I agree that variations are not caused by natural selection; Darwin agrees , too. Darwin’s theory is that nature selects from the variation; not that it causes it. However , Darwin didn’t know what caused the variation .
With the discoveries of genes-DNA , it was discovered that variety in a population of the same species is _caused_ by genetic mutations.
If nature selects a newly arising mutation over the old genotype from which the new gene mutated ( the old type goes extinct ) then there’s evolution of the species . What nature selects is what the species evolves to.
After the origin of the genus Homo , with homo habilis and Stone tools made based upon in culture and language , symbolically guided behavior and communication , based in ancestral legacy , the physical evolution is mainly increase in brain size ; and the cultural evolution is the main way genus homo adapts in the natural selection sense . There is some physical evolution ( of skin color , etc ) , but mostly adaption through cultural inventions and evolution .
On Aug 27, 2021, at 3:10 PM, Tony Black
Well, I will simply quote the back-cover blurb (which, unfortunately, conveys little of Reid’s eloquence, force of exposition and argumentative nuance, but does get across at least one central theme):
“In Biological Emergences, Robert Reid argues that natural selection is not the cause of evolution. He writes that the causes of variations, which he refers to as natural experiments, are independent of natural selection; indeed, he suggests, natural selection may get in the way of evolution [i.e. acting merely as a filter or stabilizing force. Tony] Reid proposes an alternative theory to explain how emergent novelties are generated and under what conditions they can overcome the resistance of natural selection. He suggests that what causes innovative variation causes evolution, and that these phenomena are environmental as well as organismal.”
Right now Amazon.ca has his book (paperback) on for $7.21 Cd (!)…i.e. a steal!
https://www.amazon.ca/Biological-Emergences-Evolution-Natural-Experiment/dp/0262513404/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=robert+g+b+reid&qid=1630090098&sr=8-3
Also, his first book (1987), ‘Evolutionary Theory: The Unfinished Synthesis’ is an absolute gem. It introduces many of the concepts found in his opus (‘Biological Emergences’) of 2007, but with an absolutely awe inspiring review of the historical literature regarding evolutionary theory in general. Strangely, the hardback edition is the least expensive (whilst still coming in at a pricey $43.17 Cd). https://www.amazon.ca/Evolutionary-Theory-Unfinished-Robert-Reid/dp/0801418313/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1630090098&sr=8-1
Reid is also a big fan of my friend Prof. Emeritus C. D. Rollo whose 1994 book, ‘Phenotypes’ is yet another of what I consider to be the greatest modern works on evolutionary theory over the past half century. Unfortunately Dave’s volume will set you back a bit more at $73.74 Cd (still, a steal…as formerly it was going for upwards of $450). https://www.amazon.ca/Phenotypes-Their-epigenetics-ecology-evolution/dp/0412410303/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=C.+D.+Rollo&qid=1630090506&sr=8-1
One other work I will mention is Andreas Wagner’s, ‘Arrival of the Fittest’ which employs ‘biological systems theory’ to reveal the phase spaces of ‘metabolic, protein and gene networks’ and their surprisingly interconnected ‘libraries’….Unfortunately, right now, Wagner’s book is very expensive though you can order kindle editions reasonably cheap.
In short, Reid’s 2007 book looks at the causes, mechanisms and conditions of *variation* and ‘emergence; Rollo’s book looks at the hierarchal, integrated circuitry of the genome, i.e. the actual organization of organism; and Wagner’s book looks at the phase space of innovation and innovability (and how and why evolution is, far from being ‘hard’, is both ‘easy’ and inevitable).
PS There is only one copy of Rollo’s book available. Let me know if you have intention to buy, and I will leave it for you….otherwise I’m going to pick it up, as my present edition is somewhat dilapidated.
Tony
From: Charles Brown
Yes an organism’s behaviour in the struggles for existence, for self-preservation, and in snuggles for reproduction , courting and mating , play the essential role in natural and sexual selection , or the evolution of their type over generations .
the mutations , point or otherwise , that give an adaptive advantage , arise randomly relative to the adaptive problem that they solve .
Thanks on Professor Reid . Might you quote some of his key passages ?
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 26, 2021, at 4:01 PM, Tony Black
Certainly an organism’s own behaviour plays a vital role in its own (biological) evolution. Though the complexities here are many, the old notion of purely ‘random mutation’ – especially random *point* mutations - playing the primary role in evolution is patently wrong; at the very least, inadequate.
