nature as historical and evolutionary

8/12/2019 Nature as Historical and Evolutionary

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/nature-as-historical-and-evolutionary 1/28

Nature as Historical, and Evolutionary

The Hyper-Focus on Evolution in Defending Modern Sci -

ence

Today the theory of evolution, which is primarily viewed as a

matter of understanding the mechanics of evolution, since out-

side those with either a childish view of reality or a political

agenda evolution is viewed as simply an observable fact, is domi-

nated by the converged theories commonly referred to as

Neo-Darwinism.

The real argument is not the straw man argument of simplistic

atheists whose only means of argument is to oppose the ignorant

and childish views of a minority of the religious, and the corre-

sponding argument of the ignorant and childish which ignores

obvious observable reality. The more complex and interesting ar-

gument concerns a mechanics of evolution based on purely ran-

dom causality versus mainstream creation theories that origi-

nated as an attempt to supplement evolutionary mechanisms

with both a telic causality and an addendum to the mechanics of

much older evolutionary theories. The commonality between



both arguments, and the reason they are so easily confused by

the non-scientic public, stems from the hyper-focus in both

cases on evolutionary theory itself. Mainstream creation theories

largely are in alignment with eisenberg!s statement on science

in general" #The rst taste of the natural sciences will ma$e you

an atheist, but %od is waiting for you at the bottom of the glass.&

This isn!t a defense of creation theory, but rather a loo$ at the

reasons underlying the hyper-focus on one scientic theory by

both sides. 'ewontin has already dealt with the rst argument

in terms of a political use of the childish views of certain sects of

(hristianity to battle one of the last areas of states! right in the

).*., that of the states! right to oversee education. +s a result

will focus on the second argument, that which ta$es place at a

much more complex level of argument between actual scientists,

of whom 'ewontin himself is a reasonable example, and actual

theologians and scientists who see the same problems with

Neo-Darwinism as with old evolutionary theories whose limita-

tions led to the creationism of the Neo-latonists, and see no new

solutions to those issues.

n the latter side, the focus on evolutionary theory comes out

of specic problems with Neo-Darwinist theory. n the former,



the focus arises both from a distaste for theological solutions to

scientic problems, and an underlying unease with Neo-Darwin-

ism as a solution that renders the theological addenda irrelevant.

+ large part of the issue with Neo-Darwinism lies in its abroga-

tion of two of the fundamental insights of Darwin himself, in-

sights not available to the originators of evolutionary theory prior

to the theological addenda begun by the Neo-latonists.

The rst problem concerns the fact that Darwin!s idea of natu-

ral selection only deals with one of the two moments of evolution.

The second concerns the cause of evolution itself. Neo-Darwin-

ism ignores the rst moment of the two which Darwin specically

stated could not be explained by natural selection due to its issue

with the second, since the mechanistic assumptions on which it

is based does not allow for telic causality in any sense.

The two moments of evolution, well expressed by /ernard 'on-

ergan in the boo$ nsight, concern the following"

0. The li$elihood of specic schemes of recurrence actually oc-

curring, a phrase that covers the recurrence of examples of a

specic species and the li$elihood of greater complexity arising

as those species change, and the recurrence of specic environ-

mental conditions.



1. The survivability of examples of schemes of recurrence as

specic species, which is largely dependent on the recurrence of

specic environmental conditions.

Natural selection is paramount only in the second of these two

moments. 2ather than being a driver of evolution, it acts primar-

ily as a bra$e on the development of species into more complex

forms.

The di3culty for the Neo-Darwinists arises in nding any rea-

son for the historical increase in the complexity of species given

the relative success in terms of survivability of simpler forms of

life when compared with the more complex forms. Darwin him-

self was familiar with the most advanced currents in philosophy

of his time, in particular the ideas of egel in terms of historical

development and the mechanics of telic causality, and combined

with his religious upbringing saw no di3culty in a practical

sense in accounting for the mechanics of the historical increase

in complexity, but not the di3culty the Neo-Darwinists have in

accepting either nature as a historical development or the exis-

tence of telic causality itself. +s a result, aside from stating in

the introduction that the development of new species could not

be a matter of chance or happenstance, he focused on the second



moment 4 the mechanics of survivability of specic species under

changing environmental conditions.

