how and why evolution occurs at all

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This paper is fundamental in setting out exactly how and why evolution occurs at all:

Evolutionary Drive - The Effect of Microscopic Diversity, Error Making, and Noise by P.M.Allen and J.M.McGlade
http://www.autismandcomputing.org.uk/Ev ... Drive1.pdf

Interesting stuff. Were you involved in writing this ?

This is an excellent point. Though I don't think it is an new idea, it is one that most people fail to grasp.



I think we are still speaking of optimal behavior, it is just that our perception of the environment for which it is optimal has expanded.
In the larger environment (the process of selection itself) variation and adaptability are in fact "optimal behavior" or more precisely, optimal characteristics.


Sexual reproduction oviously provides an advantage in this capacity for variation.
It seems that the optimization of the rates of variation are expressed in societal taboos regarding incest, and inter-racial reproduction.
We have a balance between, small groups on the one hand, (not too small though) and occasional intermixing of these groups on the other. Thus allowing for just the right amount of variation it seems.
You have the protective father, and brother who are wary of the foreigner, combined with the young lovers' irresistable attraction to the forbiden mate. "never a tale of more woe" etc etc.
These are ideas from a book by Carl Sagan.

We see this principle expressed also in the development of actual intelligence and learning, and its superiority to mere instint.
Culminating in our capacity for reflective thought, and resulting "conciousness" .

Truly fascinating!

When everyone has enough knowledge to say what genuine optimal characteristics are then I'll accept them. Our track record so far is dismal. Environmental devastation and species loss. in the meantime I cling to the firm belief that "optimal charecteristics" are something you can only see with hindsight.

Hey come on guys, keep it going.
Have you heard about Monsanto trying to patent pig breeding? Honestly, they don't even have to be GM.

Anyone read Kropotkin on evolution?

OK I just read a little on Kropotkin.
I found it very interesting. I never knew there was this whole Russian school of thought on evolution. It figures with the cold war and all.
I think he had some good ideas. The Gladiatorial image has definately been oversold in the west, but maybe it just suits the general social and economic atmosphere, or justifies the self serving attitudes of the elite.
I think competition is necessary for evolution to occur in nature, and perhaps Kropotkin focuses too much on harmony in this respect.

But I do think that evolution in the human realm, cultural, and spiritual must focus on cooperation. After all society and civilization is a polar departure from the competitive anarchy of nature.

wow it sounds just like what we're studying in biology atm!

Why it happens does little to help understanding. How it happens gets you alot of data and useful things you can do with it. I see humans as part of nature and a success so far but that could change. Nature does not exist only for humans we are not the center of reality. The whole Social dawin idea was thought up so people could be rough and controling and try to gloss over hurting there fellow humans. What we call culture shortcuts having to reinvent ideas and process every 20 to 30 years.

Kropotkin was pre-USSR. He was also an Anarchist, so not really on speaking terms with many of the Bolshevik tendancy. He is the antidote to social darwinism though. He emphasises cooperation and it's part in the process of evolution rather than the Hobbesian "short, nasty and brutish" tendancy.

Just because our track record so far has been dismal, as you have said, is prof of the changes and evolutionary development we go through, with humans we seem to evolve the best under stress, if we was not stressed to change then we wouldn't.

many of the wars and destructions of man was because he had not changed enough to adjust to the pace evolution has started to take him, while others have, with a world crowding quickly, the odds of positive combinations of DNA that are more adaptable then the rest will develop more frequently.
while the old fight to keep there own adaptations secure.
the reason things happen in human history as they do is all linked to our evolutionary changes.

change is an inevitable fact of evolution. and sometimes a harsh reality.

I just wish there were some "natural" stuff left for natural selection to take place. stress, be it positive or negative, is not the sole driver of evolution but we seem to have almost put a veto on all but human evolution and you can hardly say that narural selection is driving that nowadays.