I have mentioned him before, but I will do so again: The late Prof. Robert G. B. Reid’s, ‘Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment’, is an essential read in this regard.
https://www.amazon.ca/Biological-Emergences-Evolution-Natural-Experiment/dp/0262513404/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Robert+G.+B.+Reid&qid=1630007988&s=books&sr=1-2
From: a-list-request@lists.riseup.net
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/05/culturally-inherited-adaptations-give.html
Monday, May 17, 2021 Culturally inherited adaptations give human species high Darwinian fitness Darwin’s natural laws , physiology laws , DNA-gene laws, and ecological laws are the central organizing principles of Modern Biology. The laws of symbolically constituted language and culture as the defining characteristics of humans are the central organizing principles of anthropology. Symbolic communication and behavior give humans a way of adapting ( in the Darwinian sense ) that is more efficient than adapting based on random genetic mutation, because cultural adaptations are caused by the adaptive problem ( problems in the struggle for existence) that they solve ; the adaptive problem causes humans to invent in symbolic thought , imagination, a solution to the adaptive problem . With language and culture , Necessity is the mother of invention ( which is a materialist philosophical , not idealist , explanation, because the material survival necessity changes the ideas of the human inventor , changes her culture ) Culture allows non-random Darwinian adaption , unlike genetic adaptations ; the adaptive solution does not arise only coincidentally with the problem it solves , not just by luck as with genetic adaptations. For example , we might hypothesize that Homo erectuses invented clothes or controlled fire in response to moving into colder regions North of Africa . The acts of invention were caused by the problem in the struggle for existence of cold body temperature. The adaptive problem caused its own solution. Relying on the adaptation by way of genetic changes ( maybe to grow fur) would mean waiting on a genetic mutation NOT CAUSED BY THE COLDER TEMPERATURE, a mutation not caused by the adaptive problem, but arising coincidentally with the problem it solves. In this hypothetical thought experiment, survival in the struggle for existence, material necessity, changes the cultural ideas of the inventors , adds a custom of clothes , costumes to the their customs , their traditions , their culture. Non-randomly arising solutions to adaptive problems are La Marckian-LIKE. In LaMarck’s famous thought experiment as to “how the giraffe got its long neck”, the adaptive problem of food only available high up _causes_ the giraffe to solve the problem by stretching its neck ( this is a fictional account). The solution does not arise _randomly_ relative to the problem it solves. More adaptive problems are solved if the problem tends to cause its own solution than if the solutions just happen luckily to occur as with _random_ genetic mutations solving adaptive problems. Thus , with culture, language (symbolic inheritance, symbolic imagination and symbolic communication ) humans have a more efficient adaptive process than all other life forms. Humans have both cultural , non-random adaptation and random genetic mutation adaptation . Other life forms , species , only have random genetic mutation adaptation. How does symbolic thinking allow humans to invent solutions to adaptive problems in response to the problem arising ? Because symbolic thinking allows imaginative thinking or imagination is a form of symbolic thinking ; imagination empowers invention. Furthermore, symbolic thinking allows SYMBOLIC INHERITANCE of adaptive inventions by future generations ! Genes and culture/words are inherited - IN DIFFERENT WAYS . For example , almost all the words in the vocabulary of a living generation were invented by dead past generations , inherited. (paragraph) Ancestor veneration The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations through SYMBOLIC INHERITANCE . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Issac Newton put it . Accumulated knowledge gives a growing ability to adapt, in Darwin’s sense , to problems in the struggle for existence . https://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/09/symbolic-inheritance.html Symbolic Inheritance For anthropology, culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance is the unique species characteristic of _homo sapiens_. In a sense, "culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance is another word for "wisdom", from the notion that humans are the species _homo wise_. It is humans socially learned practices, customs, language, traditions, beliefs, religion, spirituality that make us "wise" in so many ways, certainly clever and winners _as a species_ ( not just as a few "fit" Individuals) in the struggles and snuggles to survive as a species. Since the advent of civilization, sometimes it's not so clear how wise our culture makes us. Greed, slavery, war, male supremacy, Egoism originate with Civilization ! It is better termed Savagery and Barbarism. Therein lies the central drama of the history of the human species. Nonetheless, clearly in the Stone Age, our having culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance was a highly adaptive advantage over species that did not have culture , stone tools , scientific knowledge (!) standing on the shoulders of dead generations , raising our species fitness. This is evidenced by _homo sapiens_ expanding in population and therefore migrating to an expanded area of living space