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Date:         Thu, 28 Jan 1993 09:20:11 -0700
From:         "William T. Powers" <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      It's Evolution's Will

[From Bill Powers (930128.0845)]

Greg Williams (930128) --

Durward Allen's musings are reminiscent of the preacher trying to
explain to his congregation why God let the crops fail, let the
children get polio, let the dam break, and allowed inflation to
devalue the old folks' pensions. It's all part of the grand
design, sez he, although we mere mortals can't understand the
justice of it.

A lot of things in the world just happen. They don't have any
particular reason for happening; they're side-effects. If the
beaver spends a lot of energy half-ringing trees, well, the
beaver manages to finish the job enough of the time to get along,
and the waste of energy isn't any particular problem to beavers.
They are, after all, control systems. If they use a bit more
energy, they can just eat a little more. The dam they had in mind
to build gets finished anyway (I'll bet you don't find a lot of
half-ringed trees surrounding half-finished dams).

When evolution is used as a catch-all explanation for everything
that happens, it gets pretty close to vitalism. What's the
functional purpose of baking bread of a kind that dries out so
that crumbs fall from your peanut-butter sandwich onto the floor?
Why, it's to feed the ants, which scavenge dead materials and
prevent the spread of disease! So bakers have evolved to produce
bread in the way they do in order to protect their own species
against germs, and ants have evolved to scavenge little bits and
pieces of stuff because that helps to evolve big sloppy creatures
that scatter food around for the ants to eat. The prototypical
example of this kind of evolved symbiosis is The Picnic.

At the core of any organism's existence is a set of controlled
variables that the organism maintains in states that are of
evolutionary benefit to the organism. In the process of
controlling these variables, the organism acts on its
environment. Those actions control those variables, maintaining
them at their reference levels and counteracting disturbances.
But they also produce myriad side-effects. Those side-effects are
part of the world in which other organisms live; some are
deleterious and some are helpful to other organisms' control
processes. If they're deleterious, the other organisms counteract
their effects as best they can; if helpful, the other organisms
relax their efforts. The result is to keep side-effects of one
organism's action from materially affecting the variables
controlled by others.

Somewhere among all these interactions there are no doubt special
adaptations in which one organism feeds off the side-effects of
the control processes of other organisms and vice versa. But
human beings are very good at making up stories; they can make
EVERY interaction seem to have an evolutionary purpose. All the
story-teller really needs is plausibility. If the listeners are
in the mood, they can suspend disbelief and enjoy the tale.
There's no danger of anyone proving that the story is false.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Best,

Bill P.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU