I have seen in a long time.

I read Darwin's Daughter. It did more than any other book I've read to show you his personality. He was a gentle, generous, person. The death of his daughter crushed him--the price paid for being deep and sensitive.

This is an example of Quammen's sarcastic wit that I love, which he tries to keep a lid on, but sometimes slips:

"We're a country that was founded by religious cranks. Maybe that's part of it."

As for that remark about population growth in developing nations, well, that growth is an infinitesimally short blip. Their fertility will eventually drop to one or two kids per female, as has been the case for most of human history. Evolution continues, only its direction has been changed. Speciation also continues, in fact it has probably accelerated under pressure of humanity's overarching influence and alteration of environments. My daughter's parakeet and leopard gecko being two examples.

Really good job on that Dave.

how he would do in front of a conservative school board debating evolution and intelligent design? He acknowledged his own vulnerability in his last answer - that a wide swath of America will say "screw you!" to an assembly of experts, no matter what the topic. Supporting evolution in a political fray is a tough fight on the wrong battlefield.

I grew up in a small Ohio town that tried to put intelligent design into my biology classroom. It was theater, mostly. The ID supporters, including a few school board members, had their talking points from national organizations, and we had ours from groups like the NAS and the ACLU.

But reducing evolution to a political argument, or a debate in front of the public, gives away too much to the ID side. Something as complex as evolution is not easily debated on Tuesday evenings in the high school library. That's why the Dover, PA case from last year was so good - it managed the debate with court-room rules.

I'm glad Quammen wrote this book because it acknowledges how difficult it can be for some people to accept evolution--including Darwin. Although he might not fare well in front of my old school board, Quammen's books and articles are doing a lot to reach the vast middle of this debate. His NatGeo yellowbook article from November 2004 ("Was Darwin Wrong?") was terrific, and the cover couldn't be beat. I just wish he still wrote more for magazines (or should I say   - the magazine I work for - Backpacker).

"that the way to detect the direction of it would be to look at the people who have the greatest reproductive success. Who on this planet has the greatest reproductive success?"

     Howabout Christian Fundamentalists. Ultra-Orthodox Jews,  etc.. they're the ones having the biggest families.  Perhaps humans will evolve into people who don't believe in evolution.  But we'll probably destroy ourselves before that happens.

I'm a believer, by which I mean that I believe that the fossil record and contemporary ecology are a historical text that biologists have successfully read.  Diverse biological organisms suddenly appeared about 650 million years ago.  Every several million years thereafter, these forms seem to have changed suddenly.  During long stretches of time between the disruptions, these forms appear to have changed gradually, filling increasingly specialized niches in an increasingly complex set of ecosystems.  In the periods immediately following the sudden disruptions, the renewel of species seems to have been the most transformative, with incidental forms becoming dominant and dominant forms becoming extinct.  Most recently, for example, mammals rising to replace dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

I am an athiest, in that I do not believe in a separate, conscious, or overseeing god.  I believe in Pliny the Elder's dictum: "where mortal helps mortal, there is god."

But I do believe that On the Origin of Species does us a terrible disservice in framing the causes of Natural Selection in strictly Hobbesian terms.  Darwin's Nature is a "war of all against all."  Indeed, his primary metaphor is competition between individuals - over sex and food and resources.  We are still stuck with this idea today, as if we were all permanently adolescents.

And I think most people say they "believe in evolution" with only a vague sense of what is actually in Darwin's book.  It is neither a process that gets turned on and off - as the debate about a very short period of reproductive success suggests it might be - nor is it a theory about intra-species interactions EXCEPT for the role of sexual selection.  It is a logical and materialist explanation of the morphological characteristics of biological organisms.  And it assumes not a single one of us (mammals or otherwise) thinks, dreams, wishes, hopes, creates, imagines, loves, empathizes, or otherwise behaves beyond the shear animalistic drive for food and reproduction.  It is classical economics disguised as the fundamental cause in biological history.

