Innovation (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 01, 2013, 16:25 (4023 days ago) @ dhw


> 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!
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> dhw:There was "no need" for eyes etc. either, since bacteria have kept going without them. ... If the human branch of the evolutionary bush was pre-programmed, then so were eyes etc., which are integral to humans.-Didn't say they weren't, but you do not answer my point. Humans leapt foward.-> dhw: 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.-I've said just the opposite: evolution appears to be a combination of automatic responses to challenges and dabbling. The Cambrian is a major dabble.->dhw; 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.-Please review the human tree: Luci, Ardi, Sediba, etc. placed all over Africa developing in all the disparate climates. The apes stayed apes.
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> DAVID: My hero Alfred Russel Wallace came to this conclusion first: -> 
> dhw: 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. ...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. -Common primate to human ancestry, yes. Darwin inferred the savages were inferior which led to support for Eugenics.-> dhw: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? ...Of course the human potential is much vaster, but unused brain capacity only means that full use is not the sole criterion for survival.-The "much vaster" 'difference of man and the difference it makes' Exactly the point, and you made it for me. Where did that enormous "unused brain capacity" come from and why?-> 
> dhw: 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. -My problem with your answer is "no more believable" as a modifier in your three suggestions. You invent a variety of first causes and accept none of them! Pick one as your favorite. At least accept that there must be a First Cause, by necessity, in some form, in any chain or cause and effect, or don't you believe that either? Why is there anything? We are here. There must be a cause. Perhaps you would like to return to the 'eternal universe theory' of pre-Einstein days.