[lit-ideas] Re: Do the fittest survive? Not necessarily
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 03:37:43 -0700 (PDT)
--- On Wed, 18/8/10, Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>MOI: Do you thinker-people actually argue about this?
Some did, some still do. The status of Darwinism is not entirely
straightforward, especially as only specific Darwinian explanations are
testable whereas the framework that sets what a Darwinian 'explanation in
principle' is not. Darwinism is also beset by problems, though it has been
remarkably successful in solving some of them.
>It seems to me patently obvious that I can't direct myself to alter my DNA.
But it isn't so obvious, a priori, that DNA (or whatever material codes for
offspring's characteristics) might not be influenced by environmental
conditions or 'experience': that having to stretch for the high-up fruit
influences my DNA to mutate in the direction of 'tallness', 'greater
stretchiness'. We gain muscles through exercise: why should we not gain
adaptive genetic changes through the exercises the environment demands we
perform? It isn't obvious, a priori, that the genetic code is particulate and
combines rather than intermingles. Even if we accept it is obvious that one
cannot consciously direct changes in our DNA, that would make it far from
intuitively obvious that such changes are directless - and only appear to have
direction because the successful adaptations are the ones that survive.
> We're here by accident and will disappear by accident.
Not entirely by accident perhaps, depending what is meant by accident. But the
truth that we are not here as part of a divine plan, or necessary progressive
sequence, gives many vertigo - and they prefer to escape into
'justificationist' philosophies, whether these be Intelligent Design or
inductivism - or the view that Darwinism simply represents a synthetic a priori
necessity or an 'analytic' truth.
> There's no such thing as fittest -- except at the moment.
Popper puts it more like this: even the ill-fitted may survive, at least until
they are eliminated.
Donal
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