Quoted message said:

viruses could emerge.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

That's as absurd as claiming there hasn't beeen *any*
growth in complexity

over a billion

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

years and that bacteria are the apex of evolution.

There is no apex in evolution. There is only local

adaptation to

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

local conditions. Bacteria are not the apex of

evolution. They are

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

the modal organism.

Quoted message said:

I remember the statement in Michael Crichton's _Prey_ that

wherever

Quoted message said:

you find bacteria, you also find bacteriophages that prey

on them.

Quoted message said:

Perhaps then, phages should be considered the modal

"organism."

I like this approach--and I definitely agree with the
concept of "movable walls." IMO, complexity, when properly
measured (hah!) increases quantitatively to a limit, then,
jumps to a new window of opportunity, or qualitatively
higher level--windows representing the presence of left and
right walls as opposed to an unbounded right wall.
Complexity continues "progressing" in this hierarchical
manner, possibly without limit. One can look at this as
having a purpose, object, or goal, however I prefer to think
of these terms as only metaphors for the process, namely, a
natural, physical tendency, in its own right.

In considering the entire trend, holistically, I am reminded
that it is very similar to the processes described by Robert
Wright, in his book "Non Zero." In this book, he attempts to
ascribe the general "progress" of human culture over its
entire history to a natural law/tendency to accumulate "non-
zero summness," a games theory concept based on social
cooperative benefits vs competitive ones. He also concludes
there is a increasing positive direction to such overall
complexities, also likely lacking an upper bound, although
admittedly, he presents no precise theory justification or
hard evidence. It is a quite interesting book however, and a
games theory approach may ultimately turn out to be quite
useful in clarifying the many notions of biological
complexity and related questions. ...tonyC

Quoted message said:

[email hidden]

Andrew Melka <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

I recently read _Future Evolution_, which predicts that
the increasing size and intensity of the sun will make the
earth uninhabitable for life some time between 500 million
and one billion years from now. On this calculation the
explosion of complex, multicellular life on earth is
already half over.

I was talking about life, not "life on earth".

Being totally wiped out by an explosion is a possibility for
living systems - but it is not one that I assign much of a
probability to.

Most likely organisms will either survive the blast or
migrate out of the blast zone before the explosion.

Quoted message said:

And it points up another thing lacking in you contention,
the abiotic environment is not a stationary target for the
energy dissipating strategies of life. The sun has
increased in intensity (about 1/4 I think) in 4.5 billion
years. The atmosphere has fluctuated and changed in
composition. The continents and ocean basins have formed
and moved about on the face of the planet.

Yes - so what?

Quoted message said:

Even if humans seed distant planets with life, and thereby
extend the existance of life to the age of the galaxy or
universe, the major consideration for this pioneer life
will be the particular, fluctuating conditions they find
themselves in, not the ultimate energy dissipating
strategy. And suppose life does go on developing its
energy dissipating capability, it will still be confined
to a small minority of the universe's planets. If you say
that life can free itself from planetary, abiotic
environments, then maybe life can and has freed itself
from other aspects of the abiotic environment. To the
extent that life frees itself from the abiotic environment
your argument for a direction of life's arrow founders.

It's not clear what you are talking about.

Living systems typically spend most of their time in a
biotic environment - surrounded by other living systems.

FWIW, I expect life will remain (largely) confined to
planets for the indefinite future, though it will almost
certainly be able to travel between them.

...but what this has to do with my argument for living
systems having a direction associated with progressive
accumulation of technology for existing and reproducing in
the universe is not clear.
--
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dkomo <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

Tim Tyler wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Here's an essay I wrote recently about life's direction.

originoflife.netdirectionOpen ↗

In his latest book of essays entitled _A Devil's
Chaplain_, Richard Dawkins has a review of Steven Gould's
book _Full House_ in which Gould attempts to treat growth
of complexity in evolution as a statistical artifact. The
Dawkins review was published back in June of 1997.

Yes, I know.