So someone explain to me how understanding Darwin's evolution helps the environmentalist cause?  Because, in fact, according to the record, periodic disruptions (extinctions) have been the best thing for overall complexity and diversity, and according to the causes offered by Darwin, it doesn't matter what we think anyhow.

Genuinely curious,
K. Curtis

Yes, David, that was yet another in a series of fine interviews.

To what Biodiv said about population growth in developing nations, I would add that many more of their children tend to die young, whereas in North America and Europe and Japan, a very large percentage of new-borns will certainly survive into adulthood, and most of those will have children of their own.  So the concept of reproductive success is complicated.

(Regarding shrinking birth rates, there was a weird story on ABC News last night, about how Japanese toy manufacturers are making robotic "grandchildren," and selling them to happy seniors.  Japan has, I think they said, the highest median age of any country right now, so there are a lot of these elderly people without real grandkids.)

CharlesJustice's observation is in agreement with everything I have read.  God knows what it will mean in the long run.  I cling to the hope that these children of conservative Christians and Jews will follow the typical pattern of young people, who more often than not put up a good struggle to grow up into adults quite different from their parents.

On Quammen's belief that Christianity is not compatible with Darwinian evolution, characterized by randomness involved in selection and speciation: He may be right, but I am not sure.  That is, it may indeed be correct that most Christians who accept evolution, such as apparently Pope Benedict XVI and other high-placed Catholics, seem to insist that God has been creatively directing evolution at every moment.  Perhaps that is not a fair assessment of what the Pope actually thinks, but it seems reasonably close.  I would say, in that case, with John Haught, that we Christians need a deeper conception of God, a more paradoxical theology: God is creatively present at every moment of evolution, but God is not directing it in the way we understand Aristotle's Efficient Cause, working with a prior concept, a Formal Cause, and an intention, a Final Cause, to create something.  Rather, God is beyond that; God's creative activity and intention can most certainly work with randomness, however utterly mysterious such a collaboration must always be for us.

We might take a lesson from the flag of Iraq.  Saddam Hussein, always a secularist, decided around the time of the First Gulf War, for reasons of his own, to add between the three stars the two words of the Muslim motto, "Allahu akbar."  That motto has a profound theological significance, however much it may be abused for political ends by various Muslims, including Saddam.  It is usually translated into English as "God is great."  But really, the adjective is a comparative form, and so it more correctly means "God is greater."  I.e., whatever great and impressive thing we might find in the universe, God is still greater.  God is greater than evolution characterized by randomness.

Well, so say I.  And I am no Muslim.  But I would love to have a conversation with one of those evolution-denying Turkish Muslims that Quammen refers to.

A more scientific-minded person might give a different answer, but to me an appreciation of evolution reinforces how tenuous our position on this planet is. The notion that we're chosen by God to oversee things, in my view, gives a dangerous sense of complacency. Like the worst that will happen is Dad coming in and spanking us for getting our room dirty.

Evolution, like all empirical science, shows us that we are animals, as dependent on the web of ecology as any other. Despite our flawed and partial flickers of abstract cognition, we are no more able to step outside evolution than any other animal.

Which means: appreciate the present. Be kind. Work to improve human culture and society. Be careful and thoughtful in how you treat the rest of the biosphere.

As for this:And it assumes not a single one of us (mammals or otherwise) thinks, dreams, wishes, hopes, creates, imagines, loves, empathizes, or otherwise behaves beyond the shear animalistic drive for food and reproduction.That is categorically false. I'm not sure where you got that idea.

I wholeheartedly agree with the outcome you want here.  I believe we must be careful and thoughtful in our actions and be cognizant of and act ethically within our biospheric existence.  I am as dedicated an environmentalist as there is.

But, I do not see Darwinian evolution leading us there (and I'm not sure there are any other scientific contendors for a theory of biological form and diversity).  Understanding that we are the product of some sort of morphological process is not On the Origin of Species' special contribution.  That idea originated with the Greeks and had been a regular part of Western scientific discourse for half a century prior to Darwin.  Darwin's contibution was offering a CAUSE for the morphological changes:  Natural Selection, a process that selected the fittest for any particular circumstance.  His analogy for Natural Selection throughout the book is human agriculture and animal husbandry.  If human's can select random traits in organisms, why not Nature?

