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Topic: Evolution and autocatalysis (Read 868 times) |
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rhinoceros
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Evolution and autocatalysis
« on: 2004-04-19 15:45:00 » |
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I am pasting this from a not quite recent book review of "The Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence, and Chaos in Human Evolution" by Jeffrey K. McKee, Rutgers University Press, 2000. Does anyone care to take a shot?
http://www.skeptic.com/review12.html
<begin quote>
What the future holds for the evolution wars may be glimpsed in the next generation's writings, an intriguing representative sample of which can be found in paleoanthropologist Jeffrey McKee's The Riddled Chain. The subtitle alone, "Chance, Coincidence, and Chaos in Human Evolution," tells us that this is not a strickly gene-focused, adaptationist analysis. The alliterative reference is to influences outside the traditional forces of study that have shaped the course of evolution; and once again the topic is our favorite species. McKee cleverly draws the reader into theoretical debates about human evolution through personal stories of his own field work in South Africa. But McKee is not just in the search of our origins, which is now reasonably well fleshed out in a very bushy tree of life. There is no linear chain in the "ascent of man" that can be cleanly drawn from Lucy to us. Instead, as McKee demonstrates through a convergence of evidence ranging from fossils to computer simulations, "Natural selection is severely limited both in its power to promote useful genes and in its freedom to tinker with morphology. Human bodies are not particularly well adapted in many respects, revealing the chance origins of nature's 'designs.' Chance and chaos, as much as the ever vigilant selective process, made us what we are."
To a strict adaptationists like Richard Dawkins and Edward Wilson, these are fight'n words. If natural selection is not the be all and end all of evolution, then what is? Autocatalysis, McKee argues in the book's most daring chapter. "Autocatalytic evolution simply means this: evolution is caused (catalyzed) by itself (auto). It is self-propelled by feedback loops. If this means that most evolutionary change is catalyzed or caused by the inherent nature of a species, then the grand theories of environmental forcing fall away. Evolution would proceed with or without changes in climate or in the plant and animal community with which a species interacts. Evolution is the cause of evolution, and it continues by its chaotic devices." Indeed, autocatalysis is what chaos and complexity scientists call feedback loops, as when a PA system generates "feedback" between the microphone and speakers.
The figure from McKee shows just how nonlinear and interactive the process of evolution can be. The old linear model of bipedalism --> tool use --> meat eating --> big brains --> language --> culture is replaced by an autocatalytic feedback loop in which "each morphological aspect has functional or behavioral consequences or correlates (solid arrows), which in turn reinforce the evolved features through positive natural selection (open arrows)."
Autocatalysis is a superior model for explaining the complexities of life because as biologists have discovered in recent decades (particularly with the rise of the science of ecology), simple linear models fail to account for complex biological systems. The same has to be true for the history of life.
It certainly is in human cultural history, which is riddled with autocatalytic feedback loops and, in fact, forms the core of Jared Diamond's revolutionary work Guns, Germs, and Steel. McKee believes that he's on to something here that could very well start yet another evolution war. "The theory of autocatalytic evolution is painfully simple, horribly mundane, and probably correct."
Is it? The evidence is good, but it is too soon to tell, so as in the debate over Wilson's sociobiology and Mendel's genetics, the battle for science will be determined in both the private and public spheres of influence.
<end quote>
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Blunderov
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RE: virus: Evolution and autocatalysis
« Reply #1 on: 2004-04-19 17:57:11 » |
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rhinoceros
Sent: 19 April 2004 09:45 PM
[Blunderov] I'm not to sure how much confidence I can place in the
statement "Natural selection is severely limited both in its power to
promote useful genes and in its freedom to tinker with morphology."
There was some interesting research a little while back from, I think,
The University of California, about master genes; capable of controlling
groups of genes in order to effect quite dramatic changes in morphology.
(Interesting is that one of the fundy arguments against the theory of
evolution is this very contention - that natural selection cannot
properly account for the dramatic changes in morphology that are
claimed.)
It is not clear to me why these two ideas, dramatic genetic mutation and
Autocatalysis, should be mutually exclusive as the article seems to
imply. "If natural selection is not the be all and end all of evolution,
then what is?" smacks suspiciously to me of a false dilemma; could it
not be some of both at different times and places for instance?
Maybe this why the models don't hold up?
It seems to me that the writer has deliberately presented matters in a
more adversarial light than might be completely warranted.
All that said, I quite like the idea of autocatalysis.
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Walter Watts
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Re: virus: Evolution and autocatalysis
« Reply #2 on: 2004-04-19 19:34:22 » |
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These "feedback loops" sound surprisingly similar to Stuart Kauffman's "tiny attractors", don't you think?
