Tuesday, October 21, 2003

doug mini essay of evolution Posted here Tuesday, October 21, 2003 at 11:50:33 AM     Just to get it on the record.. An important problem with "evolution" is the contradiction between preformism, which e-volution implies, and full adaptation to circumstances which do not unfold in a linear way. The earth is not necesarily evolving in a way that inelligence would be its co-evolutionary partner. The idea that evolution is going towards a fixed destiny is an import that has cultural roots, and anyone carrying that assumption should investigate their own influences. Preformism or directionalism miss the beauty and mystery. Another issue is that often there is an assumption that we know what is evolving, speech, intelligence, the color of the flower, the arch of the wing. But in fact we do not know, since often what is really happening is quite hidden. The story of salmon, the depositing of carbon on the river banks, the involvement of prey, the feeding of the trees that hide the banks that shadow the young salmon.. This is as far as we have got, but the real story may still be hidden, So when people pick something like "problem solving" as the "representative anecdote" about which an explanation is going to be an adequate theory of the whole, then we have to cringe who might think that "poetry" would be a better representative anecdote for which, if we had a good theory, we would know more about what being a human being is. I am not asserting that poetry is it, just suggesting that our basis for choice is based in presuppositions which are probably off the mark. Another problem is that space is not a void, but a field of potential which contains and limits and empowers "evolution", but we have no theory at the level of form or more profound about what that is, yet is must be part of a full theory of change. The idea of "representative anecdote" comes from Kenneth Burke, who used literature to understand society, and was concerned that we pick the wrong - and too superficial - things to try and understand. Comments very welcome, as always.   ********