> From: ragland37{at}webtv.net (Michael Ragland)
> Why is it a lie? Hanna Newcombe stated "the whole universe evolves,
> so does life on earth, and so does human society. In reading the
> sentence I didn't infer she was implying evolution is the same for
> the universe, for life on earth and for human society.

Her sentence confuses different usages of the same "word" in different
contexts. Natural language often adapts old words to new usages with
different meanings. Here the word "evolution" which merely meant slow
gradual change, as opposed to "revolution" which is sudden change, has
been adapted by biology to specifically mean change in heritable
characteristics or factors. Although such change is usually gradual
over time, thus fitting the original defintion, gradualness is not an
essential characteristic of biological evolution, and indeed sometimes
biological change occurs suddenly, when a mutation in a regulatory gene
causes drastic overall changes in the resultant organism. This
biological meaning is not the same as the original meaning, nor the
specialized but clost-to-original vague astronomical meaning. It's OK
that in different contexts, in different disciplines/sciences, the same
word has different meanings. We understand the context and understand
which meaning to apply. But to mix up such different meanings in a
single sentence, and then to use the phrase "so does" to imply the
different meanings are in fact all the same, is just plain incorrect.

Suppose instead of "evolution" we used the word
"change". Suppose we
say "After exercising, I change (my clothes), and so does the
Universe", would that be enlightening or just confusing? I say it'd be
confusing, worthless, just like Newcombe's mixup.

> We are a part of the universe even if the evolution on earth is
> different from the evolution of human societies or evolution of the
> universe.

Life on Earth changes, human socieites change, and the Universe as a
whole changes in largescale ways. So what? They all change, but in very
different ways. Very little or nothing is to be gained by emphasizing
anything in common to their different ways of changing.

> when it comes to the origins of the universe we will probably never
> be able to prove it.

I agree. It's only the subsequent history of the Universe after the
first tiny fraction of a second after the origin that we understand
pretty well, although not yet completely, "dark energy" and "dark
matter" are still big questions to resolve, although at least we
already know how much of each there is.

> I think it is way too premature to state "but matter that performs
> chemical fecundity, what we would call "living", seems to be rather
> rare.

If more than 50% of our Galaxy were converted from natural stuff
(dust&gas clouds, stars, planets, etc.) to living matter, I think it'd
be pretty obvious from our casual observations. It's pretty clear any
life that is out there occupies a very tiny fraction of the total mass
of our own Galaxy, and likewise every other galaxy we've studied to
date. There might be tiny pockets of life on planets or in dust/gas
clouds all throughout our Galaxy and other galaxies, but still that's
rare quantatively. Our own biosphere on Earth is a tiny pocket within
our Solar System. That's what I meant by "rare". By and large, the
energy flow in the Universe, as we've so-far observed, just goes by
natural processes having nothing to do with any life. Even in our own
Solar System, only one part in a billion of the Sun's energy strikes
Earth where it interracts with life.

> I don't know where the statement, "Oranges have navels. So do human
> beings".

I concocted that as a metaphor to the mixup of different definitions of
the word "evolution", here a mixup of meanings of the word
"navel". I
thought maybe you could see how absurd it'd be to present a thesis on
the commonality of having navels between humans and oranges, and then
maybe you'd understand why I object to similar misuse of the word
"evolution".

> So Darwinian evolution does have partially an aim. To enhance
> survival over that which doesn't.

Yes, although the word "aim" might be misleading. Normally
"aim" refers
to pointing at some target that has been decided-upon beforehand. But
here all we're doing is filtering out the bad choices, and whatever
remains is what we have when we're done.

Also, because of various kinds of "wars", between species or between
sexes etc., there's the "red queen" race a lot of the time, where it's
necessary to evolve just to survive in an increasingly difficult
system, so the overall result isn't enhanced survival but any survival
at all. It's "enhanced" only relatively speaking, relative to falling
behind in the race and going extinct.

Regarding optimal part of our Galaxy for life, and optimal part of our
Solar system for life:
> I think Hanna is referring to the origin and current status of human
> evolution. I don't think she is looking into the future when science
> and technology may make it possible for human beings to live on Mars.

If she meant that, she should have stated it a bit differently, and
then we'd all be in agreement.
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