But that's where Darwin get's us in thick.  What causes natural selection?  Competition.  Darwin took the obvious given - the organism that eats and reproduces passes on its traits to succeeding generations - and suggested that the only means to this outcome was competition.  It is very reductionist in its conception and representation of the natural world, and painfully narrow in its explanation of animal behavior.

I get this from a reliable source - the book itself.  It is a dismal and harsh and cold piece of writing and it leaves one somehow soiled for their part in things.

I don't think it helps the cause.

Respectfully,
Kip

into competition either. However, as much as I wish it were not so, I have come to accept it, rather than create for myself a warmer, fuzzier alternate reality. Reality sucks sometimes, you can accept it or get religion.

Ask yourself why we (mammals or otherwise) thinks, dreams, wishes, hopes, creates, imagines, loves, empathizes, or otherwise behaves beyond the shear animalistic drive for food and reproduction.

It isn't a always mano-a-mano. It is more often group on group competition, from the family unit (sending your kids to private school) to taking a job from another, to a business trying to take business from other businesses, magazines grabbing readership, religions trying to dominate other religions, and on it goes.
Also, evolution is not an analogy for capitalism, it is the other way around.

you can cooperate for the overall good of the species. The concept of competition in evolution, as the sole or even the main, impetus for evolution, does seem to me to be cultural. It's human beings looking at a process and deciding it's competitive based on our definition of what "competitive" is. One could just as easily look at the process and the result and see it as a form of cooperation, even when violence is involved. We're talking about cooperation on a different level. Like there's different kinds of love, you know?

Re: the article quoted above, it's an excellent, thought-provoking piece, not only the climate change stuff (which is intense) but the author's exploration of what she calls the "thirteenth tipping point".

caniscadida: I love that you wrote this: "God's creative activity and intention can most certainly work with randomness, however utterly mysterious such a collaboration must always be for us." Said perfectly.

Competitive explanations for non-competitive behavior...  Am I the only one who finds a painful irony in this?  

This is the Darwinian baggage.  It IS cultural; it is classical economics.  It is also the architecture of Darwin's evolutionary theory.  Check out the book, I'm not making this up.

Respectfully,
Kip

Three questions:

Is it selfish to live?

When you look out your window at the processes unfolding around you in the natural world, what percentage of what you see out there is an unfolding competition - a zero sum game where only one side, team, investor, organism, species will win?

If you answered most in order to accord with Darwinian evolution, explain to me, then, why diversity (and not singularity) is the mark of a long undisturbed ecosystem.  If competition is the essential driving cause, how come, until human's came along, no one organism or species seemed to win.

(And, to the contrary, the only way to understand the expansion of human habitat into all regions of the globe is as an exquisite exercise of cooperation.  No one person did that alone.)

Respectfully,
Kip

(P.S. And, just to be clear, I am not trying to forward an Intelligent Design argument here.  I am objecting to Darwin's reductionism and everything it implies to encourage us to think deeper about how we (earth organisms) understand and represent our history).

There is something disturbing about a theory that says that there is no good act that doesn't have at its root some form of selfishness. It sounds to me like it's saying that materially-conditioned selfishness encompasses everything. I don't think I'm going to be teaching my kids that...

I'm not saying that natural selection doesn't have power to describe nature. (And I should admit to not knowing enough biology to really have informed opinion.) But does it have to describe everything? As Quamman notes, Darwin was "a materialist by disposition." And he was also a Victorian. He famously got his inspiration from Thomas Malthus, who couldn't have been more Victorian. This is from Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population:

The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation.

In other words, bluntly put, human populations die off because they are unfit to live, and this is the way of the world. This view strikes us today as barbaric and wrongheaded. Maybe Darwin just used this as a jumping off point, but certain ways of thinking have been known to smuggle their way into science before. (But again, I'm coming at this with a liberal arts education and not much of a science background. And to clarify, I'm not advocating Intelligent Design, Creationism, etc.)

