Who drives Evolution?

Cyracuz,

This seems to be a good reference on which to base analysis.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/teleology.html

You state your analogy in terms of "driver" or "directional agent" but this may merely be a reaction to those who argue for "a deity" as an ultimate driver. Without that concept to kick against does the analogy still hold ?

I am not sure the analogy holds either way. The thought behind it was that all elements within evolution exert equal influence on the direction things take.

Ah... " All elements within evolution exert equal influence"

That would have been a better heading for this subject.

We must firstly define what the elements are.

Obviously the organisms that evolve are elements but where does the physical world in which they exist come into it. Is that influence lesser, equal or greater then evolution itself?

Not only is there no one driving, but there is no road to follow and no destination. Probably no bus, either. More like herds of nomads wandering in an endless field, perhaps randomly but more likely heading for any promising food source while staying within walking distance of a waterhole.

Eiadeio.

Yes, for that assertation to be of any use we need to define what the elements are.

This is a higly subjective process, and there is no clear answer. This is because in absolute reality there are no elements, just a seamless transgression between states of being, and even such a statement is inaccurate. Language is really insuficient to describe this, due to it's dualistic nature. Reality is indivisible.

The progrees of science shows this. Once upon a time air was just air. It was one element within evolution. According to this line of reasoning the elements are trees, water, air, humans, animals, planets, earth, fire and so on.
But then we learned of the elements in the periodical system, and now we can say that these are the elements within evolution.
But then came quentum mechanics, revealing a whole new way to classify things, and a whole new categorizaton of the elements.

Then comes the future, and who knows what it will bring.

So the first two sentences of Terry's post are, as I see it, very appropriate.

I wonder if 'Genomes' have anything to do with it

Does the lawn grass affect the direction in the same way as we humans do? Did humans have the same impact when dinosaurs were running around?

There might be a prime driver, but perhaps everyone gets their turn at driving.. Sometimes it's a big fish, or an amphibian turtle or a fierce cat or a clever two legged mammal...the driver seems to be changing the outfit.

bluesky

Are you not twisting it all up now? I don't know how to answer your questions.

And it seems to me that you're suggesting that man drives evolution currently. But that is just crazy. :wink:

geli

I would guess genomes play their part. If they're not just the receipt

Do all these creatures have the same Genome code? And does that code offer these creatures the same degree of awareness and control over their environment? "Equal influence from everyone" appears to be an oversimplification…

But I agree that everyone has "some" influence and would venture to guess that perhaps each may have had (or will have) more influence than others at some point in time and space.

But today man can take a piece of land and wipe out all the flora and fauna. Technology and sheer human population growth is the most powerful influence than any other creature can have on the environment to come. Would you disagree?

Evolution isn't a bus. To call it a bus does imply a common destination. There is no such thing in evolution. Evolution goes everywhere at once. Sometimes it reaches a destination but often it crashes.

Look at evolution as 6 die. Each time you throw them they can come up with different numbers. Is there control exerted every time they all come up 6? No. Now imagine that someone else is throwing the dice but they only show you the result when all are 6s. Does this mean that person is controlling the outcome of the die? Not at all. It only means you are making a judgement on limited information.

bluesky

You seem to be operating under the assumption that humans have more control that any other aspect of this bungle we like to call evolution.
That isn't neccesarily so.

A virus can exert it's influence, and humans might be at it's mercy. And you heap control together with awareness, making it impossible to give any answer to your question. There is no such thing as control.

Take a tree, for instance. It has it's "programming", that makes it strech towards the light. But it doesn't reach all the way up. Why? Because there is another "programming" called gravity that limits the height of the tree.

In humans this issue is known as the neverending free will/determinism debate. It is a misconception. One could not be without the other. They are two sides of the same coin.