across the earth , out of what is now Africa to the other continents. Stone Age foraging and kinship organized , peaceful and sharing societies were the mode of life for the vast majority of time of human species ' existence, 90% plus Differentia specifica of human species is symbolic communication and behavior - language and culture . I write here a critique of Engels’ essay “The Role of Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man” in part based on Marx’s claim that human labor is differentiated from all other species “ labor by the role of imagination “! ( (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm ) Otherwise , in his anthropological _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the State _ , Engels is profoundly correct on the difference between the Stone Age and Civilization and other issues. My critique of Engels on this point is informed by the current biological ( human evolution) and cultural anthropological facts on origin of tool use , stone tool use ; and the nature of language and culture as SYMBOLIC communication and behavior . Origin of tool use and origin of language and culture is the issue Engels speculates concerning in “The Role of Labour in the transition from Ape to Man“. My basic difference with him is that language and culture allowed the invention of labor with Stone tools created by imagination; not labor created language and culture ( symbolic communication and behavior ; see definition of symbolic signs below ) ; I plead not guilty to the charge of philosophical idealism -smiles . The origin of humans is the origin of language and culture , NOT the origin of bipedalism and hands freed from walking on all fours . ( see pre-human , habitually bipedal primates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecine) “Engels never finished Dialectics of Nature. Haldane, in his preface to the 1939 publication of Dialectics of Nature, regrets that it remained unpublished for a long time, and writes, “Had his remarks on Darwinism been generally known, I for one would have been saved a certain amount of muddled thinking.” One of its unfinished fragments is on the role of labor in human evolution, more specifically the evolution of the hand. It is the evolution of the hand through the process of labor—creating tools—that distinguishes humans from apes. Engels writes, “Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour.” It is not the evolution of the hand that led to our evolution as a species but the coevolution of the hand and labor as a historical process.” The bottomline of my critique in the blog below is : Language and culture , symbolic communication and symbolically guided behavior, originate 2.5 million years ago and enable homo habilis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis) to make the first Stone tools . ( THE ORIGIN OF HUMANS IS IN THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE , SYMBOLIC COMMUNICATION AND BEHAVIOR) It is NOT that the ancestral bipedal species (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecine) to homo habilis started using its hands ( freed by bipedalism ; standing on two feet instead of four freeing the hands ) and that caused them to start symbolic communication and behavior as Engels speculates . ( this is not idealist philosophical error on my part ; I will explain why not below) Here is Engels’ essay The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm The following is my blog item critiquing Engels‘ essay. http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/02/more-leisure-is-homo-sapiens-species.html More Leisure is Homo sapiens species essence ; May Day demand More Leisure ( than our ancestral primate species had) is our species essence ( See "The Original Affluent Society" by my anthropological mentor and senior anthro major advisor ,Marshall Sahlins , in _Stone Age Economics_ ) . Foraging is a mode of direct appropriation from nature , not a mode of production; making a living by gigging smart not working hard. It was not that bi-pedalism and the origin of hands originated a new labor that caused the invention of tradition , names and words . The invention of culture and language in childcare by mothers ( I’m saying mothers invented names , words , symbolic communication to improve childcare, reproductive labor ) was extended to making a living ( the Darwinian struggle for existence) ; language and culture revolutionized the human struggle for existence by making it smarter, wiser, because of accumulation of knowledge over many generations . Language gives humans the capacity for dead generations to leave communications about their experiences to future living generations) . Also More leisure gives more time to think and thereby work even smarter. Symbolic communication allows : Ancestor veneration The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Issac Newton put it concerning his scientific ancestors . Engels is wrong in "The Role of Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man" when he says "First labour, after it and then with it speech ..." CB : First long childcare , then names and speech invented by mothers to do better childcare , and then a transition to LESS toil in the struggle for existence , to smarter struggle for existence informed by ancestral experience , and more leisure as compared with primate species ancestral to homo habilis and the origin of the Stone Age . Stone tools were invented to allow making a living less toilsome and more efficient . Perhaps the topic would be better named the transition in the struggle for existence in the transition from ape to man : the origin of imagination. Stone Age society is Societas ( anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan’s term in _Ancient Society_ ) beginning 2.5 million years ago ; to circa 6,000 years ago with the beginning of Civitas ( Morgan ) private property, greed , slavery and heavy labor ( as Engels teaches in _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the State _ ) . Slavery is the origin of Hard work , work ethic. With so-called civilization, hard work ethic comes to dominate cultural ideas . So, hard labour is not our Stone Age, species-being , but civilization-being, which is a small fraction of the full time of our species history. I think Engels anachronistically projects the determining role of labor on ideas ( the historical materialist principle ) back onto the Stone Age origins of language and culture . In fact the invention of language and culture revolutionized the bipedal primates’ struggle for existence by making it less of a struggle . Toilsome struggle was introduced with _slave_ labor in so-called civilization where historical materialist determination originates. Nonetheless , Marx and Engels do propose transition from the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom . Freedom is Leisure and smart work through technology . Jobs lost to technological invention should be translated into more leisure time for the masses, a May Day demand. [Marxism-Thaxis] The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man c b Thu, 27 May 2010 05:54:49 -0700 What about the transition in labor in the transition from ape to man ? This essay uses "labor" in the sense that it is something that apes do; it is their struggle for existence , for survival in the Darwinian sense . So, it is not the same "labor" ( or is it work ?) that produces capitalist surplus value in _Capital_I, but the “labor “ more general to all animals that Marx describes in Chapter so and so , where he says the difference between the labor of spiders and bees and that of man is imagining the project as a plan first ( this implies that spiders and bees labor). Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm So, Marx’s implication ( contra Engels in “The Role of Labor “ ) is that in the transition from ape to man, labor transitioned in part by taking on more mental labor, imagination and planning , as a component. Imagination is a form of symbolic thinking . Symbolic thinking defines humans , differentiates humans from all other species despite the false and exaggerated claims for chimps and gorillas by some primatologists [Marxism-Thaxis] The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man c b Thu, 27 May 2010 13:32:42 -0700 Engels: “But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.” ^^^^^ CB: Ahhh but how ? How did the experience of repetition of use of _a_ hand by one individual get transferred to the brains of the next generation and the next , become the experience of _The_ hand ? If Patriarch uses his hands thousands of times his increasing dexterity is based on accumulated experience in that one individual's brain. The next generation's brains go back to "square one" at birth and childhood . The only way to accumulate the knowledge across generations is by mediating the learning experience with language, imagination, symbolic communication The only way to "stand on the shoulders of giants" is to receive messages from them through a system of symbols, words . ( as in those days there wasn't the technology to take enough pictures) "The" hand is not the hand of an individual, but The Hand, as a concept, an organ of the species. ( Symbolic signs - words being the best example - have an _arbitrary_ relation between the sign and the thing signified . They are using something to represent something that they are not. In my class , I write my name on the board -Charles Brown . Then I point out that the marks on the board are not me; but they are used to represent me. So a name is using something to represent something it is not . There is an arbitrary relation between a name and the person named . “What’s in a name ? A rose by any other is just as sweet. The opposite of a symbolic sign is an _indexical_ sign . There is a necessary ( not arbitrary ) relationship between the sign and the thing signified . A favorite example is smoke and fire . Smoke is an indexical sign of fire . Only humans have symbolic signs . Humans and all other animals communicate or read indexical signs ; humans have both -despite the exaggerated claims for chimps and gorillas by some animals rights primatologists. Symbolic and indexical signs are basic ideas of semiotics .( http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/) The arbitrary relation between symbolic signs and thing signified gives humans a DISPLACEMENT capacity . Humans can communicate with each other about events that are not in their immediate sensory field , like things that happened a week ago , or things that are on the other side of town See https://owlcation.com/stem/The-difference-between-animal-and-human-communication I CLAIM TO HAVE DISCOVERED BY LOGICAL IMPLICATION THAT THE UNIQUE DISPLACEMENT CAPACITY OF HUMANS ALLOWS ACCUMULATION OF KNOWLEDGE OVER GENERATIONS BECAUSE A LIVING GENERATION CAN SHARE THE EXPERIENCE OF DEAD GENERATIONS , SHARE _DISPLACED_ EXPERIENCES . Therefore , it was the ability to experience the displaced experiences of dead generations, symbolic thinking , that allowed the first humans to make Stone tools ( reverse of Engels’ idea) Again , Symbolic communication allows : Ancestor veneration The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Issac Newton put it concerning his scientific ancestors . Sent from my iPhone
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