I see that, not as problem with the answer per si, but with the question. Why questions may imply that we need purposes or aims. Science don't need "metaphysical why" questions, only "mechanistic why", that are equivalent to "how questions". Evolution is not a why answer, but a "how" answer, because evolution is a process. And all heritable changes are evolutionary by definition.

The main point is to know if something evolved as an adaptation or a by-product.

Adaptive explanations have to be corroborated with evidence, besides an adaptationist plausible scenario, or otherwise they can be, at best, a good hypothesis.

Behavioral traits are usually the most difficult traits to access if they are adaptive or by-product, and in the past several critics and counter-critics were made to the adaptationist program, especially to behavioral traits. I'll let links below, one of each side, which I think as valuable to read.

My view is that we have no reason to rule out, nor to assume something as an adaptation as long we have no evidence of that this evolve through natural selection (including sexual selection). Neutral evolution and by-products are common in nature. Cooption is also common, when a function for witch an adaptation (trait) is being selected changes though time.

http://faculty.washington.edu/lynnhank/GouldLewontin.pdf

http://www.philoscience.unibe.ch/documents/educational_materials/Mayr1983/Mayr1983.pdf

Best,

Daniel Casali

I see that, not as problem with the answer per si, but with the question. Why questions may imply that we need purposes or aims. Science don't need "metaphysical why" questions, only "mechanistic why", that are equivalent to "how questions". Evolution is not a why answer, but a "how" answer, because evolution is a process. And all heritable changes are evolutionary by definition.

The main point is to know if something evolved as an adaptation or a by-product.

Adaptive explanations have to be corroborated with evidence, besides an adaptationist plausible scenario, or otherwise they can be, at best, a good hypothesis.

Behavioral traits are usually the most difficult traits to access if they are adaptive or by-product, and in the past several critics and counter-critics were made to the adaptationist program, especially to behavioral traits. I'll let links below, one of each side, which I think as valuable to read.

My view is that we have no reason to rule out, nor to assume something as an adaptation as long we have no evidence of that this evolve through natural selection (including sexual selection). Neutral evolution and by-products are common in nature. Cooption is also common, when a function for witch an adaptation (trait) is being selected changes though time.

http://faculty.washington.edu/lynnhank/GouldLewontin.pdf

http://www.philoscience.unibe.ch/documents/educational_materials/Mayr1983/Mayr1983.pdf

Best,

Daniel Casali

Alexander this is an interesting question. The term "God of the gaps" has been used for the tendency of religious folk to invoke God when a particular human capacity or organ seemed too complex in its composition for a naturalistic explanation. You set me to wondering whether or not evolution with a capital "E" is being invoked when we reach an explanatory impasse? This makes me wonder if perhaps our confidence in the evolutionary process has taken on a character akin to religious faith? Could we have developed an "Evolution of the Gaps" sort of thought process?

Maybe because we lack any other scientific explanation for any heritable, variable trait.

Daniel there are quite a number of well-known writers in the sciences and in Philosophy of Science who claim that the notion of teleology or design is a necessary one in order to "do science". Here is an example from noted atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse:

“Design language reigns triumphant in evolutionary biology…it may be more difficult to eliminate the general anthropomorphism of biology than most reformers allow.” Ruse goes on to speak of Francisco J. Ayala, one of the contributors to the volume which Ruse is editing, "He is no mushy-thinking metaphysician believing in mysterious forces. But Ayala does think that as a biologist he can and must be a teleologist…Although there may not be a Great Designer in the sky, because of natural selection organisms (unlike inanimate objects) are design-like – the eye is like a telescope and the heart is like a pump. Hence, asking function questions makes sense and advances biological understanding."

Many scientists use the term “teleological” in a broader sense, to include explanations that account for the existence of an object in terms of an end-state or goal that they serve. That being the case, you may be strictly correct about "why questions" at first glance, but I think the backdrop of "the big picture" of science does, in fact, set scientists to doing something that strongly resembles metaphysical speculation. I believe the life sciences speak of "design" when describing living systems because that language best fits with the way human beings experience the functioning of those systems. Addressing the human organism in terms of design is simply consonant with reality as it presents itself to human perception. The usage of teleological language does not necessarily entail “reverse causation.” (see L. Nissen's, Teleological Language in the Life Sciences, 1997, p. 195) That being the case, I believe Alexander's question has some legitimacy.