And I strongly disagree with the last paragraph of your post. It seems we're looking at this from different angles. Humans are not where and what they are independently of the rest of evolution. We're a link in the chain, that's all, and any notions we might retain about us being the "most influential element of evolution" are merely subjective self worshipping ideas. We are as much at the mercy of our surroundings as everything else.

We might be able to wipe out all flora and fauna. But we cannot live without it. We are flora and fauna.

To get the gist of the statements I've made in this post you must try to "think away" dualism. Everything is connected, and this connection is of such a nature that it isn't really accurate to say that anything is distinguished from anyting else. That idea is merely the result of human perception.

If you want to base your question on currently accepted science then the answer is nothing or no one can drive or direct evolution. The reason is, as currently defined evolution is a stochastic process. This is a technical term for absolute randomness. As such you can disregard the application of the process relative to an analysis of that process, whether it be speciation or lottery numbers. Much has been developed on "random theory".

First we can, again without regard to application, say that the process cannot have a meaningful average. The average of the Superlotto numbers so far will not help in winning tonight's lottery. There can be no rate and no change of rate, both by definition would signal a non-random process. Just because you use a stronger stream of air in the lotto-ball machine you cannot say that you are increasing the randomness of the process you are just increasing the velocity of the balls, this provides no more predictive ability than you had at the slower speed. So when someone speaks of the rate of evolution increasing/decreasing you can see it is just a poor use of terms.

A random process cannot be directed or in what sense is it a random process. A random process does not have different "states" of randomness; a random process is just that. So you can see that much can be described about the attributes of evolution without even considering what evolution even is.

Random process. This statement bears witness of human pride. There is no such thing as random. There are only unknown variables.

There may be more variables that a human can calculate in a lifetime, an so it would seem that something can be random, but then it would only be a testament to man's inadequacy.

Sorry, I had assumed that you wanted to discuss this from a scientific standpoint. I'll leave you to whatever ego stroking exercise to which you are currently engaged. Enjoy!

Cyr

I too tend to believe that everything is connected, but everything is obviously not equal in its outward influence at any given point of time as your opinion seems to suggest.

Think of manifestations (creatures/species/nature) as waves on an ocean, varied in their size, shape and force. Often a dominant species is like powerful wave and we could say that the nature today is experiencing a tsunami of humans. A wave like that can be still connected (thru ocean) to every other wave; yet can have more influential manifestation than other waves. This is an observation (not some worship) that may rather emphasize the responsibility of humans towards the environment.

Where and how the next dominant wave surfaces on the ocean? That might be the randomness or maybe not…who has enough information to conclude?

Your science is welcome CorrectResponse.

How about making a counterclaim to my statment that there is no such thing as random, if you know the science to back it?

bluesky

I'll have to get back to you on this. A little pressed for time right now, and I feel your thoughts deserve more than the few minutes I have to spare right now.

I would say it's human pride to attempt to assign a purpose to every process.
Just because we attempt to find order doesn't mean there is any.

That would be a philosophical question. Not a scientific one.

In order to tell that an electron doesn't move randomly you would have to be able to measure the movement of every atom in the universe. Any attempt to measure those movements would introduce more variables. You can't prove or disprove the randomness since it can never be tested.

padros

Your points are good. I agree that it is human pride to assign purpose to every process. And it is also human pride to deny that there might be purpose just because we don't see it. Sometimes we really cannot tell.

But it really does seem to me that there is no such thing as random. That is not to say that there is purpose, just that if we knew all the variables of any given problem, we would be able to predict the outcome with absolute certainty.
If you were to roll a ball down a hill, the route it traveled down would seem random at first. But if you were to examine every hump and hole in the ground, the speed of the ball, wind resistance, and so on, I am convinced that, -as long as all the relevant variables were identified, you'd be able to tell exactly where the ball would roll.

Another example is billiards. To me a lot of it seems random, but I understand that it is not, seing the precision with which the experts drop their balls.

bluesky

Following your analogy of ocean and waves, I feel compelled to ask, where is it reasonable to draw the line between one wave and the next?