Mt. Improbable, Revisited

By the time he did, nearly three centuries had elapsed since Newton's annus mirabilis

Three centuries? Wasn't it closer to two?

Unless you've read it already, let me recommend one of Gould's lesser books, Full House. While the writing didn't grab me as much as some of Gould's others (very repetitive), one idea is worth noting in the context of Dawkins' "climbing" metaphor.

You'll remember my problem with the climbing metaphor is that (to me, anyway) it implies the notion of goal-direction. There's a mountain; why should an otherwise random path choose to go up, against the force of gravity? Non-goal-directed paths generally don't choose a consistent direction against physical laws: when's the last time you saw the course of a river climb a mountain, rather than run down one?

In Full House, Gould introduces the following idea: Life Begins, in some primitive form. From there, if evolution is random, it will proceed in directions both more and less complex. But if it becomes less complex, it's no longer Life As We Know It. So life has evolved in random fashion, but while that evolution has produced a great variety of more complex species (though as would be expected, most new forms are simple - there is a far greater variety of simpler life forms, such as bacteria, than more complex ones) there is nowhere to go in the less-complex direction. Thus the appropriate metaphor is not a path up a mountain, but rather something like the growth of a bush planted right against the side of a wall, branching off randomly in all directions in one hemisphere (as simple, more complex), but unable to grow at all in the other direction (less complex).

Tresmal:

The concern regarding ascribing ascent of the hill as being "goal-oriented" is an understandable artifact of the metaphor. The progress up the "hillside" of the mountain is not necessarily direct. There may be crevices and potholes which describe the slippage of complex forms back down to less complexity. All of evolutionary advance appears to be anti-entropic, but in the mountain-organism-environment system we understand that it isn't so. At the level of the individual selection juncture, the more fit form is able to make the upward climb, against gravity or against more efficient energy utilization.

I prefer Dawkin's metaphor to your bush metaphor and suggest that metaphors are tools of communication that cannot be prototypic, by definition. Mount Improbable is a model which I think communicates quite well to all but those who have trouble visualizing either the mountain or the fact that less-complex forms tend towards more-complex forms to solve the crisis at the selection junction.

Perhaps Darwin's ideas are too complex to ascribe to metaphor. Certainly, the development of the eye would seem miraculous if one chooses to ignore the less dramatic sets of minor changes leading to fitter forms which have occurred in so many examples.

MikeO: I think you're addressing Jud's comment. Mine was the nitpicky one about the elapsed time between Newton and Darwin.

Yah. It should be two centuries.

Maybe we should put Dawkins' head on pike though, just to make sure it never happens again :)

JJ, is this on your list?

Leni, don't forget your specialty is motherpucking, not fatherpiking.

MikeO wrote: Mount Improbable is a model which I think communicates quite well to all but those who have trouble visualizing...the fact that less-complex forms tend towards more-complex forms....

My trouble with the Mount Improbable model is precisely that it makes people think it is a "fact" that "less-complex forms tend towards more-complex forms." There is no such "fact" in evolutionary theory of which I'm aware. If you can find some support for an evolutionary tendency favoring complexity in a current textbook or other reliable source (that isn't simply an artifact of poor writing), I'd appreciate knowing about it.

Jason says,

Glad we cleared that up.

I don't think your interpretation of the point Dawkins was making with his mountain climbing metaphor was in dispute. Was it?

"But I want to believe that, through the eyes of my faith, this is how God created the world and that God cares about that world." Giberson

"I want ..."
Why does a person "want" to believe something about a god or more basically "want to believe" there us a god to believe in?

Why not "not want to"?

You don't need a supernatural being to explain anything. It is an idea which interferes with understanding. It contaminates it. No knowledge is added or reached by saying "this is the way god does things" in regard to evolution (or anything else).