Darwin!s studies and resulting theories represented a ma5or

advance in comparative 6oology, made possible by technical ad-

vances in the ability to travel and therefore accomplish compara-

tive 6oology on a larger and more varied scale, and represented

an advance, largely accomplished in the practical sense by others

but guring largely in his theories, in terms of paleontology as a

means of dramatically extending the $nowledge of the historical

aspect of nature. +t the same time Darwin!s theories accom-

plished a leap back to the original ideas on evolution as a com-

plex interplay of telos and happenstance that over a historical pe-

riod led naturally to species admirably adapted to their environ-

ment. Natural selection provided a mechanics for the happen-

stance that is largely responsible for the survivability of existent

and new species, however it has no bearing on the telic causality,

which Darwin himself felt was too complex a topic to tac$le at

the time of his writing.

The Neo-latonists! issue in terms of telic causality arose from

the development of the idea of a creator being initially by the

*toics, and was simultaneously answered by the nature of the



creator being in 7uestion. f reality had a beginning intentional

telic causality was necessary to account for nature as natural his-

tory and the resulting need to account for the increase in the

complexity of life forms over a limited period. 8or 9mpedocles

the past was limitless, which was simply an assumption common

to his society. 8or later thin$ers, in particular +ristotle, the tem-

poral innity of the universe was a logical deduction based on

the notion that any beginning to the universe would create a situ-

ation of an innite regression in terms of the cause of such a be-

ginning. The development of theories such as the /ig /ang the-

ory of reality!s origin doesn!t fundamentally address the problem,

because the singularity at the beginning in fact replicates the

features of the creator being except for the intentionality of the

creator being, and the problematic issue that the singularity, as

no longer being, must be temporally tensed, and must therefore

itself have a cause. +s a result the theory still prevalent of the

beginning of the universe complicates the situation for evolution-

ary theory, because the historical increase in complexity cannot

be accounted for by an intentional telic causality arising from the

intentionality of the creator being itself.



9volution, then is neither a fact nor a theory, but the descrip-

tion of nature viewed as natural history. :hen nature is loo$ed

at historically, even within the history of man, but more conclu-

sively when geological history is brought into play, it appears as

evolutionary. This history is determined by a complex interplay

of creativity and destruction, *elf-organi6ation and entropy,

*elf-optimi6ation and the limiting factors of the environment and

resulting natural selection. The renormali6ation of Darwin!s vi-

sion of natural history with the invalid assumptions of mechanis-

tic determinism, far from obviating creationism, render it neces-

sary in order to account for the deciencies in applying their ex-

planation to the actual historical record of nature., as it was orig-

inally a necessary complement to the early evolutionary ideas in

order to account for the observed evidence.

Darwin!s full vision of natural history as evolutionary, however,

does not have the deciencies present in either the original no-

tions of evolution nor the renormali6ation of Neo-Darwinism, and

as a result re7uires no complementary creationism to account for

nature!s historical development as evolutionary.



The Problems ith !onverged or "eo-Darinist #deas

8ollowing on the notion of Darwin;s ideas as a historical ac-

count of nature, in which, evidentially, nature presents itself as

historically evolutionary, we need to loo$ more closely at what

this means in terms of the inade7uacy of the most commonly ac-

cepted theories of nature as historical, usually inaccurately re-

ferred to as #theories of evolution&.

Neo-Darwinism and its variants purport to be a more concrete

extension of Darwin;s ideas, expressed principally in $n the $ri-

gin of Species. Darwin;s ideas were an attempt, if only partial, to

loo$ at the history of nature, to view nature as historical in pre-

cisely the meaning egel gave that term. egel;s denition of

history as the #history of *pirit& doesn;t initially give us much as-

sistance in seeing how Darwin applied the idea to nature, which

is generally viewed as precisely the opposite of anything #spiri-

tual&.