And, to the contrary, the only way to understand the expansion of human habitat into all regions of the globe is as an exquisite exercise of cooperation.  No one person did that alone

There is no doubt that most of our time is spent cooperating "inside of groups." However, we do that for the most part to better compete against other cooperating groups of people.

I suppose you could say that the destruction of all Native American cultures was an exquisite exercise of cooperation by European settlers, but to suggest the 90 million dead Native Americans were cooperating in their own destruction would be a real stretch.

The fire ant takeover of the southwest is a great analogy for what we have done. But, put two nests together and they start killing each other. They do not link up nests in an attempt better compete. They are not programmed, have not evolved to do that, for whatever reasons, and neither have we, thus the existence of countries (our ant nests).

I say all of this to suggest that we have a better shot at saving our world by channeling our instincts, rather than pushing that we will all start cooperating as one giant group. That idea is called communism, which looks good on paper but falls flat anytime someone tries to put it into practice.

We would be better served finding ways to channel this competition between groups of cooperating people toward solutions to save the planet. I would enter my electric-hybrid lithium ion powered bike into the competition. What would you enter?

... when talking about evolution is projecting intention or direction or character onto it -- i.e., anthropomorphizing it. It's very difficult not to, even for people consciously guarding against it.

The idea that all the coordination and cooperation we see in the natural world is some sort of illusion born of self-deception, while the competition is "real," strikes me as a cultural artifact.

Also, animals that "compete" do not feel envy like we do, or anger, or existential awareness of being cast into a world alone to sink or swim. None of those connotations of the world competition apply. In evolution, competition simply means the abstract, almost mathematical notion that some animals will die sooner than others, and some will breed more than others. None of the affective dimensions of competition apply. It's hard not to see the whole process through a filter of human cognition and emotion.

However, we do that for the most part to better compete against other cooperating groups of people.

Compete for what?

Respectfully,
Kip

It's hard not to see the whole process through a filter of human cognition and emotion.

But isn't it hard to see anything without the filter of human cognition? Maybe the reason why it's so easy to misread is that it hasn't been adequately explained or explored. Perhaps this makes it too easy to come in and explain things in reductionist terms...

Even Dawkins often does it in his books because it is so effective at conveying ideas via analogy, but he always sprinkles in lots of warnings not to misinterpret it as supporting purpose in design.

Kip,

Your paycheck would be a good example. There are a lot of people who would like to have your job. Whatever it is, it has to beat picking vegetables in the baking heat for $5.00 and hour, or worse. Ask yourself why you don't give it away to someone who would really like to have it, and then take their place in the field. You won that job by competing for it, you just don't realize it, and sure don't want to believe it. You will cooperate enough to keep that job or someone will take it from you. If your boss tells you to go club baby seals, I am going to guess that you are probably going to lose that job.

Dave,

I did not say that cooperation was an illusion born of self-deception and that only competition is real. I said,  

"People cooperate with each other all day long..."

Cooperation isn't an illusion. I then went on to say

", but mostly to efficiently compete for resources from other groups. We just aren't aware that this is what we are doing, and the self deception is self reinforcing because most of us don't want to believe we are competing."

Let me try again. The act of cooperating as a contributing member of Grist is a more effective way to compete against another group of cooperating people, like the Bush administration. Cooperation is very obvious, very common, and very real, both in human societies and in the rest of nature. As individuals acting alone, we can't do much. As a member of a group like Grist, a great deal can be accomplished. You do not go to work every day "thinking" that you are doing so to better compete, but in practice, as a member of a cooperating group, that is what ends up happening. Self-deception isn't the best term to describe that. It is just something we are not generally aware of. It isn't good and it isn't bad. It is a self-image many of us find repugnant, myself included thus the reluctance to accept it.

