Innovation (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, May 01, 2013, 12:29 (4023 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: "Springing out of the primate herd" could only be a divine dabble, or a stroke of genius by the intelligent cell/genome/DNA mechanism...-DAVID: I have no idea, as previously stated of the proportions of dabble/preprogramming that made evolution advance to US, but my point about humans has nothing to do with the fact that apes had "eyes, sex, lungs, livers" etc. Humans were obviously thrust out of the simian herd. There was no need for upright posture, big brain, etc. Climate may have altered African climate, but no other slightly biped tree swinging ape changed!-There was "no need" for eyes etc. either, since bacteria have kept going without them. I reckon unneeded sex is just as amazing as an unneeded big brain and an unneeded upright posture. If the human branch of the evolutionary bush was pre-programmed, then so were eyes etc., which are integral to humans. But according to you, all the preceding "byproducts" developed them through responding to random changes in the environment, so these essential human organs were NOT preprogrammed. Ergo humans were NOT preprogrammed. However, if your scenario begins when some primates came down from the trees and stood upright, that means "poking into the system for mid-flight corrections", i.e. dabbling, not pre-programming. As for "African climate", yet again you talk as if the whole of Africa had one climate. It's a vast continent. There's no reason at all why climate change in one area might not have triggered the innovations, while in other areas apes and the climate remained unaffected.
 
DAVID: My hero Alfred Russel Wallace came to this conclusion first: "[...] Whereas Darwin expected evolution by natural selection to transform an ape-like animal into a human, Wallace rejected this scenario. He argued for "some kind of non-material intervention in the genesis of humans". His religious views allowed him to be open to this hypothesis, although his arguments were drawn from scientific observations of different races of humanity.
"The more I see of uncivilized people, the better I think of human nature on the whole, and the essential differences between so-called civilized and savage man seem to disappear." 
"[Wallace realised that] many humans have abilities that they never have the opportunity to use. Such a situation, Wallace reasoned, cannot evolve through natural selection alone, which promotes only those traits that are useful. Wallace concluded that human evolution required some divine intervention. This argument shows an excellent appreciation of the mechanics of natural selection [. . . ]" (my bold)[/i]-At least your hero's conclusion was "divine intervention", which = dabbling! It sounds to me as though his religious views influenced his hypothesis rather than allowed him to be open to it. First, natural selection does not transform anything ... it only ensures survival. Innovations transform. Darwin also emphasizes the similarities between so-called civilized and so-called savage humans in The Descent of Man, but that's still true if humans descended from "ape-like animals", and if anything it supports the idea of common ancestry, which you have always accepted. Many of our fellow animals also "have abilities that they never have the opportunity to use". So does that mean a dolphin that doesn't detect underwater mines, or a dog that doesn't guide blind people must have been created by divine intervention? Most animals can be trained to do things they've never done before. Such abilities don't evolve "through natural selection" anyway; they evolve through a mixture of nature, nurture and need. Of course the human potential is much vaster, but unused brain capacity only means that full use is not the sole criterion for survival.
 
dhw: As for an intelligence that can think and plan, I would gladly admit it if you could tell me how such an intelligence ... a zillion times more amazing than that of the genome, with the ability to create whole universes and the tiniest of microorganisms ... could have come into existence without any sort of prior "thinking and planning". First Cause explains nothing. -DAVID: If cause and effect exist, there has to be a first cause which is eternal and always there. First Cause is there by necessity. Leibnitz: "Why is there anything?", must be answered. I'm sorry if you don't want to answer, then why think and puzzle at all? You are the guy who opened up this website to raise just such observations and questions, and I am your goad, as in Wallace to Darwin.-I offered you THREE first causes, but you are goading me by omitting all of them! I wrote: "First cause conscious energy is no more believable than first cause non-conscious energy which evolves into consciousness, or first cause non-conscious energy which strikes lucky. That's where we hit your famous wall of uncertainty..." The fact that you've chosen one of these three unlikelihoods is no reason for omitting my answer and then accusing me of not wanting to answer. But I shall sit stoically on my picket fence, for we thoughtful, ever-puzzling, always-ready-to-answer agnostics are used to being slandered by those who are convinced they can stop thinking and puzzling because they already know the answers! Wallace and Darwin? More like Abbott and Costello.