9videntially, given not only the array of examples in Darwin;s

own wor$ but in the wor$ of many brilliant researchers since,

from de (hardin to 'ewontin, when nature is viewed historically

it appears as an evolutionary history. The 7uestion then arises as



to what ma$es a given history, the history of nature as we $now

it in this case, an evolutionary history, rather than 5ust a se7uen-

tial listing of events and changes.

:e can distinguish 7uite readily an evolutionary change from

a non-evolutionary change, as well as from a devolutionary

change. :e also distinguish fairly easily between evolutionary

change and revolutionary change. *ince evidentially the history

of nature has been predominantly evolutionary <although re-

search since Darwin has demonstrated revolutionary aspects to

the history of nature at di=erent times 4 referred to in the litera-

ture often as ;punctuations;> any theory that attempts to under-

stand the history of nature has to be able to distinguish between

these types of change, and provide su3cient reason for the pre-

dominance of evolutionary change, punctuated by revolutionary

change and occasionally halted and redirected by devolutionary

disaster.

Darwin is, of course, $nown for the idea of natural selection.

owever Darwin himself did not feel comfortable with the focus

given to the idea, since on its own it doesn;t provide su3cient

reason for what the evidence available to him, presented as a

steady evolutionary trend in the changes involved in nature



throughout its history. :hile not proposing another mechanism

himself, he does note in the introduction to n the $rigin of

Species that whatever that mechanism might be it

"aturalists continually refer to e%ternal conditions&such as climate& food& etc'& as the only possiblecause of variation' #n one very limited sense& as eshall hereafter see & this may be true( but it is pre-posterous to attribute to mere e%ternal conditions&the structure& for instance& of the oodpecker & ithits feet& tail& beak& and tongue& so admirablyadapted to catch insects under the bark of trees' #nthe case of the misseltoe& hich dras its nourish-

ment from certain trees& hich has seeds that mustbe transported by certain birds& and hich has )o-ers ith separate se%es absolutely re*uiring theagency of certain insects to bring pollen from one

)oer to the other'

Darin& !harles +,.,-/-.01' $n the origin of

species +p' 21' ' 3indle Edition'

n critici6ing the #naturalists& of his time, Darwin indirectly

levels a serious criticism at the Neo-Darwinists, mechanistic ge-

neticists, and other #convergence& theorists that believe they are

extending his wor$. 2andom change, by virtue of its being ran-

dom, cannot distinguish between evolutionary, revolutionary,



non-evolutionary and devolutionary change. :hile Darwin does

ma$e the claim that natural selection is the #main& arbiter that

ensures change will, overall, operate in an evolutionary manner,

thus matching the evidence at his disposal, he does not claim

that it is the only agent of evolutionary change.

%oing beyond Darwin, we have not only to provide a theory

that fully accounts for change that can be described as evolution-

ary, we have to account for the ;punctuations;, revolutionary

changes that do not t well with the slow, steady model of

change originally envisioned. +s well, the theory of the history of

nature must provide a stronger accounting for an overall evolu-

tionary style of change capable of overcoming the devolutionary

disasters we have since discovered in the evidential record.

:hat, then, do we mean by evolutionary <and revolutionary as

a more sudden form of the former> versus non-evolutionary or

devolutionary change? :e see nature;s historical record as evo-

lutionary because we see evidence of a progression in terms of

diversity and complexity within nature. +s Darwin noted there is

a fundamental di3culty in understanding

4 ho a simple being or a simple organ can bechanged and perfected into a highly developed be-ing or elaborately constructed organ(



Darin& !harles +,.,-/-.01' $n the origin ofspecies +p' /1' ' 3indle Edition'

This di3culty obviously doesn;t lessen when the re7uirement

of understanding how revolutionary increases in diversity and

complexity could occur, as they appear to have done relatively of-

ten in the geological record.

