↪Gnomon You know, there's an old truism in science, 'a theory that explains everything explains nothing'. It suggests that if a theory is so broad and all-encompassing that it can be used to explain any observation or phenomenon, it may lack specificity and predictive power. In other words, a theory should be able to make testable predictions and provide a clear framework for understanding specific phenomena. If a theory can be stretched to explain anything, it becomes less useful as a scientific tool because it doesn't provide meaningful constraints or insights into the natural world. Good scientific theories are typically more precise and focused, allowing scientists to make specific predictions and test their validity through experimentation and observation.
The question is: if the mechanism by which complexity arises in bacteria evolution, autocatalysis, galaxy formation, ant hive construction, etc. is modeled similarly, doesn't that denote a larger general principle? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Americans do seem to tend to have a real antipathy toward Darwin. Not just the religious fundamentalists. — Danno
The scientists involved didn't present their findings as a Theory of Everything, but merely one thing (a new law) to explain three things (novelty, stability, reproducibility) that were not covered by Darwin's biological theory, and not possible in view of the conventional Big Bang Theory.↪Gnomon
You know, there's an old truism in science, 'a theory that explains everything explains nothing'. It suggests that if a theory is so broad and all-encompassing that it can be used to explain any observation or phenomenon, — Wayfarer
Darwin didn't say that the term evolution can't be applied to anything else, did he? — Danno
the new ‘law of increasing functional information’ states that complex natural systems evolve to states of greater patterning, diversity, and complexity — Gnomon
Thanks. I will appreciate your fair & balanced report on the technical paper. I have only read the news articles that summarized the original study. I got the impression that this was not a report on a specific scientific empirical experiment, but a philosophical analysis of general observational evidence.↪Gnomon
Yes as I noted in my second response, my first might have been hasty, and I'm now reading the actual paper. :yikes: — Wayfarer
Well since in Real Life here on planet Earth while physical systems are getting more and more complex, biological systems are rapidly becoming simpler and simpler. If current biological trends are extrapolated indefinitely, there will be a zoo, a corn field and an industrial feed lot.
It's erroneous on it's face. — LuckyR
magritte Here's the link to the very nicely formatted .pdf of the paper.
I was sceptical first up, but having started to read it, I'm coming around to it. — Wayfarer
Stuart Kauffman’s extensive research and speculation are inspired by deeply held philosophical, metaphysical, and religious beliefs, which often stand in tension with his scientific investigations. His obvious rejection of the existence of a Judeo-Christian God cannot disguise the profound longing for unity and reconciliation that lies at the heart of his work. If Darwin and his followers are right when they claim that evolution is a matter of chance, human life would seem to be an accident. For Kauffman, such a vision renders life meaningless and makes it impossible to feel ‘at home in the universe.” If, however, there is an emergent order to things that lends evolution a discernible order and probable direction, life has a logic that makes human existence meaningful:
In this view of life, organisms are not merely tinkered-together contraptions, bricolage, in Jacob’s phrase. Evolution is not merely “chance caught on the wing, ” in
Monod’s evocative image. The history of life captures the natural order, on which selection is privileged to act. If this idea is true, many features of organisms are not merely historical accidents, but also reflections of the profound order that evolution has further molded. If true, we are at home in the universe in ways not imagined since Darwin stood natural theology on its head with his blind watchmaker.
This order, or course, is neither the product of a purposeful designer nor programmed from the beginning; rather, evolution is an inner teleonomic process in which order emerges spontaneously but not accidentally. “If I am right,” Kauffman hopefully declares, the motto of life is not ‘We the improbable, but We the expected’.
Regardless of whether the system is living or nonliving, when a novel configuration works well and function improves, evolution occurs.