The traditional answer is not so different than the modern one: God is the creator and Evolution is the creator. Even the traditional anwer recognizes that God creates the world along a process, along steps, although there is no traditional attempt to clearly map out all the step of evolution like modern science is trying to do. There is also a modern debate between those who think that all was created at the time of the Big Bang and the rest are mechanical consequence of the laws and radomness that followed and those that think that there is creation , emergence in Nature. This is remisnicent of the old debate between a creator God external to its creation and a creator good immanent to the creation, the later version could correspond to reality/noumenal an ever realm of creation beyond any possible conceptualization but within the experience of being.

Larry,

I was refering to the jewish and christian religious tradition and I was expressing my own personal interpretation of these traditions and I agree that most people in these tradition might not agree with my interpretation. My interpretation is closer to the mystics in these traditions. The mystic do not try to picture god but try to be in contact with god by going inside themself at their core of their experience.

You interpret my saying with your own projections. The notion of guiding hand comes from you own imagination. It is not in my text. I did not put it there inconscously. I am a naturalist as far as it can be pushed. Finally the scientific epistemology is gradually moving away from positivism and going towards an epistemology compatible with creation and so open to God as the process of creation which is the world.

I have a different interpretation of Bergson. Bergson fired at the mechanistic notion of time, the time of clock and identified true time to creation in the NOW. I am with him on that. The death of God is the closure of our epistemology to even the possibility of creation. Bergson paved the way for new creative epistemology, as Goethe before him, Leibniz before him in the line of a renewal of Aristotle's epistemology. They are romantic, they beleive that we have access to reality/creation/god through our intuition and feeling, imagination. Yes mechanistic epistemology necessarily reduce everything to things because it cannot allow real agency, an agency that is not mechanical. Marx is totally brain washed into the mechanistic philosophy. Weber has saw the way out paved by Kant.

The concept of evolution is far from being completed and in fact it will never be because it is the direct road to God.

Regarding some of the speculation and conjecture above, I have to ask how we think nature creates life? There are so many differing theories regarding abiogenenesis that it makes one's mind reel. Scientists like Francis Crick and Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe have speculated about life coming from off planet because of their conclusions regarding the earth being too young to produce life via abiogenesis (The "Panspermia" theory being Crick's and "Lifecloud" being that of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe). I have listened to Dawkins speculating about life arising off planet as well due to this same problem. He says it would have to arise via a Darwinian process. Larry I am thinking that Louis is the scientist here. I'm not sure of the pertinence of the thought of Bergson and Nietzsche on matters having to do with science.

The words of Thomas Nagel in his The Last Word may well provide some insight into some of what lies behind your own outlook here:

"In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself:I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning and design as fundamental features of the world...I admit that this idea—that the capacity of the universe to generate organisms with minds capable of understanding the universe is itself somehow a fundamental feature of the universe—has a quasi-religious "ring" to it, something vaguely Spinozistic."

A few pages later he states, "Why is the natural order such as to make the appearance of rational beings likely?’ it is very difficult to imagine any answer to the question that is not teleological"

I would commend Simon Conway Morris' Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe to you as a place to look regarding some of your speculation.

Larry,

Obviously Nature is quite capable of producing everything. That being said not much has been said. I will say other thing that do not say a lot: Nature = Universe = God = Reality = Creation = Noumenal = ground of reality = ground of being = Brahman = our most personal reality = Atman.

The these words are not psychologically equivalent. God is a name of a person and so people pray God and it would odd for most of them to pray reality or the universe because those are name of what they perceive as set of things.

The idea of God as dice player is simplistic but not totally off the target. At the quantum level of reality, the formalization are probabilistic, and they are the only possible one because it is not possible to penetrate the quantum ground of being in a deterministic way, it is not possible to mechanize reality at that level. This is funny given the whole mechanistic philosophy began with the atomists and in modern time it is where determinist has found its limit.

Larry and Louis,

Though you are saying some different things from one another, you both sound similar, in differing ways, to Ursula Goodenough in her The Sacred Depths of Nature, which is a scientifically informed version of pantheism. Are you familiar with her work, and if so, how does your thinking compare to hers?

