Complexity and social Evolution

[Thunderbird]

One description of a good scientific theory is that of a model or tool that generates information.
If a scientific model provides solutions to problems not yet solved by present models, its probably a good model, when these solutions provide information that you never expected, or could not have predicted it usually means its a really good theory.

The theory of evolution is one of these really good models, and has held up to the test of time......so far.

But consider the following; are these current models shedding any practical light on problems and challenges to the common man ? or, for that matter mankind in general? Are these models providing practical applications to help our species survive in changing times ?Can we afford to hold on to outdated paradigms that were intended only to objectively observe the evolutionary process, without taking into account that we are still subject to some sort evolutionary process.. From this point of view, the traditional Darwinian models, although correct, are in fact outdated, in that they do not provide or translate into a social relevancy concurrent to the needs of common people.


Evolution and the study of evolution can no longer be solely objective activities.
Both are the acquisition and utilization of information from the world around us. The question must now be ask; How does this information from the past help us as a species to survive, And dare I say, evolve further?

Are these current models of “survival of the fittest” the best possible paradigms for life in the 21st century ? Are they providing sufficient information needed in creating a world that utilizes the highest of human potentiality? A paradigm where we are all invited to participate.

I believe the science of emergence, systems theory, and complexity, can provide a much needed pragmatism to Darwinian models that will,.. by there nature, promote and assist mankind in a self-organizing global society.

Caveat: These models are not mine, and certainly are not new to science, they are currently being utilized in virtually in every scientific field, and even in evolutionary biology, although the ID movement is attempting to misappropriate these models as a religious wedge within the academic community. We cannot let this happen. If you believe this cannot happen, you need to wake up.

[REASON]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

But consider the following; are these current models shedding any practical light on problems and challenges to the common man ? or, for that matter mankind in general? Are these models providing practical applications to help our species survive in changing times ?Can we afford to hold on to outdated paradigms that were intended only to objectively observe the evolutionary process, without taking into account that we are still subject to some sort evolutionary process. From this point of view, the traditional Darwinian models, although correct, are in fact outdated, in that they do not provide or translate into a social relevancy concurrent to the needs of common people.

I don't agree that they should. Why is it necessary in the understanding of biological evolutionary processes to integrate social relevance and problem solving for the common man?

This sounds somewhat like the ideas surrounding Social Darwinism. Is that your intention?

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

Evolution and the study of evolution can no longer be solely objective activities. Both are the acquisition and utilization of information from the world around us. The question must now be ask; How does this information from the past help us as a species to survive, And dare I say, evolve further?

Are these current models of “survival of the fittest” the best possible paradigms for life in the 21st century ? Are they providing sufficient information needed in creating a world that utilizes the highest of human potentiality? A paradigm where we are all invited to participate.

I believe the science of emergence, systems theory, and complexity, can provide a much needed pragmatism to Darwinian models that will,.. by there nature, promote and assist mankind in a self-organizing global society.

I think you need to elaborate on this a bit. It has a real Social Engineering flavor to it. Am I misunderstanding? What are you getting at?

[Buffy]

To be self-referential, scientific advance is usually evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Its certainly a good idea to keep an open mind for the revolutionary changes, but insisting that you must throw out the "old ideas" to see the new ones is just as short-sighted as not being open minded.

Now as Reason points out, what you seem to be talking about is Social Darwinism, which is actually generally discredited not only because its been used largely to justify racism and class warfare, but simply because the analogies become strained: there are no discrete entities to reproduce even if the morphologically identifiable features appear to evolve.

If you're looking for a theory of how societies and social structures evolve, I'd say its wide open with *no* accepted theories, so there's no "old order" to overturn.

Trying to create such a conflict in my view, simply makes your task much more complicated!

Is that how you're going to apply complexity?

America is addicted to wars of distraction,
Buffy

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Buffy

To be self-referential, scientific advance is usually evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Its certainly a good idea to keep an open mind for the revolutionary changes, but insisting that you must throw out the "old ideas" to see the new ones is just as short-sighted as not being open minded.


Buffy

Read the post. No where did I say Thow out, rather Update.

I believe the science of emergence, systems theory, and complexity, can provide a much needed pragmatism to Darwinian models that will,.. by there nature, promote and assist mankind in a self-organizing global society.

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by REASON

This sounds somewhat like the ideas surrounding Social Darwinism. Is that your intention?

Social Darwinism ? This thread is about complexity. read the post.

Are these current models of “survival of the fittest” the best possible paradigms for life in the 21st century ? Are they providing sufficient information needed in creating a world that utilizes the highest of human potentiality? A paradigm where we are all invited to participate.

This statement is in opposition to Social Darwinism. Hello.

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Buffy

To be self-referential, scientific advance is usually evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Its certainly a good idea to keep an open mind for the revolutionary changes, but insisting that you must throw out the "old ideas" to see the new ones is just as short-sighted as not being open minded.

Now as Reason points out, what you seem to be talking about is Social Darwinism, which is actually generally discredited not only because its been used largely to justify racism and class warfare, but simply because the analogies become strained: there are no discrete entities to reproduce even if the morphologically identifiable features appear to evolve.

Mankind’s enviable fate will not depend on any scientific or institutional intelligentsia that we can invent, but will succumb to the eventual Tao, or way, inherent within information itself.

This is the essence of emerging self organizing systems. I am seaking about creativity as opposed to control.It is about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

[REASON]

You know T-Bird, Your little immature sheep references aren't going to garner you any respect around here. It's childish. It doesn't bother me because it only ends up being a way in which you make yourself look foolish.

