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? If so, does it include tectonic processes?
Vulcanism? Bolide impacts? All these things impact (sorry :-) on weather
processes, so why not. 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. 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.

Hull somewhere says there are exceptions to every rule in biology
(including that one).

-- 
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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