Monkey troops and bands of hunter-gatherers do the same thing, minus the office setting. The chimps are not "thinking" that they must cooperate in order to bash the competing group they just made contact with. Instincts prod them to react as they do. And no, you and I are not "thinking" that we must cooperate with other Grist staffers so that we can better compete against Exxon. Our genetic proclivities are doing that for us also, mostly at a subconscious level. We have evolved to feel good around and like people who share our beliefs and thoughts. It does not matter if people buy that. They will still go to work everyday, cooperate with most of the members of their group, and in doing so, make the group more effective at attracting the diners from other restaurants, or readers from other publications. Grist as a cooperating group of people who do not see themselves as being very competitive, has become a foe to be reckoned with, whether they like that image or not doesn't change the fact.

It is also a natural tendency for most of us to see this competition as a matter of good against evil, right against wrong, as Bush does and that is not a cultural artifact either. That is human nature. We do not have as much free will (are more constrained in our behaviors, or alternatively, are more motivated by subtle chemical rewards) than most of us want to believe.

   The basic idea is that evolution mean that at certain points something happens that favors one set of inheritable characteristics over another.  But the different sets of characteristics were not "competing" in any sense of the word as we use it.

   In fact, they are not even self-aware!

   It is more like a giant pachinko game.  A whole bunch of balls are released and follow different paths, some go further than others.

   But are the balls competing?  Or just following their paths as best they can?

patrick

and very applicable to the over all process, but lifeforms don't have to be self-aware to compete. I have film footage of one species of katydid literally shoving and prodding another species off its leaf. Although it looked like an act of self-awareness, it was just programming-- we are talking about an insect here.

Self-awereness is not a necessary condition for one life form to drive another toward extinction, as fire ants are doing in the southwest, and as we are doing globally. Make uo another word to describe the process if you want. Just don't pick cooperation, it has another meaning, and is used to describe other actions.

Bio -

My paycheck is exacly the sort of example that highlights Darwin's dependence on economic culture and free market metaphors to explain biological evolution.  Of course it fits, that's its source.

But explain to me why I must see my dinner with my family (which I do every day) as part of a competitive structure, or my delight at sunsets, or my love of the ocean, or my thirst for good philosophy, or my desire to fight poverty.

I submit that your world is no more constructed out pure competitiveness than mine is.  But, I guess you are welcome to see it that way.  I just think it leads us to terrible conclusions about the meaning of life, to bad solutions for our environemntal crisis...and I think it is factually and experiencially incorrect.

This all began with the claim that people just needed to get on board with evolution.  I say if we get on board with the wrong idea about evolution (which we have inherited from Darwin) we have no where to go.  Maybe it's not that we are unaware, maybe you are trying to force a cause that is not as prevalent as you would wish.

Respectifully,
Kip

David Roberts,

This quote:  "Also, animals that "compete" do not feel envy like we do, or anger, or existential awareness of being cast into a world alone to sink or swim... None of the affective dimensions of competition apply. It's hard not to see the whole process through a filter of human cognition and emotion."

How do you know this?  

If I feed our cats when the dog's in her cage, she whines, barks, and paws at the door.  That's not envy?  

We observers cannot discard our filters to observe the world, because those filters define the world for each of us.  When I observe things, it is my inner life that is most real.  My experience of things goes from the subtle to the gross:  There is my existence, then false ego, intelligence, mind, emotions, and then the world "outside."

Are we not of the same nature?  We live in the same world, made of matter, all of the same essense.  Each of us is life.  So on what basis should we assume that animals are not built like this?  

To act as if we can discard the parts of us that lie between our inner selves and the world, while still observing the world, is absurd.  IMHO.

