Evolution delivers social behavioural adaptations at the group level that benefit the greater good, producing ethical outcomes.
There is increasing recognition that evolution operates at the group as well as the individual level. Multilevel selection questions the sufficiency of an evolutionary theory that operates only at the genetic level. Darwin was aware of this problem and proposed that natural selection can operate at more than one level of the biological hierarchy. Natural selection at the group level explains many social behavioural adaptations that evolve for the greater good of the group- reducing group conflict, enhancing productivity and promoting more effective community structures.
Enhancing the potential of the individual through knowledge acquisition can therefore enhance the potential of the social group, which in turn feeds back to the individual or is transferred to other groups- benefiting all levels of a society in the process. Each piece of knowledge gained by the individual and group is recycled in some form within the entire life system. This process of cross-catalysis therefore leads to accelerated problem solution on a global scale, whether in response to pre-defined or self-organising goals.
In essence, collective behaviour can lead to group-level functions that resemble the behaviour of a single or super-organism, with capabilities far beyond that of the individual. This is now occurring at the human level via the global web at an accelerating rate.
The rate of acquisition of knowledge by groups is also largely independent of local social turmoil such as wars and conflict. It is instead dependent on the rate of exchange of information between a system and its environment and the capacity of the system to process that information and generate an appropriate response. Evolution is therefore a two-way street. However the morality of the evolutionary process itself is neutral.
History is replete with instances of 'barbaric hordes' overrunning more socially 'advanced' states, or of 'civilised' nations dominating more 'primitive' peoples. In both cases, the result is a transfer of information through the merging of cultures, technologies and social structures, allowing cross-fertilisation of one with the other. In many cases, the adjustment is painful and uneven, particularly for most indigenous cultures, with valuable knowledge either lost or suppressed.
Advances in computing and communications are now facilitating the transfer and generation of knowledge between cultures at breathtaking speed, resulting in the phenomena of evolutionary global convergence. This occurs when trillions of interactions and feedback loops at the information level allow processes to be optimised almost instantaneously at all levels of society, from local to global and back to local ad infinitum. At the same time, the new knowledge generated induces another round of opportunities to realise further potentiality gains.
This is the process driving life's future for better or worse.
But while cultural, economic and technological information is generated at a massive rate, another meta-process is at work; a secondary selection feedback loop, sifting and winnowing out the useful applications and guidelines required to ensure the most beneficial outcomes for life. This meta-knowledge can be categorised as ethics; a constraining influence, ensuring the survival of life in the face of a surfeit of potentially extraneous or lethal knowledge and capable of building a more just and equitable society.
The implications for our world of this evolutionary ethical selection process provides a more positive prognosis as we enter the next and most turbulent transition phase of civilisation’s future.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Evolution's Seamless Knowledge Web
Many scientists continue to postulate a territorial imperative over the evolutionary paradigm, reluctant to concede its applicability to a wider range of non-life processes.
This may stem from the fact that the first evolutionary model to be recognised and accepted by society at large was that applied to biological development. Although Darwin focused attention on evolution as it applied to all life, the broad concepts have been articulated by a number of philosophers both before and since Darwin's hypothesis.
As early as 500 BC, the master philosopher Lao-Tzu defined an all-encompassing phenomenon which he called the Tao or Way, as the dominant force shaping all aspects of nature and society. Today the Way could be re-interpreted as the all-pervasive force of evolution. By the start of the nineteenth century, evolutionary concepts had begun to receive broad philosophical acceptance. Scientific advances, particularly Newtonian physics and astronomy, also indicated an evolutionary advance in human knowledge.
By the twentieth century, it had become generally accepted that any realistic picture of the Universe had to be evolutionary. Philosophers such as Teilhard de Chardin, Henri Bergson, Friedrich Schelling, Alfred Whitehead and Samuel Alexander all developed the theme of an evolving, 'becoming', Universe rather than a static or nihilistic state of 'being'.
For Samuel Alexander, the pre-eminent Australian born philosopher, the fundamental entity was Space-Time, which he proposed engenders first Matter, then Life, next Mind and finally Deity in the form of emergent evolution; an evolving God which does not exist in the distant past, but comes into existence in the far future.
