The Becoming Universe- Marx and Darwin
What did they have in common?
Ideas of general evolutionary development had been gestating for many years as biologists and naturalists observed the vast array of the adapted features of nature. It was only Darwin's monumental theory of natural selection that finally challenged the anthropocentric design arguments of the time. When the evolutionary paradigm arrived it led to a new interpretation of universal purpose in which natural phenomena evolve towards a final outcome, rather than being specifically designed by a creator.
Thomas Huxley, a co-founder of evolutionary theory, was one of the first to realise the wider implications of the evolutionary model. The laws of motion and energy conservation might he suggested, be examples of natural selection from a wider set of possibilities. In this conjecture, Huxley demonstrated great prescience. One line of cosmological reasoning today that is gaining increasing acceptance postulates that the laws and constants of nature may indeed vary over time and that our entire universe might be the result of a natural selection process, as postulated by eminent physicist Lee Smolin.
Evolutionary concepts were also starting to permeate the broad canvass of human history. Hegel, through his Philosophy of History in the 1820s, introduced the notion of understanding a subject by the unfolding of its history. He saw in history evidence of evolutionary progress expressed as a dialectic process of change.
This position is of central significance to a unified theory of evolution, as it demonstrates the notion of underlying structure in the chaos of past events. Hegel's dialectic was the foundation of Marx's communist philosophy supported by a conflict process between two opposing knowledge theses. The resulting clash of ideas produced a higher level of knowledge synthesis; a ‘becoming’ process which creates the essential mechanism for social progress.
In this notion of a dialectic, Hegel and Marx stumbled onto an essential element of the evolutionary process. Each interaction between a system and its environment generates new adaptive knowledge, generating a reaction which mutates and repeats until an optimal solution is reached.
This process of evolutionary tug-of-war between competing theories also results in a net gain in knowledge over time and is mirrored in the advances of philosophy itself; particularly in relation to the two great competing hypotheses of empiricism and rationalism.
It may be argued therefore, that all history is the outcome of the broader process of evolution, in which the underlying information flows drive all historical processes, resulting in continuously optimised outcomes for civilisation on a broad scale.
Each outcome ripples through the fabric of life, constantly changing the social landscape. Such a cumulative, multi-layered recursive process epitomises the essence of the evolutionary process.
Evolution in general does not have a specific teleology or goal, but is self-organising and dynamic. However it can be argued that an overall melioristic outcome can be discerned in the process, resulting in enhancement and refinement at every information level.
By the start of the 19th Century, evolutionary concepts had begun to dominate both philosophical and scientific thinking. The second law of thermodynamics known as the ‘heat death’, predicted the eventual extinction of life on earth and in the cosmos. This prognosis together with the collapse of traditional design theories under the impact of the Darwinian revolution, forced theologians to drastically modify traditional religious teleology, towards a more abstract view.
Philosophers such as Teilhard de Chardin interpreted the Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis in terms of an ultimately progressive cosmos, with a melioristic outcome for life, as opposed to the pessimistic heat death view. He predicted the ultimate evolution of an Omega point or omnipotent manifestation of the Christian God in the far future.
This represented a new view of human history; a view that clearly indicated an advance or progression in the knowledge and understanding of the world through the physics of Newton and biology of Darwin; a progressive humanity coupled to an evolutionary universe. The universe could therefore be seen as evolving towards some goal and in doing so could be construed as a teleological organism.
A number of eminent 19th and 20th century philosophers championed variations on the theme of evolutionary progress including Marx, Bergson, Alexander and Whitehead.
The Marxist theory of human development predicts the evolution of social systems from capitalist to socialist to an egalitarian society.
Henri Bergson, whose work marked him as the leading French philosopher of the 20th Century, based his philosophy on a becoming universe in which a changing reality always creates something new, driven by a non-physical life force- Evolution. He rejected the static ‘being' or ‘existence’ paradigm of philosophers such as Sartre, in which time is regarded as illusory or irrelevant.
Samuel Alexander, the greatest Australian-born philosopher, believed the fundamental entity was space-time, from which was created in sequence- matter, life, mind and finally Deity.
Alfred Whitehead was a mathematical physicist whose philosophy postulated the natural world to be a living organism, applied to both living and non-living entities. He believed every object including God to be composed of events in a process of becoming. He asserted that the laws of physics, together with the elementary particles, also would undergo change and that in the fullness of time all logical universes would exist. This thesis is gaining renewed support from the current ‘many worlds’ physical theory.
It can be seen that as such theoretical models of philosophy evolve. In progressing from a static to a dynamic view of the cosmos, they uncover evolutionary models of the processes of life and thought itself which then uncover other evolutionary insights, in a never ending process.
Evolution is therefore seen not as a linear process, but operates at multiple levels in non-linear fractal form. There exists a process of evolution within evolution, as in the Russian doll model. This is a vital characteristic of the evolutionary process, which is demonstrated time and again. It is applicable to all physical, social, scientific and religious processes. The evolution of new knowledge uncovers an evolutionary universe in all its aspects.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Future Darwinism- Towards an Information-based Theory of Evolution
The core of the Darwinian evolutionary process is the capacity of an organism to adapt to its environment. Living systems that adapt best are therefore more likely to survive and continue to adapt through ongoing recombination, mutation and replication.
But how do organisms know how to adjust to the optimum level of adaptation required by their environment? What is the process in the complex chain of cellular processing events that triggers the level of adjustment needed- for example to cope with a new food source or an increase in temperature?
The transmission of information from the environment to the organism, say in the form of a chemical signal, obviously plays a critical role in the process.
However we are more used to thinking about evolution in terms of natural selection for a wide range of physical traits. The idea that selection could depend on the level of information sensed about the state of the environment, takes us to a much deeper and more radical level.
Any organism, even as basic as a bacterium, that embodies some knowledge about its environment, is in a better position to exploit environmental resources and optimize its growth potential.
Each bacterium uses lac proteins to break down its food- the sugar lactose. Knowing how much lac protein it should produce to maximise its use of the available sugar in its environment provides it with a competitive edge over rival cells.
In recent experiments at Princeton University, physicist Professor William Bialek and his team provided the evidence for this critical link between life’s evolution and its capacity to access and interpret the information in its external environment, using the single cell bacterium E.coli as a test model.
Too much or too little protein production harms the organism's survival prospects. A bacterium that can calculate how much lac protein to produce to utilise available sugar in its environment will gain a survival advantage.
He calculated that bacteria storing one bit of information about production of the lac protein in their gene regulatory network, gives the cell the capacity to turn production of one protein on or off, which in turn provides a 5 per cent "fitness advantage" over bacteria storing no bits.
This suggests that there is an "information minimum" for life’s survival and that natural selection favours organisms that capture more bits of information about their environment.
This is a hugely significant finding, providing direct evidence to support the thesis that the process of evolution and adaptation is governed by the level of access to relevant information in an organism’s environment; and that this principle is common to all living systems.
It therefore provides a critical link in the chain of evidence supporting an ultimate information-based Theory of Evolution.
But how do organisms know how to adjust to the optimum level of adaptation required by their environment? What is the process in the complex chain of cellular processing events that triggers the level of adjustment needed- for example to cope with a new food source or an increase in temperature?
The transmission of information from the environment to the organism, say in the form of a chemical signal, obviously plays a critical role in the process.
However we are more used to thinking about evolution in terms of natural selection for a wide range of physical traits. The idea that selection could depend on the level of information sensed about the state of the environment, takes us to a much deeper and more radical level.
Any organism, even as basic as a bacterium, that embodies some knowledge about its environment, is in a better position to exploit environmental resources and optimize its growth potential.
Each bacterium uses lac proteins to break down its food- the sugar lactose. Knowing how much lac protein it should produce to maximise its use of the available sugar in its environment provides it with a competitive edge over rival cells.
In recent experiments at Princeton University, physicist Professor William Bialek and his team provided the evidence for this critical link between life’s evolution and its capacity to access and interpret the information in its external environment, using the single cell bacterium E.coli as a test model.
Too much or too little protein production harms the organism's survival prospects. A bacterium that can calculate how much lac protein to produce to utilise available sugar in its environment will gain a survival advantage.
He calculated that bacteria storing one bit of information about production of the lac protein in their gene regulatory network, gives the cell the capacity to turn production of one protein on or off, which in turn provides a 5 per cent "fitness advantage" over bacteria storing no bits.
This suggests that there is an "information minimum" for life’s survival and that natural selection favours organisms that capture more bits of information about their environment.
This is a hugely significant finding, providing direct evidence to support the thesis that the process of evolution and adaptation is governed by the level of access to relevant information in an organism’s environment; and that this principle is common to all living systems.
It therefore provides a critical link in the chain of evidence supporting an ultimate information-based Theory of Evolution.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Future Darwinism - The Future of Life - Foundations
Darwin's year in 2009 celebrates the 200th birthday of perhaps the most profound thinker of the modern era. It is also an appropriate time to explore the ramifications of the next stage in the Darwinian revolution.
The biological theory of evolution is undoubtedly the most powerful paradigm ever conceived by humans to explain their own existence. Since Darwin's epoch-making treatise, Origin of Species, published a hundred and fifty years ago in 1859, evolution has been centre-stage, universally recognised as the driving force in the emergence of all life, including modern humans, from the genesis of the first cells on this planet, almost 4 billion years ago.
However, despite its ubiquitous brilliance as the jewel in the crown of human intellectual achievement, the notion of Darwinian evolution has never been developed to its full potential. It remains instead largely constrained within its biological cradle, often limited in its everyday connotation to the lowest common denominator of 'survival of the fittest'.
The intention of this blog on the Future of Darwinism will be to explore and re-evaluate the future potential of the Darwinian model and to demonstrate that its current scope and application is only the tip of the intellectual iceberg.
By combining its formidable biological principles, including the immense field of genetics, with those of systems, network, quantum, complexity and information theory, it emerges as an incalculably deeper and richer model than previously contemplated.
The major thesis currently being explored in this blog as well as by a number of eminent researchers across the spectrum of the physical and social sciences, demonstrates that the evolutionary engine that drives biological development also drives all other dynamic adaptive processes at the physical, social, cognitive, economic, political and technological level and is in fact the major dynamic governing the Universe, past present and future.
It is further proposed to explore in future posts the social ramifications of recent developments in artificial intelligence and the computational power of the Internet, that mark the next crucial stage in human evolution; involving the inevitable symbiosis of vast computational intelligence with the power of the human mind.
These two 21st century conceptual goals - a universal all-encompassing Unified Theory of Evolution based on the original Darwinian model - coupled with the emancipation of human intelligence via the future Web, together provide a vastly more powerful paradigm for exploring the future of life and human potential.
The Future Darwinism blog therefore develops the foundations for extending Darwin's legacy of a Biological Theory of Evolution towards a verifiable Unified Theory of Evolution, ecompassing all processes of life and the universe.
It also summarises the author's original thesis published in 2006 - The Future of Life: Meta-Evolution- A Unified Theory of Evolution
available from Amazon.com and now updated in 2010 and soon to be available from Google Editions e-book store.
The biological theory of evolution is undoubtedly the most powerful paradigm ever conceived by humans to explain their own existence. Since Darwin's epoch-making treatise, Origin of Species, published a hundred and fifty years ago in 1859, evolution has been centre-stage, universally recognised as the driving force in the emergence of all life, including modern humans, from the genesis of the first cells on this planet, almost 4 billion years ago.
However, despite its ubiquitous brilliance as the jewel in the crown of human intellectual achievement, the notion of Darwinian evolution has never been developed to its full potential. It remains instead largely constrained within its biological cradle, often limited in its everyday connotation to the lowest common denominator of 'survival of the fittest'.
The intention of this blog on the Future of Darwinism will be to explore and re-evaluate the future potential of the Darwinian model and to demonstrate that its current scope and application is only the tip of the intellectual iceberg.
By combining its formidable biological principles, including the immense field of genetics, with those of systems, network, quantum, complexity and information theory, it emerges as an incalculably deeper and richer model than previously contemplated.
The major thesis currently being explored in this blog as well as by a number of eminent researchers across the spectrum of the physical and social sciences, demonstrates that the evolutionary engine that drives biological development also drives all other dynamic adaptive processes at the physical, social, cognitive, economic, political and technological level and is in fact the major dynamic governing the Universe, past present and future.
It is further proposed to explore in future posts the social ramifications of recent developments in artificial intelligence and the computational power of the Internet, that mark the next crucial stage in human evolution; involving the inevitable symbiosis of vast computational intelligence with the power of the human mind.
These two 21st century conceptual goals - a universal all-encompassing Unified Theory of Evolution based on the original Darwinian model - coupled with the emancipation of human intelligence via the future Web, together provide a vastly more powerful paradigm for exploring the future of life and human potential.
The Future Darwinism blog therefore develops the foundations for extending Darwin's legacy of a Biological Theory of Evolution towards a verifiable Unified Theory of Evolution, ecompassing all processes of life and the universe.
It also summarises the author's original thesis published in 2006 - The Future of Life: Meta-Evolution- A Unified Theory of Evolution
available from Amazon.com and now updated in 2010 and soon to be available from Google Editions e-book store.
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