Walter
rhinoceros wrote:
<snip>
> "Autocatalytic evolution simply means this: evolution is caused (catalyzed) by itself (auto). It is self-propelled by feedback loops. If this means that most evolutionary change is catalyzed or caused by the inherent nature of a species, then the grand theories of environmental forcing fall away. Evolution would proceed with or without changes in climate or in the plant and animal community with which a species interacts. Evolution is the cause of evolution, and it continues by its chaotic devices."
<snip>
> --
Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
"Pursue the small utopias... nature, music, friendship, love"
--Kupferberg--
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Walter Watts
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rhinoceros
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My point is ...
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Re:Evolution and autocatalysis
« Reply #3 on: 2004-04-19 21:59:56 » |
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[Blunderov]
I'm not to sure how much confidence I can place in the statement "Natural selection is severely limited both in its power to promote useful genes and in its freedom to tinker with morphology."
There was some interesting research a little while back from, I think, The University of California, about master genes; capable of controlling groups of genes in order to effect quite dramatic changes in morphology.
(Interesting is that one of the fundy arguments against the theory of evolution is this very contention - that natural selection cannot properly account for the dramatic changes in morphology that are claimed.)
[rhinoceros]
Of course, ultimately everything will have to be expressed in the genes. There is not much else there for pattern storage, is it? I think the argument is more about the mechanism. No doubt, random mutation, survival of the fittest and mating selection could turn a baloon shape into a cube, given infinite time and a challenging enough environment.
If mutation had the time to produce gilled people then a cataclysm would give them the advantage by wiping out most of the non-gilled ones. But mutation never gave gilled people their chance as far as we know, and the kinds of catastrophes, diseases and mating failures which humans faced at large fall within certain bounds. In this sense, I can see how "natural selection is severely limited both in its power to promote useful genes and in its freedom to tinker with morphology."
So, there may be some legitimate questions there: Is mutation really random? If not, what is its direction and how is it passed on to the descendants? Does this alleged direction work even without any evolutionary selection pressures, or is it an illusion caused by the fact that the evolutionary pressures which humans had to face were more or less the same everywhere? Is this view supported by good evidence showing that the "proper" evolutionary view is inadequate?
[Blunderov]
It is not clear to me why these two ideas, dramatic genetic mutation and Autocatalysis, should be mutually exclusive as the article seems to imply. "If natural selection is not the be all and end all of evolution, then what is?" smacks suspiciously to me of a false dilemma; could it not be some of both at different times and places for instance?
Maybe this why the models don't hold up?
It seems to me that the writer has deliberately presented matters in a more adversarial light than might be completely warranted.
All that said, I quite like the idea of autocatalysis.
[rhinoceros]
I haven't read the book and I have just started to read on this subject. It is possible that these complexity theories will eventually provide us with a theory for the specific mechanisms of evolution or will make us change our view of some factors.
About the adversarial presentation... yes, that was the writer's intention. The reason becomes obvious when you read the whole review at http://www.skeptic.com/review12.html. Also notice the last sentence: "the battle for science will be determined in both the private and public spheres of influence"...
[Walter Watts]
These "feedback loops" sound surprisingly similar to Stuart Kauffman's "tiny attractors", don't you think?
[rhinoceros]
It is interesting that you mentioned that, Walter. I just found a paper containing a lot of references to Stuart Kaufman's work.
Complex Adaptive Systems
J. Stephen Lansing
http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lansing/CompAdSys.pdf
Abstract: The study of complex adaptive systems, a subset of nonlinear dynamical systems, has recently become a major focus of interdisciplinary research in the social and natural sciences. Nonlinear systems are ubiquitous; as mathematician Stanislaw Ulam observed, to speak of "nonlinear science" is like calling zoology the study of "nonelephant animals" (quoted in Campbell et al. 1985, p. 374). The initial phase of research on nonlinear systems focused on deterministic chaos, but more recent studies have investigated the properties of self-organizing systems or anti-chaos. For mathematicians and physicists, the biggest surprise is that complexity lurks within extremely simple systems. For biologists, it is the idea that natural selection is not the sole source of order in the biological world. In the social sciences, it is suggested that emergencethe idea that complex global patterns with new properties can emerge from local interactionscould have a comparable impact.
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simul
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Re: virus: Evolution and autocatalysis
« Reply #5 on: 2004-04-19 22:37:32 » |
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Feedback loops smash eardrums at concerts, create hurricaines. It's unsurprising that they might create new species. A feature of these loops is often “symmetric speciation”. Symmetry in feedback can be seen in the Lorenz attractor.
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First, read Bruce Sterling's "Distraction", and then read http://electionmethods.org.
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simul
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Re: virus: Re:Evolution and autocatalysis
« Reply #7 on: 2004-04-20 15:53:10 » |
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Yep. Apparently someone got so caught up in the feedback-loop nature of everything that he developed a unified physics theory out of it. Unfortunately, nobody famous ever sat down to try and make it work. I like it. I think it's fully compatible with Wheeler physics, just an alternate metaphor.
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First, read Bruce Sterling's "Distraction", and then read http://electionmethods.org.
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