Diversity, while perhaps di3cult to account for, is at least eas-

ier to initially understand than complexity. Natural selection, for

its part, has nothing to say on the latter. (omplexity, as far as all

the evidence we have available, in and of itself shows no intrinsic

advantage in terms of survivability. :hen we add in the li$eli-

hood of any particular scheme recurring, complexity inherently

ma$es chance recurrence less li$ely, while ma$ing intentional re-

currence <in the widest sense of intentionality> intrinsically more

di3cult and costly in terms of energy utili6ation. The law of en-

tropy throws a further di3culty in the way, in that evolutionary

change appears to occur in spite of a necessary general tendency

towards simpler forms of organi6ation with lower inherent en-

ergy re7uirements to maintain that form. Neo-Darwinism pairs



random genetic mutation as the driving force behind change,

with natural selection as the arbiter guaranteeing that change

overall will be evolutionary, but in practice random genetic muta-

tion doesn;t occur often enough for su3cient favourable muta-

tions to occur, and thus doesn;t provide a su3cient base from

which natural selection could select only the more favourable

mutations. :hile it;s certainly true that mutations do occur, and

it;s also perfectly possible that natural selection could ensure

that a favourable mutation survives, in general mutations are not

favourable, and while natural selection does, denitely, de-select

these changes from proliferating, the overall negativity of its ef-

fect ma$es it su3ciently unsuitable as a means of increasing di-

versity and complexity.

:e also $now far more about natural selection as a mechanism

than Darwin could have, in that it is both far more e3cient than

he anticipated in a stable environment, where a given species

will reach its optimal conguration within three to four genera-

tions, and simultaneously radically ine3cient in a rugged envi-

ronment, where no observable improvement can be expected in

an innite number of generations. %iven that the ma5ority of en-

vironments where life is observed are su3ciently rugged to ma$e



natural selection ine=ective in distinguishing advantageous traits

from disadvantageous ones it;s place as the main arbiter of

change is rendered at least highly 7uestionable. +t the same

time the much higher than anticipated e3ciency in stable envi-

ronments renders it doubly problematic, since the diversity ob-

served in stable environments is magnitudes greater than should

be expected.

The reasonableness, then, of the converged Neo-Darwinist the-

ories only survives when natural history is loo$ed at as a 5ust-so

story. :hen the combination of random genetic mutations and

natural selection is applied predictively to a relatively stable en-

vironment, it would predict a much lower amount of diversity

than is actually observed. :hen it is applied to a more rugged

environment, the increase in adaptive traits is much higher than

would be predicted. Neo-Darwinist mechanisms do provide a

handy account of how unfavourable changes are prevented from

proliferating, but the overall predictive picture that emerges is

one of a general loering of diversity and complexity over time,

which of course is in $eeping with the mechanics of physics ex-

pressed in the law of entropy itself. *ince this does not account



for the evidential history of nature, it does not su3ce as a theory

of that history.

+s remar$ed earlier, complexity itself remains a problem, one

more di3cult initially to fully understand than diversity. :hy

there should be a steady tendency towards its increase, whether

in natural history or human history, remains a mystery as far as

mechanistic scientic accounts purport to explain the world as

we experience it. Diversity has obvious advantages in terms of

survivability both within a species and in terms of life itself.

(omplexity, however, displays no obvious advantages in either re-

producibility or survivability, in fact it appears positively detri-

mental to both in the ma5ority of cases.

8urther, what complexity itself consists in is not well under-

stood. :hile it may be obvious in concrete instances which of

two systems is the more complex, dening precisely hat ma$es

one system generally more complex than another is a less obvi-

ous tas$. *imple calculations such as si6e, number of parts, even

number of obvious relations, all fail radically when analy6ing dif-

ferent types of systems, yet generally we intuitively understand

which of two systems is more complex <assuming a reasonable

basic understanding of both systems>.



f we ta$e living systems as examples, we could for instance

draw up a list of living systems of varying complexity"