The review is available on the web at:

world-of-dawkins.com1997Open ↗
06fullhouse.shtml

I cite the review - and quote from it at some length
in my essay.
--
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Tim Tyler said:

dkomo <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

Tim Tyler wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Here's an essay I wrote recently about life's
direction.

originoflife.netdirectionOpen ↗

In his latest book of essays entitled _A Devil's
Chaplain_, Richard Dawkins has a review of Steven
Gould's book _Full House_ in which Gould attempts to
treat growth of complexity in evolution as a statistical
artifact. The Dawkins review was published back in June
of 1997.

Yes, I know.

The review is available on the web at:

world-of-dawkins.com1997Open ↗
06fullhouse.shtml

I cite the review - and quote from it at some length in
my essay.
--

Right, I glanced at the review on the web and mistook it for
a different review.

Dawkins talks about evolution's direction as an improvement
in the adaptive fit of species to the environment. Is this
the same criterion you're using when you say "having a
direction associated with progressive accumulation of
technology for existing and reproducing?"

[email hidden]

dkomo <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

Tim Tyler said:

dkomo <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

Tim Tyler wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> Here's an essay I wrote recently about life's
> direction.
>
> originoflife.netdirectionOpen ↗

In his latest book of essays entitled _A Devil's
Chaplain_, Richard Dawkins has a review of Steven
Gould's book _Full House_ in which Gould attempts to
treat growth of complexity in evolution as a
statistical artifact. The Dawkins review was published
back in June of 1997.

[...]

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

world-of-world-of-Open ↗
dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Reviews/1997-06fullhouse.shtml

I cite the review - and quote from it at some length in
my essay.

Right, I glanced at the review on the web and mistook it
for a different review.

Dawkins talks about evolution's direction as an
improvement in the adaptive fit of species to the
environment. Is this the same criterion you're using when
you say "having a direction associated with progressive
accumulation of technology for existing and reproducing?"

No.

I actually preferred Gould's complexity metric - however
poorly specified Dawkins claimed it was.

My preferred metric for measuring evolutionary progress
would be the rate at which entropy is degraded by the living
system in question.

However I'd be happy with practically any measure of
sophistication, complexity, or development of an ecosystem -
provided it's not totally counter-intuitive.
--
__________
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<< Dawkins then gives his own definition of evolutionary progress:

"a tendency for lineages to improve cumulatively their
adaptive fit to their particular way of life, by increasing
the numbers of features which combine together in adaptive
complexes."

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

But wait a minute. Why improve what is fixed? If the
adaptation is high - then stay in stabilizing selection. If
low then change is favored. Again I suggest this model for
selection pressure

As environmental adaptation increases stabilizing selection
increases and directional and diversifying selection
decreases.

AND VICE VERSA

As environmental adaptation decreases stabilizign selection
decreases and directional and diversifying selection
increases.

In other words, Dawkins suggestion is half the answer - the
half where there is still environmental selection pressure.

Tom

Tom

You sure sound confident in relating Dawkin's view of the
progressiveness of Darwinian evolution. What do you forsee
for the next millions of years? "A continuation of
coevolutionary arms races between predatory and prey
species, the prey progressively becoming less easy to
catch, the predator in return progressively becoming better
able to catch it. These arms races can last for millions of
years." We are the main predatory species, yes? Do you
forsee this going on for millions of more years. I will be
honest I don't.

You quote, ""a tendency for life to increase in anatomical
complexity, or neurological elaboration, or size and
flexibility of behavioral repetoire, or any criterion
obviously concocted (if we would only be honest and
introspective enough about our motives) to place [censored]
Sapiens atop a supposed heap." Yup, we're atop the
supposed heap.

