TH
> Would you comment a little more on the above?

OK.  I see living systems (...organisms, species, ecosystems, ...) as
engines doing work.  They all consume energy, extract work with which they
continually build/repair themselves, and release degraded energy (mostly
heat) into colder regions (e.g., the upper atmosphere).  They are, in a
phrase, self-organizing. 

TH
We disagree here - the obvious question is when
did this SELF organizing start? Then one asks
why would a SELF organizing system that is 
not in line with an environment survive?
Lets' say your self system popped up using
Oxygen - yet in this reducing atmosphere there
was none. How long can this SELF go on?
It would die.
How can any system be selected that is against
the environment it is in at the START? It can't.
Not only that but no one can even surmise a
way a system could start on its own - it is the
downfall of most OOL scenarios - first this
'perfectly formed - self absorbed - made in a
vacumn - system pops up - then after this
magic 'creation' it adapts to the environment but
only when it wants to.

No, unless the environment and the energy sources
in the environment form, kick start, and force
the power on the system for billions of years 
no chemical system will exist, and no life.

We, 4 billion years later see a slight separation
between the selfish genome and the environment
its 'learned' to adapt to - but that is something
that has evolved.
There is no way on this or any planet that that
self absorbed and independent 'life' system 
could have popped up outside the environment
and survive. 

There is nothing independent or self  about first
life . There is nothing new about it either - it
was not a barrier or moment in time when life
started. It was the culminating reaction to a
power forced cyclical environment that went
on for ions before it.


 Because dissipative systems are necessarily open
systems, they are also at the mercy of the external environment. 

TH
I would say they are a PRODUCT of that environment
at first. Can you disagree with this?

 Therefore,
these driven, self-organizing systems are constantly perturbed by
environmental phenomena, and adapting to the more predictable aspects of the
environment.  I would not say that "the environment has the last word" in
the context of the adaptive evolution of species any more than I would say
that the cookie jar in the corner of a room "had the last word" in making
you walk to the corner of the room.  You walked the walk and did the work to
get there, so I would not give the credit to the cookie jar.  Similarly,
species evolve in ways that energy acquisition is improved, but they are
active agents in the process.  When a species evolves adaptively, they have
"walked the walk" and done the work.  It seems trite to say that
the "cookie
jar" had the last word.


TH
But if every cookie jar in every corner (corner being
the environment it is in) looks and acts
the same (to carry on the analogy) then it's not
trite at all to think the environment is a major
part of the cause. And IF the environment is not
the cause then you should be able to put the cookie
jar on the moon, in the middle of the sun, or at
absolute zero with no change at all.
You cannot do that with any living thing (bacteria
on the moon maybe)
You are accepting a heat cycle without consciously
being aware of it - and that is the key to the
environment's control (more so at the beginning
before our selfish genomes could take over)

Comment?


Regarding "alternative reasons for phenotypic convergence" I will offer the
following from Goodwin (2001; "How the leopard changed its
spots").  This is
not a very good source for our discussion, but I think it will convey the
essential concepts.  Goodwin developed a computational model of development
(shape and size change) for Acetabularia (a macroscopic, single-celled alga
that develops very complex morphologies).  His computational model robustly
predicted that the organism will exhibit spiral phyllotaxis (the arrangement
of leaves on a stem) as it grows.  It does; but the point here is that the
model made this prediction no matter how Goodwin tried to cause it to do
otherwise.  It turns out that:

"over 80% of the 250,000 or so species of higher plants have spiral
phyllotaxis.  This is also the dominant form generated in the model, which
identifies it as the most probable form in the generative space of possible
phyllotactic patterns.  So we get an interesting conjecture: the frequency
of the different phyllotactic patterns in nature may simply reflect the
relative probabilities of morphogenetic trajectories of the various forms
and have little to do with natural selection."

I hope this gives you a glimpse of the argument.

Cheers,

Guy
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