Today, every person has an innate understanding of evolving processes and systems applying the notion to all spheres of activity - political, economic, technological, psychological and cultural. However, the full majesty and power of the paradigm has still been largely unexplored. This is partly related to the massive rate of advance in all fields of human knowledge, forcing its partition into countless sub-disciplines, creating realms of ignorance between fields and reinforcing territorial behaviour within the professional and academic communities.
How many physicists, for example, have more than a fuzzy understanding of the social impact of investing billions of dollars in a super particle collider rather than cancer research? And how many economists comprehend even vaguely the cultural values of past civilisations or the ecological value of a rainforest?
But the current acute myopia of disconnections between social and scientific disciplines is slowly breaking down in the face of major intractable problems such as global warming, third-world poverty, over-population, loss of biodiversity and human rights violation. Solutions to problems of this global magnitude require the reintegration of dozens of knowledge domains involving the collaboration of many experts amplified by the large-scale computational resources of the Web.
Once knowledge is again perceived as a seamless web as in ancient times, the arguments that evolution is a random local phenomena or that it applies only to biological phenomena, will collapse. Biologists more than most should be aware of the holistic nature of life.
Certainly chaos theory teaches us that no event occurs just locally. Even the smallest perturbation generates ripples elsewhere in the Universe.
Blog link- http://thedarwinblog.blogspot.com
This may stem from the fact that the first evolutionary model to be recognised and accepted by society at large was that applied to biological development. Although Darwin focused attention on evolution as it applied to all life, the broad concepts have been articulated by a number of philosophers both before and since Darwin's hypothesis.
As early as 500 BC, the master philosopher Lao-Tzu defined an all-encompassing phenomenon which he called the Tao or Way, as the dominant force shaping all aspects of nature and society. Today the Way could be re-interpreted as the all-pervasive force of evolution. By the start of the nineteenth century, evolutionary concepts had begun to receive broad philosophical acceptance. Scientific advances, particularly Newtonian physics and astronomy, also indicated an evolutionary advance in human knowledge.
By the twentieth century, it had become generally accepted that any realistic picture of the Universe had to be evolutionary. Philosophers such as Teilhard de Chardin, Henri Bergson, Friedrich Schelling, Alfred Whitehead and Samuel Alexander all developed the theme of an evolving, 'becoming', Universe rather than a static or nihilistic state of 'being'.
For Samuel Alexander, the pre-eminent Australian born philosopher, the fundamental entity was Space-Time, which he proposed engenders first Matter, then Life, next Mind and finally Deity in the form of emergent evolution; an evolving God which does not exist in the distant past, but comes into existence in the far future.
Today, every person has an innate understanding of evolving processes and systems applying the notion to all spheres of activity - political, economic, technological, psychological and cultural. However, the full majesty and power of the paradigm has still been largely unexplored. This is partly related to the massive rate of advance in all fields of human knowledge, forcing its partition into countless sub-disciplines, creating realms of ignorance between fields and reinforcing territorial behaviour within the professional and academic communities.
How many physicists, for example, have more than a fuzzy understanding of the social impact of investing billions of dollars in a super particle collider rather than cancer research? And how many economists comprehend even vaguely the cultural values of past civilisations or the ecological value of a rainforest?
But the current acute myopia of disconnections between social and scientific disciplines is slowly breaking down in the face of major intractable problems such as global warming, third-world poverty, over-population, loss of biodiversity and human rights violation. Solutions to problems of this global magnitude require the reintegration of dozens of knowledge domains involving the collaboration of many experts amplified by the large-scale computational resources of the Web.
Once knowledge is again perceived as a seamless web as in ancient times, the arguments that evolution is a random local phenomena or that it applies only to biological phenomena, will collapse. Biologists more than most should be aware of the holistic nature of life.
Certainly chaos theory teaches us that no event occurs just locally. Even the smallest perturbation generates ripples elsewhere in the Universe.
Blog link- http://thedarwinblog.blogspot.com
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