Michael Ragland

Tim Tyler wrote: Here's an essay I wrote recently about
life's direction.       originoflife.netdirectionOpen ↗
In it I argume that the notion that evoultion is a
directionless process whose direction at any time is
contingent on envrionmental conditions is nonsense. That
notion fails to consider the possibilty that there are
systematic regularities in the environment. Such
regularities do exist - and they provdide a definite
direction to the evolutionary process in nature. The
direction is the one you are probably familiar with me
going on about by now: that living systems are engaged in a
cumulative discovery of energy-dissipation technology -
that makes them get progressively better at indentifying
sources of energy and then degrading those sources in the
process of making copies of their genomes. I finish the
essay on a teleological note. Often when there's a clear
direction, there's a goal. Is life like water running
blindly downhill - without thinking of the ocean - or does
it have plans, objectives and goals? I argue in favour of
the latter. If /anything/ can be said to be goal-directed,
it's biological systems - and I spell out where I think
living systems are going.
--
In his latest book of essays entitled _A Devil's Chaplain_,
Richard Dawkins has a review of Steven Gould's book _Full
House_ in which Gould attempts to treat growth of complexity
in evolution as a statistical artifact. The Dawkins review
was published back in June of 1997. In his review Dawkins
says "I shall show that if we use a less anthropocentric,
more biologically sensible, more 'adaptationist' definition,
evolution turns out to be clearly and importantly
progressive in the short to medium term. In another sense it
is probably progressive in the long term too." First Dawkins
summarizes Gould's definition of progress "calculated to
deliver a negative answer to the question whether evolution
is progressive" this way: "a tendency for life to increase
in anatomical complexity, or neurological elaboration, or
size and flexibility of behavioral repetoire, or any
criterion obviously concocted (if we would only be honest
and introspective enough about our motives) to place [censored]
Sapiens atop a supposed heap." Dawkins then gives his own
definition of evolutionary progress: "a tendency for
lineages to improve cumulatively their adaptive fit to their
particular way of life, by increasing the numbers of
features which combine together in adaptive complexes."
Furthermore, "by this definition adaptative evolution is not
just incidentally progressive, it is deeply, dyed-in-the-
wool, indispensibly progressive. It is fundamentally
necessary that it should be progressive if Darwinian natural
selection is to perform the explanatory role in our world
view that we require of it, and that it alone can perform."
Dawkins points to the evolution of the vertebrate eye as an
example of this kind of progress, from a primitive light
sensitive spot in the earliest ancestors, to the modern eye
with variable focus, tracking, high resolution and wide
color sensitivity. The eye has been a steady ramp-like climb
up the sheer cliff of Mount Improbable. Another example is
the coevolutionary arms races between predatory and prey
species, the prey progressively becoming less easy to catch,
the predator in return progressively becoming better able to
catch it. These arms races can last for millions of years.
Dawkins adds "But there was no global progress over the
hundreds of millions of years, only a sawtooth succession of
small progresses terminated by extinctions. Nonetheless, the
ramp phase of each sawtooth was properly and significantly
progressive." At the end of the review, Dawkins' passes
judgement on Gould's _Full House_: "...because of the
cumulative character of coevolutionary arms races over the
shorter term, Gould's attempt to reduce all progress to a
trivial, baseball-style artefact constitutes a surprising
impoverishment, an uncharacteristic slight, an unwonted
demeaning of the richness of evolutionary progress."           --
[email hidden]

A professor asked a student, "If you had a choice between
the oppressed and the oppressor which would you choose." The
student replied, "Neither". The Professor shook his head and
stated, "You don't have a choice." The student paused and
said, "The oppressed".

There is one notable exception to this: human knowledge,
which due to a feedback effect, is increasing exponentially.
That is, the more complex our knowledge becomes, the faster
that complexity seems to increase. That's why the
neurological dimension of evolution is so important. It's
the one area that appears to be still unbounded. Of course,
you could consider human culture as being outside the realm
of biological evolution. If you look only at the physical
aspects of evolution then I think your idea of forces that
oppose increases in complexity is valid.

dkomo

I don't think human culture is totally outside the realm of
biological evolution. If advances in knowledge such as
genetics leads to application of knowledge to the biological
organism then complexity can likely be increased. But just
to have our knowledge become more complex doesn't mean our
biological complexity increases faster. Way too much is made
of the "feedback effect". I would argue the vast majority of
biological human specimens can't fully digest our knowledge
becoming more complex. Indeed, I would even say it has
negative consequences.

Michael Ragland

A professor asked a student, "If you had a choice between
the oppressed and the oppressor which would you choose." The
student replied, "Neither". The Professor shook his head and
stated, "You don't have a choice." The student paused and
said, "The oppressed".