Dear Alexander,

besides ''evolution'' there is only ''revolution''. ''Evolution'' assumes long way, step by step, with small changes etc. ''Revolution'' is on the contrary. I think (intuitively) that all important things in the living life have been created in a revolutionary way: first life (first living organism, the bacterium etc.), first plant, first animal, first human. But their development was and is, by the way (everybody learns, even bacteria and viruses learn to recognize and resist the drugs), in an evolutionary way, as I think.

Bill,

I know just a little bit about Ursula Goodenough. I did not read her books. I only read few parts from her book : Sacred depth of Nature. Although I am sympathic with the recent religious naturalist movement, I find them somehow superficial because they just take science at face value. Science as it is is profoundly fragmented. Science has to be profoundly unified in order to be compatible with the religious traditions of humanity. In the classical pediod of the West , the culture was integrated into a whole cosmology. Aristotle completed the synthesis of this classic cosmology. Christianity integrated this cosmology into Scholastic philosophy. That cosmology was shattered to pieces first by Copernicus, then by Galilieo, Descartes and Newton and the whole enlightment movement. The new scientific world view tried to substituted itself to the old cosmology but it could not do so for many reasons. In order to be compatible with the religious tradition, the scientific world view has to be open to the fundamental notions of these traditions. It is my faith that these traditions are essentially correct and that the scientific tradition is true. What we need is truly get into the depth of all these traditions. Getting into the depth of science is to unify all sciences into unified conception of the generation of the cosmos. It is to cast away the old conception of objectivity, to stop thinking science describe the world as it is and to replace it with a participatory epistemology. To replace the old mechanistic epistemology that forbid any possibility of creation. I can go on and on but I will go back to Goodenough and the modern religious naturalist. My criticism to them is that they take the scientific picture at face value, neglect to contribute to its unification, and tried to surf on it and to institute a new religious in a very superficial manner. I do not think we need new religious traditions. What is needed is to come up with a new scientific cosmology that is integrated through a new story of creation, a new genesis which then could be used by all existing religious tradition of the world, that will integrate it in their own terms, in the terms of their own tratidion, in the continuity. At that point, I think that most people will become pluri-religious.

Louis and Larry, The two of you are more different in your outlooks than I realized. You both have interesting responses.

Louis I am not sure that I understand your view. I would have said that the changes wrought by Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton actually brought science and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into a closer unity. The old perception in Christianity that became the accepted view of cosmology in medieval times was that of the Ptolemaic model of the universe has had no defensible similarity to what is described in Scripture, it just happened to become the accepted view of the medieval Catholic magisteria. Robert Jastrow has written of all the ways that subsequent discoveries, down to and including the concept of the Big Bang, seem to harmonize with the Biblical description of creation. Everything exploding into being out of nothing at the singularity surely sounds a lot like Creatio ex Nihilo. Jastrow addresses this subject in Red Dwarfs and White Giants, Until the Sun Dies, and God and the Astronomers. He draws no conclusions about this, but shows how frustrating and ironic this whole process feels for many coming at things purely from the standpoint of physics. Certainly Sir Fred Hoyle expressed similar thoughts in the past. Gerald Schroeder, the Jewish physicist has a whole number of books that engage the same issues. Although I know Frank Tipler of Tulane University is now in disrepute with many cosmologists, he and Brandon Carter were two of the first physicists to begin theorizing about the different forms (weak and strong) of the Cosmological Anthropic principle. Brandon Carter and Tipler's fellow author Barrow have distanced themselves from this brilliant physicist whom they had previously aligned themselves with. Why, what happened to Tipler? His research seemed to be leading him to metaphysical conclusions. He wrote first from an atheistic perspective, then from a theistic perspective, and now from a Christian perspective. His new notion of the Omega Point cosmology has come under heavy fire from a number of philosophers, but David Deutsch of Oxford, who laid the foundations of the quantum theory of computation, says the physics of the Omega Point cosmology are sound, although he rejects the religious conclusions which Tipler draws from them.

Louis I am not sure what a "participatory epistemology" looks like? What do you have in mind when you speak of that?