• dog

• worm

• tree

• mouse

• sponge

• bacterium

t would be relatively easy, given a general $nowledge of each

of these, to put them in order of complexity, while there might be

7uestions on certain of the examples <is a worm more or less

complex than a tree?> for the most part the ordering is fairly ob-

vious"

0. bacterium

1. sponge

@. worm

A. tree

B. mouse

C. dog

<t;s my view that those who would put worm after tree are in-

trinsically biased in favour of animal life as inherently more com-



plex than plant life, which have decided against in this case

since trees not only appear more structurally complex, in many

cases they display complex behaviour that many people don;t as-

sociate with plants>

The 7uestion is, then, how did 7uic$ly arrive at that particu-

lar ordering, and with one possible exception, why would the ma-

5ority of readers agree with me with little to no hesitation? ow

do we recogni6e more complex <living> systems almost without

thin$ing about it?

f we ta$e two examples that, at least to an untrained eye, ap-

pear to be similarly complex in terms of number of parts and re-

lations, for instance the mouse and the tree, on what do we base

our intuition that the mouse is the more complex system? There

was a hint in the ellipsis above" we tend to view complexity as ei-

ther structural or behavioural. :hile the tree demonstrates a

high degree of structural complexity, we might initially say that it

doesn;t display the behavioural complexity of the mouse. 9ven

this di=erentiation proves to be simplistic, however. :hile the

organs of the mouse are certainly more complex in their activi-

ties than the leaves or trun$ of the tree, much of what we ascribe



as the behaviour of the mouse as a mouse& rather than as a col-

lection of more or less complex parts, involves not only its indi-

vidual behaviour but its behaviour as part of a group of mice with

which it lives and interacts. :hile trees also tend to be found in

groups and interact to a certain degree, the extent of and sense

to their interactions doesn;t compare to that of a group of mice.

(omplexity, then, isn;t restricted to an individual system any

more than a subsystem of that system, and by the same logic is

not combined to a single group within a species, or a single

species, but to the complexity of all the interaction between all

the species. Darwin;s vision of the evolutionary nature of the his-

tory of nature was a vision of nature as a hole. nly as nature

itself as a system gains in diversity and complexity do subgroups

and individuals gain in degrees of freedom, which is the funda-

mental manner in which we 5udge complexity. nsects, for in-

stance, have degrees of freedom in the way they interact that

sponges do not. Dogs have magnitudes greater degrees of free-

dom than insects in their social interactions, arising from the

complexity of having a world, even if in the main that is a semi-

otic, and not a linguistic world. uman beings have evolved the

means of evolution itself, where evolution is primarily a societal



rather than a biological matter, precisely supplementing natural

history with history proper. The rate at which the interplay in

human societies has increased outstrips that of natural history by

further magnitudes, and each increase in social complexity re-

sults in the potential for an increase in individual complexity, for

instance from mythical being to metaphysical being and beyond,

which in turn increases the possibility of gains in social complex-

ity.

The main failure of Neo-Darwinism is analogous to the failure

of social Darwinism, in that the focus on the individual, or the in-

dividual species genus people nation, forgets the interplay

which allows any given individual or group to grow in complexity,

and the increase in diversity which allows that growth in interac-

tivity and sustains it. The history of nature as evolutionary is not

the history of the preeminence of any one species, but the in-

creasing diversity and complexity of nature as a whole made pos-

sible by the development of more complex species and individu-

als, which in turn ma$es the development of more complex

species and individuals possible. Thus any theory of natural his-

tory as evolutionary must be a dialectical theory 4 one that not

only handles seeming contradictory tendencies <e.g. development



of selshness and altruism> but sees the interplay of these con-

tradictions as necessary to the development of either.

The nal problems a theory of natural history must confront

are"

0. the problem of the seemingly inevitable tendency towards

such increase in complexity, which is not obviated by the

record of dramatic devolutionary catastrophes in the histori-

cal record, but in fact made stronger by them, in that natu-

ral history has remained evolutionary on the whole despite

such massive catastrophes

1. how an individual or species can posit itself as such, indeed

must do so, retroactively, in order to come into existence at

all. *implistic linear cause and e=ect does not su3ce for

this, but without it we have no conception of the necessary

ability of beings to found the <local and temporary> abroga-

tion of the law of entropy by becoming increasingly complex

and raising the local energy levels.