Andrew Melka <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

Let me see if I can be a little more clear. Are you
familiar with the mathematical construct known as a
fitness landscape? This is a three dimensional
representation of a topography where adaptive peaks
represent high fitness, the higher the peak the
higher the fitness. Natural selection works to move
species up the steepest slope at their location. A
species that winds up at the top of an adaptive peak
stops. There might be a higher adaptive peak near
by, but in order to reach that higher peak, the
species would first have to go down into the valley
between the peaks, i.e. experience lower
reproductive fitness. It is possible that as
conditions change and peaks fall and rise and move
about that she'll build you a stairway to heaven.
It's also possible she won't.

Maybe your contention can be visualized as a still
jagged, but evenly rising into the distance,
mountain chain. On average over time, adaptations
for greater dissipation of energy result in greater
reproductive fitness. This still doesn't guarantee
you a stairway that natural selection can climb. But
the point I was making about life freeing itself
from abiotic conditions can be visualized this way.
Suppose the lineage that finds itself on the fitness
landscape is able to change the fitness landscape
for itself, in a word, it is a mound builder. Does
such a lineage or lineages ascend a slope that pre-
exists where it finds itself, or does it build a
mound. That depends on two things, one, how steep
the pre-existing slope is, and two, how quickly it
can mound build. Let's imagine a very gradual slope
(which might compare to your energy dissipation vs.
reproductive fitness function) and a fast mound
building capability. The lineages never reach the
distant crest of the moutain range, because they
wind up living on top of their mounds. I think this
possibility is consistent with at least some of
Gould and maybe more obviously with Havelock. [...]

I attempt to address this sort of point at the start
of my essay.

``While it is true that the events that take place as a
consequence of evolution depend critically on the
environment in which they occur, the conclusion that the
result does not have a directional character neglects the
possibility that there may be systemactic regularities in
the environment which effectively provide such a direction.

In fact in the natural world the environment is full of
regularities. The spatial and temporal structure of the
universe is characterised by large scale structure and
regularity.''

- originoflife.netdirectionOpen ↗

In other words, I am claiming that - after examining the
fitness landscape represented by the universe, there is
still vast scope for progressive adaptive evolution, and the
discovery of new technology.

There are vast untapped energy sources in the universe.
There's no cosmic shortage of resource shortage - or at
least not for quite some time. Tapping those energy sources
effectively represents a gigantic task for living systems.
We are looking at a big challenge, more than enough of a
challenge there to propell organisms down progress's
slippery slope at breakneck speed for the forseeable future.

It's not entirely an armchair observation - empirical
observations are involved. We have the history of life to go
on. We can see that discoveries like haemoglobin,
photosynthesis, vision, DNA

realms associated with each discovery that provide evolution
with a fundamentally directional nature.

If the universe was more obviously hostile to life things
might be different. If bombings and catastrophes were the
rule, life might never get far off the ground. However, what
we are looking at is pretty much the opposite state - the
universe is a dangerous place - but nowhere near dangerous
enough to prevent life from developing, thriving and
spreading.
--
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Michael Ragland <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

You sure sound confident in relating Dawkin's view of the
progressiveness of Darwinian evolution. What do you forsee
for the next millions of years? [...]

Forseeing the far future is always challenging.

However, I figure it will consist of an advanced
civilazation.

There will be brains the size of planets.

Stars will be farmed - by means of deliberate collisions.

Life will get into sophistated technology that will look to
us like magic.
--
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Michael Ragland said:

You sure sound confident in relating Dawkin's view of the
progressiveness of Darwinian evolution. What do you forsee
for the next millions of years? "A continuation of
coevolutionary arms races between predatory and prey
species, the prey progressively becoming less easy to
catch, the predator in return progressively becoming
better able to catch it. These arms races can last for
millions of years." We are the main predatory species,
yes? Do you forsee this going on for millions of more
years. I will be honest I don't.

Well, I think it's obvious that human cultural evolution is
proceeding orders of magnitude faster than its biological
evolution, so within the next few hundred years we'll take
charge of not only our own evolution but that of the entire
biosphere. (I've put on my optimist's hat here :-) ).

