fleetmouse

Having read Wonderful Life, and with the man's recent death, I'm wondering what anyone else thinks of that book.

I understand that being a palaeontologist gave him a particular perspective on evolution based on history, but are the current forms of life as unlikely as he seems to be making them out to be?

For example, he wonders why life's forms were not limited to the "sheets" of the ediacaran fauna.

With what I know about embryology and mutation, it seems to me that radial and bilateral symmetries are damn near inevitable given the possible permutations and the time periods involved in evolution.

Certainly "contingency" plays a crucial part in variation, but considering the phenomenon of convergent evolution, aren't certain forms more likely to occur than others?

I guess what I'm saying is that a synthesis between the Dawkins view and the Gould view is needed... Dawkins seems to want to formalize evolution, while Gould seemed to want to record the 20/20 hindsight of what happened. Yet one can't formalize a process without understanding the circumstances, nor can one construct a theory based strictly on exceptions (meteor strikes, preexisting conditions) rather than rules.

Gould spent a great part of his later life in decrying the idea that Man as he exists was not inevitable, nor any sort of apex of the "great chain of being". But are tool-using bipeds as unlikely to emerge from the evolutionary process as he makes them out to be? Are we just the lucky descendents of Pikaia or something like it, or are there probabilities that something like humanity would have emerged (from whatever origin) given the initial conditions?

L

[edited for stupid typo]

[ May 24, 2002: Message edited by: Lispli ]</p>

LogicMania

Perhaps, the chain of evolution could have led to tool using organisms with tentacles, who are spherical beings surrounded by tentacles? There are ways around the phalanges and bipedalism.

There are also ways around intelligence. Intelligence just happened to work. Transmutations and circumstances led to us but it is a good thing we do not have to depend on that anymore now that we have a brain that can rewire and adapt to its surroundings. We also have a great intellectual tradition as a result of it.

Also, of course intelligent tool-making conscious organisms are not an inevitable necessity. It took 3.5 billion years and then finally us. If it was such a necessity, why didn't it do it before?

Another thing in mind: evolution did not prepare us for nuclear warfare. Evolution didn't completely prepare us for our complex politico-socio-economic systems. Maybe intelligence isn't such a good thing after all? Someone just needs to push the button and intelligence just turned out to be an evolutionary disadvantage!

Ojuice5001

A thought I have had recently: We're lucky to be an intelligent species that depends on sight. The carnivores, and possibly a large species of rodent, could have produced a species as intelligent as us. But would they have ever developed writing? Carnivores and rodents often don't have eyesight good enough to ever develop writing. So you could have a race that is as smart as humans, and competent at tool use, but it would have little or no chance to get past the Bronze Age, all because it couldn't record its knowledge like humans can. So that's one more pitfall for the world's chances of producing a species we would identify with.

Wizardry

OJuice5001

Braille?

Ojuice5001

LOL, hadn't thought of that.

LogicMania

Aren't there some organisms out there, other than primates, that (if they had the intelligence to do so) could record information with a writing utensile of some kind?

There must be some other way that organisms could record information, so they would not lose it as memory becomes lost, so that other organisms could utilize it in the future. Perhaps, if an organism had tentacles with complex muscular movements, then it could write down information. I must be having a tentacle fetish tonight.

David Gould

Terry Pratchett suggested that bees could record things in the hive and honeycomb that they build - in other words, the very architecture itself communicates ideas and history to future generations of bees.

Thus, any group of bees migrating away would begin with a knowledge of their history and use that as a basis to build their first hive and honeycombs.

It is the use of symbols that is important - anything could be a symbol. For example, particular arrangements of smells could represent ideas.

Oolon Colluphid

The particular arrangement of a fart in a lift can represent a clear idea about an individual...

Oolon

Duvenoy

Gould will be sorely missed, indeed he is already. He was not only a fine scientist but a great translator as well. He could explain science in such a way that even an iggnerent red-neck like me could grasp it.

RIP Stephen.

d

LogicMania

An interesting idea:
Perhaps organisms over time that developed digestive systems closely working with the brain could have intestines that inscribe information in fecal matter? Huh, huh? We're assuming that these organisms have very fast means of digestion.