I’ve always felt that the idea that life, or for that matter cosmic order, is a chance occurrence is a profoundly unscientific attitude. — Wayfarer
I’ve often felt like asking, is the idea that evolutionary biology tends towards higher levels of intelligence within the scope of evolutionary theory? — Wayfarer
Abilities like being able to outrun, outclimb, outhink... tend to be adaptive. Why would you think otherwise? — wonderer1
Adaption to the environment is a different thing to general intelligence. — Wayfarer
General intelligence may provide for greater versatility, but it saying that is all that it does rather sells it short. — Wayfarer
I know evolutionary biology quite well... — Wayfarer
Although you would have to have some appreciation of philosophy, as distinct from science, to appreciate that, I expect. — Wayfarer
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'chance occurrence' here — flannel jesus
Most biologists, I'm pretty sure, think life was pretty likely to occur somewhere in this universe, at some time, — flannel jesus
What's the alternative? That there's a being deliberately guiding the whole process? — flannel jesus
So I am wondering how this new law of physics can be distinguished from a drunkards walk of evolution that simply explores the whole space of the possible in a random undirected way? — unenlightened
The new work presents a modern addition — a macroscopic law recognizing evolution as a common feature of the natural world’s complex systems, which are characterised as follows:
* They are formed from many different components, such as atoms, molecules, or cells, that can be arranged and rearranged repeatedly
* Are subject to natural processes that cause countless different arrangements to be formed
* Only a small fraction of all these configurations survive in a process called “selection for function.” — Commentary
what are the principles that lead to the growth of complexity and information-encoding capacity in very different kinds of systems where an “evolving system” is a "collective phenomenon of many interacting components that displays a temporal increase in diversity, distribution, and patterned behavior." There's more to it than "stuff happens". — Wayfarer
What am I missing that they are saying? — unenlightened
Here is a proposal to explain why despite this, the total information density (a measure of order) of the universe increases. At least that is my gloss on it. (I stalled at the section with the equations, as always — Wayfarer
Configurations of matter tend to persist unless kinetically favorable avenues exist for their incorporation into more stable configurations.
Insofar as processes have causal efficacy over the internal state of a system or its external environment, they can be referred to as functions. If a function promotes the system’s persistence, it will be selected for.
The fundamental process is the dissipation of free energy—without this function, no complex, dynamic entities could exist. Unlike static persistence, which only requires dissipation during formation, dynamic persistence requires active dissipation.
Insofar as processes have causal efficacy over the internal state of a system or its external environment, they can be referred to as functions. If a function promotes the system’s persistence, it will be selected for.
There exist selection pressures favoring systems that can open-endedly invent new functions—i.e., selection pressures for novelty generation.
an enzyme’s function is not to perform any of the core functions alone, but to play a specific role in the context of a core function expressed at a higher level of organization. From the perspective of the enzyme, there is a top–down selection pressure for enzymes to have high catalytic efficiencies due to a selection pressure at a higher level for a lineage of organisms to persist. In other words, the enzyme’s function is informed by its context within a larger system. [Note one minor caveat: There are certain cases where protein folding is better described by selection for “form” based on the givens of physics—i.e., static persistence—rather than selection for functional adaptations (50)]. Ancillary functions can exist across many scales: From the perspective of an organism, there may be top–down selection pressures from the needs of its community, and the community may experience pressures from higher ecological units of selection, etc.
The functional information of a system will increase (i.e., the system will evolve) if many different configurations of the system are subjected to selection for one or more functions.
Functional information analysis is thus not currently feasible for most complex evolving systems because of the combinatorial richness of configuration space. Even if we could analyze a specific instance where one configuration enables a function, we cannot generally know whether other solutions of equal or greater function might exist in configuration space
I agree that Darwin's word-choice of "selection"*1, to describe how Evolution works, inadvertently implied some "agency"*2 doing the choosing from among the options, both fit & unfit, generated by random mutations. His model for "selection" was the artificial evolution of domesticated animals suitable for human purposes. But the notion of natural selection suggests some kind of universal teleological agency programming the mechanisms of Evolution to work toward an inscrutable Final Cause : the output of evolution.Something that occurs to me, though, is that 'selection' is a transitive verb. It implies a sense of agency - that something is doing the selecting. I'll have to think about that some more. — Wayfarer
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