If we succeed at this, we'll turn earth into an Eden and
stop the destruction of its environment. So there's a good
chance that we could last a few million years as a species.
But it might require some migration to other star systems if
things get a bit too rough here on earth.

Other than that, I've run across a serious proposal that
mankind should
begin seeding the Milky Way galaxy with life. The reason for
doing it
is that we have a responsibility as an intelligent species
to see that
life carries on in the universe even in the event of our
untimely demise.

The proposal is that when we have the technology we start
sending out automated spacecraft which carry specially
bioengineered organisms that could survive long journeys of
thousands of years and thrive on planets of distant stars in
the galaxy. The spacecraft would automatically steer toward
such planets. The proposal estimated that in five million
years or so, we could fill the entire galaxy with
terrestrial life.

Quoted message said:

You quote, ""a tendency for life to increase in anatomical
complexity, or neurological elaboration, or size and
flexibility of behavioral repetoire, or any criterion
obviously concocted (if we would only be honest and
introspective enough about our motives) to place [censored]
Sapiens atop a supposed heap." Yup, we're atop the
supposed heap.

We are the specialists in intelligence in the animal
kingdom. Other than our brains, there's nothing particularly
impressive about our anatomical complexity.

[email hidden]

"Tim Tyler" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Here's an essay I wrote recently about life's direction.

originoflife.netdirectionOpen ↗

In it I argume that the notion that evoultion is a
directionless process whose direction at any time is
contingent on envrionmental conditions is nonsense.

That notion fails to consider the possibilty that there
are systematic regularities in the environment. Such
regularities do exist - and they provdide a definite
direction to the evolutionary process in nature.

I know at least three key explanatory subcategories of
evolutionary pressures that can help us to exploit this fact
-- i.e., that such and still more complex regularities do
exist. ;-)

P

Quoted message said:

TT:- Here's an essay I wrote recently about life's
direction.

originoflife.netdirectionOpen ↗

In it I argume that the notion that evoultion is a
directionless process whose direction at any time is
contingent on envrionmental conditions is nonsense.

That notion fails to consider the possibilty that there
are systematic regularities in the environment. Such
regularities do exist - and they provdide a definite
direction to the evolutionary process in nature.

PF:- I know at least three key explanatory subcategories of
evolutionary pressures that can help us to exploit this fact
-- i.e., that such and still more complex regularities do
exist. ;-)

JE:- So called "explanatory subcategories of evolutionary
pressures" do not exist, as such. What exists are
explanatory subcategories of selectee _responses_. Because
all selectees are unique, they can respond differently to
the same pressures. Thus categorising selective pressure
makes no sense. Selectee responses are active and not just
passive. Within the non living world responses are mostly
passive and predictable because energy is not always
imported at net profit into the system over the life of that
system. Life always has an energy bank account that is in
the black. When it is in the red you are dead. This account
is used to tailor selectee responses to evolutionary
pressures that suit each selectee, at that time. If you wish
to categorize these responses then I agree, such an
endeavour has real worth. However, these responses must be
limited by each species type.

Regards,

John Edser Independent Researcher

PO Box 266 Church Pt NSW 2105 Australia

[email hidden]

Michael Ragland <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

When you say brains the size of planets do you mean like
an interconnected network of brains?

By "brain" I intend to refer to a large computing device.

A biological product whose main function is information
processing - accepting input, processing it and
producing output.

Quoted message said:

What technology would be used to farm stars by making them
deliberately collide?

AIUI, the most obvious way of influencing the trajectories
of masses in space involves throwing smaller objects at
them. The trajectories of smaller objects can be influenced
more easily than larger ones - and very small objects can
be propelled by the use of parabolic mirrors focussing
sunlight onto their surfaces and evaporating off material
from their surfaces.

We know that small changes can subsequently produce large
effects - so it's quite possible that a small-but-well-timed
nudge on a meteorite could eventually cause two suns to pass
close to one another - and rip great chunks of matter from
each other. The tricky bit would be getting the timing right
- of course.

Of course our descendants might well find other, better ways
of doing things.

Who knows - maybe most observed supernovae are the result
of the activities of living organisms in shoving stars
together ;-)
--
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