Glynn / Horizons of Identity / 21

The Problems ith 5enetic 6ccommodation Theory

The theory of %enetic +ccommodation, as expounded most

fully by Mary Eane :est-9berhard, is a tidy way of understanding

how a priori phenotypical changes become embedded in the

genome. 8or the sa$e of brevity and simplicity of understanding

will 7uote the following succinct expression of the theory by

David Dobbs"

5enetic accommodation involves a three-stepprocess'

First& an organism +or a bunch of organisms& a pop-ulation1 changes its functional form 7 its phenotype7 by making broad changes in gene e%pression'Second& a gene emerges that happens to help lock

in that change in phenotype' Third& the genespreads through the population'

Die& sel8sh gene& die

David Dobbs

:hile this is a seemingly natural way of understanding how a

phenotype!s reinterpretation of a gene is Fwritten bac$! into the




genome, the 7uestions arise as to whether it a> really ma$es

sense, b> is at all li$ely and c> matches the available evidence.

The answer to all three, when the theory is thought through

su3ciently, is no.

n terms of whether the theory really ma$es sense, we need to

consider the following"

1. n the generations that follow the initial reinterpretation

of the gene, the phenotype has to remain as it was in the ini-

tial reinterpretation, awaiting a genetic mutation that hap-

pens to be useful to replicate the phenotypical change. No

means for this to occur is proposed in the model.

2. :hile the initial phenotypical change occurs through a

Fre-reading! or reinterpretation of an existing gene, once the

proposed genetic mutation occurs, the new gene is read liter-

ally, and this is assumed to be more e3cient at creating a sim-

ilar phenotype. n fact the theory re7uires that the new gene

produce a better phenotype than the initial reinterpretation

could.

The problems are compounded when the li$elihood of the

above, and the other implications of the theory, are assessed"




1. The li$elihood of an appropriate mutation occurring soon

after a given phenotypical change approximates the li$elihood

of an appropriate mutation that is phenotypically advanta-

geous in standard converged evolutionary theory. That is,

phenomenally unli$ely, which is the ma5or logical ob5ection to

converged theory.

2. The li$elihood that the mutated gene somehow produces

a better adaptation than the initial reinterpretation, given

that the former is random and the latter environmentally

aware, is even lower than the case in <0.>.

'astly we need to assess whether the theory matches the

available evidence, again we run into signicant problems"

The theory arose rstly in order to understand the identically

of the genomes of various wasp phenotypes, and the identically

of the genome in the very di=erent phenotypes $nown as the

grasshopper and locust, the latter pair being able to reinterpret

the genome on the Gy and change bac$ and forth from one phe-

notype to anotherH secondly to understand the lac$ of signicant

enough di=erence between the genomes of fundamentally di=er-

ent species.




1. *ince the genome is both of these cases is identical, the

assumption that the gene needs to somehow exist in the

genome is not always true.

2. The theory fails to account for the lac$ of su9cient dif-

ference in genomes between radically di=erent species, since

were the ma5ority of phenotypical changes Fwritten bac$! into

the genome, the genomes would be nearly as di=erent as con-

verged theory would predict.

The 7uestion then arises as to why we need the second and

third parts of the theory, since the problems mentioned can be

ade7uately accounted for simply by the rst part, i.e. that the

genome is interpreted di=erently depending on the environment

in a dynamic fashion. ther than maintaining the assumption of

some importance to the actual composition of the genome, it ap-

pears that the second and third parts are superGuous. t seems

unli$ely, though, that decades of research that include the identi-

cation of some causally determinative genes, at least in similar

environments, has absolutely no relevance to genetic or evolu-

tionary theory. There is also the evidential issue that di=erent

species do have di=erent genomes, in fact the determination of a




species as uni7ue is via the fact that two life forms with su3-

ciently di=ering genomes can no longer e=ectively reproduce.