Larry, I really can't speak about what you have written in any significant way. I find the statement you quoted: "We have to rid ourselves of all notion of God in order for God to be there." to have no meaningful content. You're quoting a well-known Vietnamese Buddhist monk there, but I am not sure what makes his statement profound in your estimation. Clearly, elsewhere, your thought aligns with Goodenough's more than does Louis'. I am unaware of any reason why I would want to jettison all previous cosmological understandings which align with known faiths and start over again. There certainly are enough well-known researchers who find that faith aligns well with their work in the sciences. I recently heard Gerald Gabrielse, Leverett Professor of Physics at Harvard, and well-known as the pioneer of low-energy antimatter science, speaking of how closely his scientific findings accord with his faith. I am from the same religious tradition as Gabrielse. When we gather for our synods (the coming together of religious leaders from throughout the US and Canada), although there are generally about 600 clergy and lay people present, at the same time there are about 200 trained scientists present. Many of the clergy I know are trained in the sciences. My primary lecturer in Church History when taking courses at Oxford was Alister McGrath. He began as an atheist with a D. Phil. in molecular biophysics. Clearly, many men and women of science find that their love of science does not negate the possibility of an ancient faith being able to harmonize with their understandings.

As I read the two of you I get the impression that you, Louis, are in hopes of seeing an approach to the spiritual and the scientific brought forth, which would harmonize with a humbled (critiqued) science and which would have a pluralistic appeal to people across a wide spectrum. Whereas you Larry, have a sense of the spiritual and of there being something out there beyond our ken, but have some pre-commitments to an agnostic stance about those feelings. I think you begin with an assumption that existing faiths must be mistaken, and have a strong confidence in the sciences and social sciences. This seems like two epistemologies to me. An epistemology of faith where the sciences are concerned, and an epistemology of doubt where religions are concerned. Am I understanding you gentlemen correctly or have I misinterpreted what you are saying?

Larry,

You use the word ''mythology'' almost synonymously with ''naive''. Do you think that the ancient mythologies were naive? Do you think that the mythology of the mauri, or australian aboriginal, or the mythology of the native american are naive? (See Wade Davis - The Wayfinders) I think that if we think of them as being intented to be interpreted litteraly then we are naive. I think that mythology are to be not understood that way and never have been intended to be understood that way. Mythology are poetic and they do not want to be apprehended in the rational or documentary mode. These stories speak of our participation with the world and how we make sense of our life and of the world. They are kind of symbolic expression of the dynamic of our participation. All these characters in these stories are about real cognitive dynamic of our mind. If you try to get an explicit theory of the world out of this framework, it is not going to work. But if you become sensitive to these dynamics, these stories will help you. Like all the stories we tell the children. They are fiction but the good ones, the one children generation after generation want to hear, are meaningfull fictions. Children get the dynamic of the characters, feel those dynamic within them and get into a participatory mode of exploring the world through these fictions. Reality good movies are good on this basis. Good religious stories are good on this basis. It is like good music. The good music for you is the one that has the dynamics you need. You may have many questions about what I exactly mean in this text. I do not know, I just following a poetic dynamic that I think may be appropriate and so I am writing a myth of this situation. Myth are poetic , they are close to the dynamic implicit in us and allow us to expressing them in explicit symbolic forms. All philosophy come from this process. It is not something that was only good for so called primitive people.

Bill,

By cosmology I do not limit this word to only the Big Bang theory or modern scientific cosmology but this include the whole building of modern science, its epistemology and the meaning it is possible to extract from the whole building for our life, individually and collectively.Ask most scientists and you will often get very little of significance. It is what I am saying when I say that modern science is a very poor substituting myth for the antique myth. If you read Jung and Campbell you will get some aspects of this antic cosmological myth. The Big Bang is not really a scientific theory of creation. It is a theory which predict what happen in the last 13.7 billion years on the basis of an intial hypothetical state which is not explained. So it is not a theory of origin. We know quite well that the equations onto which this intial state is assumed cannot be true near the initial state given the incompatibility of quantum mechanics with General Relativity. If a theory of quantum gravity comes to be we may be able to go further in the past but a theory of origin is inconcevable in princitple. Whatever theory someone comes us, whatever equations someone comes up, the question of where does it come from will ever remain. The only answer which is not an answer is that there is nothing to explain these equations, those are the equations of an intial state. The anthropic principle is an artefact of the scientific mode of explanation that assumes the laws of physics are invariant. If one assume that the laws of physics have always existed then obviously you get a Big Bang theory where the law exists at the beginning without explanation for their being. And since the initial state was fine tuned in order to explain the structure of the cosmos and its evolution in the last 13.7 billions years then obviously you get an anthropic principle. It is not surprising it is simply an artefact of a wrong conception of physics were the law are fixed. We need a physics were the laws evolved. So my conception of the cosmos is one of permanent creation and all the phase transition in the evolution of the cosmos correspond to acceleration of the creation process by the access of new mode of creation. One single process of evolution that is accelerating and where the human mind is the apex of this process on this planet. Which bring us to the omega point. Teilhard de Chardin came up with this idea in the 1940's. LIke many other thinkers in the 30's , the emergence of the new global electronic communication network triggers among many thinkers in the 1930's the ideas that these networks were a nervous system of a super human organism emerging on this planet. The omega point is the collective singularity or the birth of a stellar intelligence where individual humans will participate into a truly conscious stellar intelligence on this planet: a Gaia with a brain. It is our coming together and Teilhard tought of this coming event as the coming of Chris. It is just an Christian image but it make total sense all the phase transitions in the evolution of civilisation are acceleration of the collective intelligence.

