Guy Hoelzer  wrote:

> in article bmilrq$2eb4$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org, John Wilkins at
> wilkins{at}wehi.edu.au wrote on 10/14/03 10:27 PM:
> 
> > Guy Hoelzer  wrote:
> > 
> >>> It seems to me a mistake to say there is this
> >>> "thing", evolution, and ask what is most
important to it the way we
> >>> might ask what is a critical path in a manufacturing process.
> >> 
> >> Hmm.  This seems like a deep difference between our views.  I see a
> >> universe filled with entities and processes, and these are often
> >> entangled because entities are always products of processes.  By this I
> >> mean more than products of past processes.  I think that all physical
> >> entities are the products of past and current processes, even if the
> >> current processes are merely slowing the rate of decay (e.g., the
> >> tension of forces that hold a rock together).  You may have noticed
> >> that I am fond of pointing to logical connections between evolution as
> >> a process (a single processes that can also be decomposed into
> >> sub-processes like natural selection, drift, and mutation) and weather
> >> systems as processes.  The main reason I like to do this is to
> >> emphasize that evolution is a physically manifested process like a
> >> storm.  I argue, for example, that a convection cell in the atmosphere
> >> is both a process and a "thing" with agency (a
cause of effects), and I
> >> think that evolution is in fact a similar sort of
"thing".  I think
> >> that evolution is not separable from the biosphere in the same sense
> >> that convection is separable from a convection cell.
> > 
> > For a deep division we agree extraordinarily.
> > 
> > But is "weather" a thing?
> 
> I would say not, but I would say that a particular storm is a thing.  I
> see the biosphere as a storm that has persisted for billions of years.

Well in one way you might be right - it is a phenomenal individual -
that is to say, we could locate it in time and space and say "look at
what the surface of that planet is doing" (had we but time enough and
space). But my question was alittle more specific - is it a single
cohesive individual? Is it, in short, a single system? Is it one
process?

Now for both weather and evolution, I think it is a series of
occasionally coupled systems, and mostly decoupled. While what happens
in the Deccan Traps or Krakatoa or Chixulub or the breakup of Gondwana
*affect* evolution and the weather, the latter are just that - effects.
So far as I know, none of the geological or astronomical phenomena are
caused by either the weather or the evolution of organisms. So I would
*not* say that everything that happens *in* weather or evolution is part
of it.

But even within those two domains - while some aspects of weather affect
other aspects - many things happen in weather than dampen out in larger
scales, and so a dustdevil in central Australia and a snowstorm in
Antarctica are decoupled. Likewise, the evolution of a fungus in the
Amazon and the evolution of a bee in Europe are decoupled (until they do
meet and affect each other's environment). So I would also not say that
all evolution or all weather is a single cohesive syste.

Hence I would not say that there has to be a property common to all
instances of evolution or weather, because there is no property-bearer,
no single "thing". 
> 
> > If so, does it include tectonic processes?  Vulcanism? Bolide impacts?
> > All these things impact (sorry :-) on weather processes, so why not.
> 
> Again, I would say not.  I see tectonics as part of a geological process
> that is functionally uncoupled from the weather.  One thing that reveals the
> uncoupled nature of these processes is that the operate on very different
> time scales.  Note that functionally decoupled processes can interact, just
> as two different organisms (which are functionally decoupled entities) can
> interact, and such interactions among entities can contribute to the
> functional organization of some particular functional process/entity at a
> larger scale (e.g., consider the GAIA hypothesis).

But now it is open to me to say that weather *does* affect geology,
through erosion and deposition. Where do you draw that line?
> 
> > How about Melankovitch cycles  My point is that something like
> > "weather" is a convention name we give to a range of
phenomena that suit
> > us to collect under one term.
> 
> You could be right about weather as a general category.  I am much more
> comfortable thinking about individual storms as process/entities that have
> individuated and have agency.  I am open to considering the global weather
> in this way (see below), but it is not as clear to me that global weather is
> a single, functional process/entity.

Then why claim the same for the formally analogous process of evolution?
Saying that things evolve and things climatically and atmospherically
change doesn't imply that there is an "evolving" nor a
"weathering", so
why would we expect to find that there is a "normal" rate or mode of
evolution anyway?

I believe that we have always given into the entification (as Henry
Plotkin once called it) of evolution, and we suffer from that. It causes
teleology - we expect to find norms and functions in things that are
entities (cohesive individuals).
> 
> > It is not a "thing" or "process" in and of
itself. Evolution is like
> > that. So properties of that non-thing are empty, or they are properties
> > of particular things and processes we would do better to investigate
> > less generally and not go looking for universalisations like
"adaptation
> > is the most important aspect of evolution", etc.
> 
> Your position is certainly arguable.  I would not dismiss it.  However, my
> view is different, and I am convinced that my view is also not so easily
> dismissed.  It may be that the functional coherence of evolution comes and
> goes, much like the functional coherence of weather systems.  We wouldn't
> say that the dissipation of a convection cell is tantamount to the end of
> weather.  There are top-down global weather effects caused by interactions
> among weather systems and the cohesion of the atmosphere that maintain
> wide-scale distributions of weather patterns across regions of the globe.
> Evolution is likely to work in a similar way, IMHO.  Evolution storms (most
> likely coevolution storms) can spring up in a rush of coordinated
> self-organization, which eventually run there course and dissipate.  I think
> that there are also top-down effects that coordinate such local activities
> (e.g., maintenance of food web structures, tendencies toward niche filling,
> ...), which is basically the GAIA idea.  So, my model has evolution as a mix
> of chaos (e.g., the effects of mutation and drift) and self-organization,
> which can manifest locally in time and space at several different scales
> simultaneously.

Gaia is not a counterexample to my view, so long as it can be
empirically demonstrated. After all, if Hamilton entertained it, then it
is eminently entertainable. But it has to be shown to occur. If there is
top-down causation, then there is, but I'm from Australia - show me.
Hamilton's idea that algal spores form clouds to disseminate the spores
is a Gaianesque model - but one that can be tested. The idea that ther
eis "Evolution" because there must be some top-down causation is
argument by assertion unless we get specifics. It seems to me that
evolutionary processes will be much more interesting if we can find out
how they *actually* work; more likely there will be a mix of coupled,
uncoupled, level-restricted and multilevel processes, and I want to know
what they are, not what we think they will be.

Hamilton, W. D. , and T. M. Lenton. 1998. Spora and Gaia - how microbes
fly with their clouds. Ethology Ecology and Evolution 10 (1):1-16.
> 
> The good news is that I don't think the difference in our views is just a
> matter of interpretation or airy fairy ideas.  Critical evaluation of
> agency is something that science is potentially good at, because agency is
> about functional coherence (self-sustaining dynamics with positive
> feedbacks) and external effects that should be measurable.  I am
> optimistic that we will develop a science of assigning agency in the near
> future (a decade or two?). Such a science would be able to assess, for
> example, whether global weather is or is not a "thing".

I oppose agency in all cases that do not involve agents. With
intentions. And internal models of the world. The temptation to project
our own agency on the world is as old as flok religion.
> 
> > Hull somewhere says there are exceptions to every rule in biology
> > (including that one).
> 
> Meaning that there are rules without exceptions?  This has essentially been
> proven by a number of physicists, three of whom won the Nobel prize, with
> the development of renormalization group analysis.

Exceptional.

-- 
John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
For long you live and high you fly, 
and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
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