Seeker196

Time and again one hears people on this very board referring to the 'Evolutionary Scale' (or ladder), typically to somethings being 'higher' or 'lower' on this scheme.

The implication of such an idea is that new generations are being pushed either towards some sort of perfected ideal form or toward 'decadent' forms. (see 19th century ideas of decadence if your into history of science).

Of course, this ideal in practice seems to be suspiciously just like a human or superhuman.

However, our modern understanding is that there is no 'arrow' or accumulation towards perfection, there is only 'what works, or does not work but doesn't kill the species, at that moment'. There is no 'teleology'(sp?)

So what then do such terms mean?

Is it a way of evaluating a species closeness to our own? Thus the chimp or dolphin is 'high' while the diatom is not...but the diatom is much more 'successful' in adapting to new enviroments, range, diversification of species and sub-species, etc. Also 'by weight' and in species longevity.

Are terms like Evolutionary Scale just a way of expressing our human prejudices? A sort of 'pat on the back' for things that seem like us?

To get far out for a moment: If humans did give birth to a species with some great adaptation, not anything to wild, but perhaps a homo that uses fats more efficiently, greater recall and intelligence, less prone to heart disease and cancer and such, could we rightly say they are higher up?

Is the term Evolutionary Scale inherently or latently racist?

Laurentius

AVE

Human's superior adaptation is due to people's particular intelligence enhanced by the faculty of self-awarness. I guess one can be entitled to draw an evolutionary scale based on this criteria.

Doesn't the human faculty of self-awarness strike you as being by far superior to the adaptation means of any other existent creature?

AVE

Vorkosigan

Do you know of any non-arbitrary way of demonstrating this? After all, cockroaches kick our butts in range and numbers. Whatever they have got, it beats us.

Vorkosigan

Ojuice5001

The idea of arranging the things in the universe into a scale has played an important role in the formation of my belief system. (It is not however an evolutionary scale per se. It is broader than that, and therefore can include things that don't evolve, such as stars.) I call something "higher" if it contains all the characteristics of something else (the "lower") and more. For instance, rodents have all the characteristics of marsupials, and add to those characteristics a multitude of dental and reproductive adaptations. Thus, rodents are higher than marsupials.

It can be immediately seen that if we focus on intelligence in particular, the human intelligence is higher than any other intelligence in the natural world. That is the justification for saying that humans are the highest, and IMO it leads to the proposition that it makes sense to affirm the existence of beings that are higher than humans--gods, in other words. After all, if a rat would be wrong to think it had the highest intelligence in existence, why should we be so confident that we do? But to return to biological life forms, humans are not the highest in every respect. Artiodactyls are higher with regard to digestion, and birds are higher with regard to locomotion. And who's to say that being able to reason is a bigger advantage than being able to fly?

[ July 02, 2002: Message edited by: Ojuice5001 ]</p>

Bill

Seeker196:

The only realistic scale upon which you can measure progress over time is a scale of INCREASING COMPLEXITY!

To try to evaluate evolutionary adaptations as being either "good" or "bad" in a teleological sense requires a value scale which is subject to the very objections that you raise. And so we see that the only way adaptations can be evaluated as being either "good" or "bad" would be to obtain the post-facto endorsement of evolutionary success (measured, I guess, in terms of increasing permeation throughout some given ecospace; which, if you measure humans on that same sort of scale, grants humans very high marks compared with every other species because we are the first species to develop methods for inhabiting totally foreign ecospaces, up to and including the vacuum of space itself).

Daniel Dennett does discuss this very point you raise in his book <a href="http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/bookdetail.asp?BookID=112" target="_blank">Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life</a>, and he reaches the conclusion that I also endorse here: the only realistic scale of measurement is a scale of complexity.

== Bill

Laurentius

AVE


Here are 3 reasons to believe Man is better than cockroaches:
1) Man's superior capacity of colonization: he can live in places where cockroaches do not have access, such as Antartica, the undersea and the outer space.
2) Man's superior ability to put the environment and other species at work for his own interest.
3) Man's better chances of extinguishing cockroaches one day.

AVE

Ojuice5001

Sorry, didn't mean to make this post.

[ July 02, 2002: Message edited by: Ojuice5001 ]</p>

Mageth

Here are 3 reasons to believe Man is better than cockroaches:
1) Man's superior capacity of colonization: he can live in places where cockroaches do not have access, such as Antartica, the undersea and the outer space.

Wherever we go, we're likely to take cockroaches with us. Further, there's a lot of places cockroaches can live that we can't. Ever tried living in a rotting log? Inside a wall? Inside a box of corn flakes?

2) Man's superior ability to put the environment and other species at work for his own interest.

Cockroaches are so successful partially because of their ability to take advantages of different environments, including artificial environments (e.g. our kitchens). You might say cockroaches exploit us for their own interest.

3) Man's better chances of extinguishing cockroaches one day.

That's something we may not be able to do, and we damned sure don't want to do. If humans were to suddenly disappear from the face of the earth, most life (including cockroaches) would go right on about their business of living. If all cockroaches (of all the various species) were to suddenly disappear, I suspect the effect from the environmental "aftershocks" on us and the rest of life would be far greater than our disappearance would be.

Cockroaches were here long before us, and unless we annihilate the entire earth they're likely to be here long after us.

[ July 02, 2002: Message edited by: Mageth ]

[ July 02, 2002: Message edited by: Mageth ]</p>

Mr. Sammi

Mageth, I could not help this one. You sound like the cockroach king.

Bill, you say only a scale of increasing complexity in agreement with Mr. Dennett. However if we look back in history (as a technical exercise), we see times where various species disappeared, does this not lead us to believe in a possible "terminal complexity", with simplification to follow...

Sammi Na Boodie ()

Mageth

Mageth, I could not help this one. You sound like the cockroach king.

My secret is out! Resistance is futile...you WILL be assimilated!