Participatory epistemology. This is a concept that Goethe is one of the first to elaborated. The phenomenologists have contributed to it. Quantum mechanics has developed a participatory epistemology. Polanyi's epistemology is a participatory epistemology. In biology, Von Uexkull has set the foundation though the concept of functional cycle of an biological participatory epistemology.

PERSONAL PARTICIPATION Michael Polanyi, Eric Voegelin,

and the Indispensability of Faith

Mark T. Mitchell

http://webprint.cairn.edu/upload/User_2596AB54-494E-4D16-B11B-207870FA963C/6C86FFBD-12CA-1CC8-D939-FDC98BF04DF0_Mitchell.pdf

Hello Louis,

I am quite conversant with Jung, Campbell, and de Chardin. As I think you know, Polanyi is one of my favorite writers in philosophy of science. I have simply never heard the term "participatory epistemology". What has stood out above all else in my reading of Polanyi is "Tacit Knowing". Is this "Participatory Epistemology" akin to Tacit Knowing?

Bill,

Participatory epistemology as I am gradually seeing it is a vast topic. Polanyi described the scientific process of discovery in participatory terms. His theory of tacit knowing is central to this. It is an intrinsic artistic and embodied approach. It is in the tradition of Goethe who put it in practice in his theory of colour and in his theory of plant growth. Goethe used a completely experiential/artistic approach to science. Kant contributed a lot to this new way of seeing scientific discovery.

Dear all,

Thank you very much for your answers. It seems that my question was not well understood and this is obviously because I didn't ask it the right way. What I really would like to know is whether I am the only one who feels that in the current science people tend to refer to Evolution whenever they come across the facts they can't explain. Say, why do birds have wings? "Because they evolved this way" would be the typical answer. The correct answer to me would be to show, for example in simulations, that there is a path that continuously lead from wingless creatures to those with wings, so that every step on this path augments the fitness of the evolving creature. There are people who do this job, but they are the minority, while the majority uses Evolution as an ultimate reason for everything.

Dear Alexander,

I not familiar with this kind of researcher that are satisfied with shallow explanations as that example you used on birds wings. But if someone tries to use that as a full-explanation for anything, you are right to criticize and question it. If you have any specific trait you wish to discuss or that I can give you some paper reference it would be a pleasure being of some help.

But as I said in my first answer, even if we do not know HOW a wing evolved(what were the selective preasures involved or which intermediated states were needed -wich is not truly the case for feathers-wings evolution) this is not equal to say that it DO NOT evolved, since we know that the ancestors and ancetsral sister-groups of Aves (non-avian Dinossaurs) had no wing, so this phenotypic change, is by definion, evolution. My point is that simply say that something evolve is not a onerous claim, it takes only that we have variation on inherited traits that changed through time. Other question, more complex and that seems to be your interest, is explain HOW something evolved, and surely needs evidence and logical explanations.

When we look at evolution, we encounter many types of behaviors, but one in special and relatively new, is chaos. Chaos in particular, is also an encounter with the most humble condition of all; and it is, to take on account our own limitations when searching the greatest precision possible.  

Through chaos, fractals and nonlinear behaviors, my work is been related with the evolution of life and how chaotic behaviors represent an encounter with our own limitations when predicting it, or expecting it. Here I share with you the article which concludes numerically that intelligent life is unique in the universe.

Through evolutionary chaos we can actually see, why is really hard to explain how things were and are at work. I personally find this condition as related to a divine will as your questing is inquiring.

Article Evolution through the stochastic dyadic Cantor Set: the uniq...