"I want to believe there is a supernatural being who designed evolution. I see order, complexity, causal relationships, great duration and diversity in nature. I know there is a supernatural being, though I can't sense that that being I feel "him". I believe, actually I really know but can't prove it to others. Right now a supernatural participation in every thing that was, is, or will be. Don't you see, there has to be! I feel it!"

Some want that version of life and living. It would be difficult to not want that version once it is an identity that renounces any knowledge that contradicts it.

I suppose (a hunch, only) that there is a net directionality arrow that tends to point in the direction of complexity, simply because there could be (part of my hunch) more ecological niches that are available to more complex ctitters. The 'less complex' niches are more thoroughly occupied with existing life forms. A life form attempting to occupy a 'simpler' niche just has more competition, and so is less likely to survive, on average.

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Jud said:
"My trouble with the Mount Improbable model is precisely that it makes people think it is a "fact" that "less-complex forms tend towards more-complex forms." There is no such "fact" in evolutionary theory of which I'm aware. If you can find some support for an evolutionary tendency favoring complexity in a current textbook or other reliable source (that isn't simply an artifact of poor writing), I'd appreciate knowing about it."

I think that the problem you are looking at here is better explained by Matt Ridley in a book called "The Red Queen."

Ivar Husa has a good point about all the lesser niches being filled early in the game. This is also a valid point, but we must understand that not all selection is due to sexual preferences. Ridley's point is that survival itself is an arms race between predator and prey, between mates, between mother and child, all looking out for their own individual best interests.

Another point to digest in this argument is the Baldwin Effect originally put forward by James Mark Baldwin in 1896 and further explored in detail by Daniel Dennett suggests something similar to your bush idea attributed to Steven Gould. Baldwin assumed a rate of random mutation some of which were "good tricks" and some of which were detrimental to the life of the organism. Unfortunately, detrimental mutations are just that, detrimental to the organism's reproductive success. On the other hand, some mutations are neutral or offer a net benefit to the organism. These characteristics, are passed on to the organisms progeny.

We must understand that not all organisms in a population are homogeneous. There is localized pockets of random variation within every group, so in essence, your argument is partially correct. There is no ONE path up Mount Improbable, and certainly, Richard Dawkins knows this fact. I have not personally read every scrap of paper the man has written but I have read enough to make this educated assumption that his simplification was just that.

You people need to get over yourselves and quit scrutinizing every syllable this man utters in search for a loophole. Dawkins sometimes make the assumption that at least a portion of his audience has done their homework and will understand where he is coming from. In that, he is entirely correct, the problem is that many of those listening are far from being fans of his work.

Your comment that there is no FACT to back up Dawkins proves a certain naivete about scientific method. We cannot ever PROVE any FACT in science. There is no guide that states "ok when you get to this point, your theory will never be disputed." This simply does not happen in the real world. We simply observe the occurrences, make inferences about how we think things will behave in the future, and wait for someone else to disprove our hypothesis or support it with other evidence. In Dawkins' case, the supporting evidence by authors too numerous to list on Jason's blog do support the gneeral claim towards climbing Mount Improbable.

The social world, the symbolized, the world of spoken meaning is a niche nested in the natural world that science knows about. All human interaction is linguistically enabled.

Science has not yet been able (if ever) to account (fully) for the humanly experienced world. Culture with all its complexity and variety seems to require the acceptance of an idea such as "transcendent" (or if you prefer a "capacity for abstraction") to account for the symbolized world of the human species.

The idea "transcendent" seems to strain at least, but more likely is not consistent with the space/time/matter idea of a lawful mechanized physical universe. A degree of freedom seems evident at even the behavioral level of culture, but more obviously at the linguistic level of symbols. They seems to require a recognition of an X that empirical science cannot recognize as legitimate within the empirical perspective.

Therefore, either naively or dishonestly, science takes X for granted. It must be taken as a given to proceed because the enigma of the relation of the objective and X (subjective, consciousness?) has not yet been resolved.

I have unique direct access to a manifold of experience that is only available to you through communication symbols. And you?