One can see James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, the idea that Earth is a self-regulating organism, as the beginnings of a more general theory that subsumes Darwinian natural selection.  According to Lovelock, if you take the four facts:

 1. Life can only survive within certain limits (temp., salt content, amount of Oxygen, etc.)

 2.  life evolves by natural selection  

  3.  If the right conditions are available an organism will grow vigerously until it has occupied its entire niche.  

 4. Life changes its environment  (ie, plants increase oxygen and conserve water; breathing increases carbon dioxide)

 You get a recipe for Gaia. That is in the process of growing and evolving life has altered Earth's environment to make it more compatable for life. The survival of life over vast periods of time, eg.  4 billion years, in spite of various environmental mega-disasters, and the steady increase in the suns radiation shows that life cooperates (not on purpose, mind you) on a planetary scale in order to survive.
   Think about the fact that there is always enough oxygen for us to breathe.  That's only because of plants.  They are not doing it out of altruism.  But if there were no plants the atmosphere would eventually become devoid of oxygen.  It's as if plants were guided by an invisible hand to support all animal life although it was never their intention to do so.  
    Plus, there's plenty of plants that have benefitted from human existence,  food plants, hemp, kentucky bluegrass, etc.  
    We can also see that ecosystems exist because coperation between organisms outweighs competition.  The benefits of all the diverse creatures coexisting must be positive or the ecosystem would collapse.  Thus Darwinian natural selection is only a part of the picture.  Once we pull back to look at the whole picture we can see that cooperation is actually the more fundamental principle.

CharlesJustice

Is niche-seeking competitive behavior? Couldn't it be seen as exactly the opposite? Don't animals frequently avoid competition?

Actually, there are documented instances of competitive behavior being maladaptive. I remember a study a while ago showing that "alpha-apes" (the competitive, aggressive ones) actually had much shorter lives than their peers due to stress and the fact that they had to fight off other would-be alphas later in life. I wish I could find a link to the study.

You could say that the niche seeking is itself competitive, but isn't that straining the meaning of the term, because the intention of the creature is not to compete?

I submit that your world is no more constructed out pure competitiveness than mine is. But, I guess you are welcome to see it that way.

Come again? I said

Cooperation is very obvious, very common, and very real, both in human societies and in the rest of nature.

I just think it [by it, I think you mean competition] leads us to terrible conclusions about the meaning of life, to bad solutions for our environemntal crisis...and I think it is factually and experiencially incorrect.

You are free to think whatever you want Kip. However, your ability to defend your thoughts with rational debate (compete) carries more weight than stated thoughts and beliefs. As for Darwin leading people to terrible conclusions about the meaning of life, well, that's a toughie. By the way, what is the meaning of life?

Competition is playing and will continue to play a major role in leading us to solutions for our environmental crisis. Will it be enough, I can't say. Will your ideas work better than mine? What are your ideas for solving our environmental crisis while I'm on the subject?

As for Darwin's take on evolution being incorrect, well, you should take that up with the leading scientists of the world, Dawkins, Dennet, Wilson. Who am I? But tell me this, if they are full of crap when it comes to Darwin, why do you put any stock in what they have to say about global warming? Do you feel comfortable picking and choosing what you want to believe from what the world's leading scientists have to offer?

because Kip mentioned a penchant for philosophy and because of his writings on evolution, especially the book Darwin's Dangerous Idea. You surely are not the only one who disagrees with Dennett, but he says a lot of things, surely you don't disagree with all of them. I think the Bright idea that he and Dawkins support was none too bright.

Competition is playing and will continue to play a major role in leading us to solutions for our environmental crisis.

When a phenomenon presents partial-solutions to whole problems that are themselves the product of this phenomenon, are we to jump for joy?  Me, I can't even muster a half-hearted approval.

But, let me explain my disagreement by agreeing with you.

If competition is the essential natural impulse, why then object to the overwhelming success of the human species?  We out-competed every other species.  We have earned this special place by transcending the fitness limits presented by the environment.  We have made the environment fit for us.  Las Vegas may very well be the highest expression of evolution yet seen on the planet.

If competition is so essentially natural, what is it, exactly, that makes human competition and human success a phenomenon OUTSIDE of these processes?  Not the extinctions, that has happened before.  Not the global impact.  That has happened before.  Nothing, really...  ...and there goes  a critical leg of the environmentalist stool.  

Darwinism is a Trojan Horse.  It doesn't help.

Do you feel comfortable picking and choosing what you want to believe from what the world's leading scientists have to offer?

Why shouldn't I?  Is this against the rules?  Does the label "scientist" somehow put someone or their ideas above criticism?  Does the addition of the word "world" suggest I should be cowed into silence and quiet acceptance?  Did Darwin or Hawkins posses some special power that I or you do not have?

Yes, of course I feel comfortable picking and choosing.  The modern sciences were not constructed to stop conversation and debate and thinking...were they?

Which brings me to a final point: rational conversation is not competition, it is dialectic, a process of logic by which the whole is even greater than its parts.  It is driven by a desire to know, not a desire to exclude.

Peace,
Kip

  Ah, BioD, I see why you don't like the word cooperation (I wondered where that came from!).

  It certainly is far from what I was thinking, and what modern evolutionists think.

  My point would favor the randomness and sheer luck (good or bad) of the whole thing, discounting any planning authority.

  Evolution looks like chance at it's best (worst), not like something controlled by or selected for any particular agency.

  More like the results of a couple billion coin tosses next to a cliff.  Some go over, some don't.

  The danger in the concept of competition is that it suggests a "winner", and evolution is about change, without "value", ie, without the concept of winners or losers in any moral sense.  It just means some genes continue, some don't.

  Is it possible to regard this process without thinking about the values of winning and losing?  (without assigning them?).  I would argue yes, but it takes a mental shift.  (grin).

patrick

not binary.  Dialogues are, unsurprisingly, the same.  

Patrick reaches a variety of understanding distinct from both mine and Bio's.

Bio talks about evolution in one post and his objection to Christian fundametalists in another.

I keep shifting back and forth from an objection to Darwin's metaphorical use of classical economics and an objection to the ideology of "everything as competition," which derives from it.

Are we ever talking about what we think we are?  Is this about a book published in 1859 - which apparently very few people have actually read - or are we talking about what we all like to imagine that book says because we've read and heard enough about it?

We live on processed food mostly, and processed nature, must we also live on processed philosphy?

How do species (not individuals) change over time:

By developing and maintaining morphological characteristics that provide them additional tools in their environment.

Where do these alterations come from?  They appear to come from genetic changes; geneticists are still puzzling over precisely how this process works.  Darwin says the changes are random, BUT that the SELECTION is based on the "survival of the fittest" in the "struggle for life."

The struggle is generated from the Malthusian claim that all population grow exponentially while all resources grow geometrically.  In other words, all beings drive to exceed their capacity, humans too.

Its characteristics are directly taken from the political philosophy of Hobbes, who said society is a compromise that human beings have decided to make to prevent the state of nature from which we came; that state of nature, so says Hobbes, is a "war of all against all."

Granted, the metaphors are increasingly appropriate for our human day and age but they are problematic (at best) as explanations of biological history.

Life is complex.  You may believe in the binary.  That's ok.  You may hold Darwin's book as a sacred text by a world renowned scientists which is not open to re-interpretation.  That's ok too.  You will neither suddenly live nor die as a result.  Of that I am certain.

You can even insist you are competing here.  Even that is ok.  If it helps you participate, it contributes to the dialogue, I cannot complain.

I have enjoyed the results.

...I wonder, though, in these 'competitions,' how do you know when you have won?

<wink>
Kip

Well done, Kip, that is brilliant.

In North American civilization, what are we competing for, after all?  How do we know when we have "won"?  When we have sent the most children to Ivy League schools?  When we have had the most sex, with whomever?  When we have had the most good sex, choicely?  When we have written the best memoir, both philosophically profound and pruriently titillating?  When we have died, with the most toys, in the biggest toy box, on the biggest toy lot?

"Nature is complex, not binary": Absolutely!

  "Nature is complex, not binary".  

  Consider that there is no winning, no victory, no losing, there is only motion, foward through time (so far!).

  Me?  I never win, I never lose.  I just am.

  And if I am lucky, I learn.

patrick

It's kind of a counsel of despair, isn't it? And perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy...

Nature works creatively. The "winners and losers" perspective is one dimensional.

Well said, Kip!!

Very astute post indeed.