Tim Tyler  wrote:-
Reason  wrote or quoted:

> > R:-
> > Since there is no "forwards" in evolutionary terms,
it's a difficult 
> > question to answer.  If you mean "forwards" to mean more 
> > complexity, then it 
> > is generally evident in the fossil record that such steps do 
> > occur.  If an 
> > organism becomes more survivable with less complexity, it may 
> > in fact be a 
> > step forward.  It depends only on whether a simpler organism is 
> > more likely 
> > to survive and reproduce, nothing more.  "Direction" is a human 
> > attribution 
> > to a directionless process. 

> TT:- 
> Evolution directionless? 
> That's a pretty ridiculous idea :-|
> It takes a *very* odd perspective to view life as "directionless".
> Life is about as directional as an explosion - i.e. it's a *highly*
> directional process - and it doesn't take much more than a casual
> glance at the history of life on the planet to see that.

JE:-
I agree that life is not directionless
but this does not mean life has to be 
a planned process. The direction of life is 
always towards increasing the Darwinian fitness 
maximand per Darwinian selectee per population
(exactly as I have defined it) where such a
maximand can be tested to refutation by a
simple experiment.

The direction for non life is to always
increase entropy (disorder). Of course,
the system must have some order to start
with otherwise it cannot become more
disordered! The fact that living systems 
can _decrease_ entropy for themselves
(increase order) on however, just a temporary basis 
by increasing disorder within their localised part 
of the universe in such a way that it is 
exactly enough to pay for each living systems
total increase in order, means life remains absolutely 
neutral to a physics maximand that requires 
the non living universe to always increase in entropy. 

The question that physics has yet to answer is where 
did all this negative entropy come from? Our expanding
universe is entirely dependent on it because
it would constantly contract without it. I suspect 
that the physics of the big bang (or even black holes) 
is somehow, a reverse maximand physics. Here 
a minimum entropy maximand can exist 
so that order can be maximally increased 
and not just maximally decreased. I also 
suspect that life could never survive within 
either a maximally ordered or maximally 
disordered, universe. 


Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser{at}tpg.com.au
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