The answers to the latter two 7uestions, although having fun-

damentally di=erent assumptions than either converged theory

or genetic accommodation theory, are actually rather obvious in

terms of the re7uirements and available evidence.

:e have evidence that organisms can and in fact do rewrite

the genome, at least temporarily, in the immune system. ow-

ever immune system genome changes do not replicate between

generations. %iven that the ability exists, though, and simultane-

ously is unnecessary for a large variety of phenotypical changes,

it!s unsurprising that we have no direct evidence of a rewritten

genome being passed on generationally. t simply isn!t re7uired

often enough for us to have direct evidence of it.

:hether or not it is re7uired <or at all advantageous> appears

to be dependent, evidentially, on whether the available variety in

the genome, without sacricing reproducibility with others of the

species, is su3cient to maintain the phenotypical changes via

consistent reinterpretation. f the phenotypical changes re7uire

more than reinterpretation for the phenotypical changes to reli-




ably Fstic$! generationally, the ability to reproduce is sacriced in

order to persist the genotypical changes that initially di=erenti-

ate species. f course, this is inherently a di3cult and ris$y

proposition, because it depends on a combination of genotypical

changes that su3ciently di=erentiate a species arising from

rewritten genes merged from two parents who could reproduce

with the origin species. These parents are not species di=erenti-

ated, but in combination their o=spring may be. recisely at this

point natural selection intervenes, acting as a bra$e on the sur-

vival of ine=ective combinations, since there is a good chance

these o=spring are sterile and cannot reproduce, and a good

chance that the merged, rewritten genomes do not produce a vi-

able new species.

This also answers another issue with standard converged evo-

lutionary theory that is not addressed by genetic accommoda-

tion" that the already low probability of any given genetic muta-

tion leading to an evolutionary advantage is rendered dramati-

cally lower in the case of a new species, since the number and

variety of available reproductive mates is reduced initially to o=-

spring of the same parents. This disadvantage is generally




avoided, which helps to understand why immune system varia-

tions are generally not inherited - the advantages conferred are

for the most part overridden by the disadvantages. nly where a

su3ciently signicant advantage is conferred do the parents re-

rite their genomes, and only where mating results in a signi-

cantly more viable species does the changed genome have su3-

cient survivability to overcome the reproductive disadvantages.

:hile it seems simple common sense that causality wor$s bot-

tom-up and forward temporally <past creates present> this ;com-

mon sense; became common based on a particular prevalent be-

lief-system or ideology. 8or +ristotle, the telic cause, i.e. the

goal, was the principle cause, since the other causes could be re-

placed with entirely di=erent ones, yet accomplish the same re-

sult. owever for this to be the case the cause has to posit the

e=ect top-down and retroactively. This became unthin$able to

common sense when phusis, or self-origination, was replaced by

techne, or production, as the mode of origin of all beings. (on-

verged and Neo-Darwinist theory, and the various modications

of them that attempt to overcome the issues noted in the past

few chapters, fail for the most ironic reason imaginable. +s tech-




nical, mechanistic understandings, they are fatefully embedded

in a perspective on reality that has its basis and 5ustication in a

creationist worldview. This can be easily demonstrated in the

history of science itself, from the abandonment of telic causality

made possible in the rst place by theologians such as :illiam

of ccam, who not only maintained the creationist notions of

common (hristians that predated him, but re-posited the god of

that creation as an engineer that would obviously accomplish ev-

erything in the most e3cient, simplest manner possible. *imul-

taneously, ccam and others posited all meaning as supernatu-

ral, the things of this world were precisely meaningless& hence

nominalist. This nominalism provided the theoretical framewor$

by which science could treat ;things; as meaningless ob:ects,

which could be fully determined mathematically, and of course if

the other part of the theological change, that all meaning ad-

heres only in god, were simply dropped or forgotten, the result is

the meaningless reality of modern science.

nature as historical and evolutionary

Documents