Now I was not accusing your concept (or whosever it is) as being Social Darwinism, I was asking if that's what you were getting at? Social Evolution and Social Darwinism at first don't sound all that different. A simple no with clarification as to why I am misunderstanding will suffice in an adult conversation. I didn't find your premise clear, and it appears Buffy didn't either. In fact, I still don't know what you're getting at.

Normally, I would enjoy discussing something like this with you since I function better in a philosophy setting. But what's the point? If I want to talk to children, I'll just talk to my kids.

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

Read the post. No where did I say Thow out, rather Update.

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

Can we afford to hold on to outdated paradigms that were...

Unless you're using a different meaning of the word "paradigm" this does indeed imply throwing the whole theory out. But to echo what Reason just said: regardless of whether the paradigm of Social Darwinism actually is accepted or not and whether we need to not "hold on to the outdated paradigm"--which I simply argue is unnecessary because there is no "accepted" paradigm--you might just want to get on with describing what you're talking about!

Does complexity have impacts on systems of any kind? Sure! Are social structures subject to Complexity? Sure!

The question is what is the point you're trying to make?

A man who dreads trials and difficulties cannot become a revolutionary,
Buffy

[HydrogenBond]

Science evolution and social evolution moves in the direction of complexity until it is able to evolve into simplicity. For example, when PC's first appeared there we literally dozens of producers each with their own operating systems and hardware. The real progression came when this was simplified with Microsoft and Apple making compatibility easier. Even the world wide web or WWW, was in anticipation of many webs. But it too got thinned down to WWW so now, one doesn't even has to type that. The first railroads began with each competitor having a different gauge rail making transitions very complicated This to was simplified to one gauge allowing the RR to more quickly evolve.

If you look at nature, chlorophyl is responsible for photosynthesis. Nature may have tested many prototypes but settled on simplicity. From this simplicity there was a new round of complexity. The complexity, in turn, reaches a crisis point, requiring a new simplification as a platform for further complexity.

If you look in practical terms, complexity looks more impressive, but it is harder to create simplicity than complexity. With complexity one shifts the idea to only a narrow range of people who can follow it. With simplicity a wider range of humans can participate allowing more innovation. Complexity is impressive looking, but simplicity is just plain impressive.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

One description of a good scientific theory is that of a model or tool that generates information.
…
But consider the following; are these current models shedding any practical light on problems and challenges to the common man ? or, for that matter mankind in general? Are these models providing practical applications to help our species survive in changing times ?

In most of the areas applicable to which evolutionary biology is applicable – environmental and therapeutic medicine, agriculture, etc. - I believe so.

Though it’s more fun to be able to express novel, original ideas, I feel compelled here to state an old, unoriginal one: Science has proven far more effective in providing problems to engineering problems than social ones. I agree with a sentiment attributed to Korzybski: if governments were half as good at building treaties as engineers were at building bridges, the world would be a paradise.

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

Can we afford to hold on to outdated paradigms that were intended only to objectively observe the evolutionary process, without taking into account that we are still subject to some sort evolutionary process.. From this point of view, the traditional Darwinian models, although correct, are in fact outdated, in that they do not provide or translate into a social relevancy concurrent to the needs of common people.

I’ve a hunch where Thunderbird is going with this. Correct me, please, if I’m badly off track.

In the simplest terms I can put it, in the form of a question: can scientific methods be applied to social problems?

This is essentially the question asked around 1919 by Korzybski. His answer, was the discipline of General Semantics, an essentially reductionistic, description-based approach – though I badly oversimplify, and don’t properly understand the discipline – based on the idea that all social problems are due to imprecision in the language, or notation, used to describe them. It’s not unreasonable to extrapolate that this approach underlies the arguably utopian (and arguably dystopian) fictional future society described Lois Lowry’s 1994 Newbery Medal winning novel, “The Giver”.

After 90 years of remaining a fairly obscure and generally poorly understood discipline, though, I’m skeptical that GS, or any approach based on language will transform civilization – but, as I’ve already admitted to the belief that my forte in speculating about such things, mathematical formalism, is of limited utility, my skepticism is not, I think, of much consequence.

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

Evolution and the study of evolution can no longer be solely objective activities.

While an argument can be made that the study of anything is ideally an objective activity, I don’t believe participation in evolution has never, for any animal at any time, been other than subjective. Like any animal, we humans are completely immersed in the process evolutionary biology studies. Contrary to common belief, evidence and analysis suggest that we humans are evolving rapidly, as such processes are measured. With the understanding of the molecular basis of genetics gained essentially all in the past half century, and the rapidly improving discipline of bioinformatics, we may be poised on a period of dramatically accelerated evolution, due to our ability to influence evolution in way other than the ancient, semi-unintentional techniques of selective breeding and species eradication. I can only guess, with hardly any certainty, how much or how little this may influence human and other species evolution in the evolutionary biological eyeblink of the next century.

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

Are these current models of “survival of the fittest” the best possible paradigms for life in the 21st century ? Are they providing sufficient information needed in creating a world that utilizes the highest of human potentiality? A paradigm where we are all invited to participate.

I’m skeptical that new systems of belief among humans – be they religions, worldviews, scientific paradigms, or mash-ups of all these and others – will be of more significance in the coming centuries than they have been in the past.

Human history over the past 5,000 or so years has been one of many different dominant worldviews, differing dramatically in ways that humans believe, emotionally and intellectually, to be of vital significance, but the outcome has consistently been an increase in the human population, in part due to simple zoology – we humans are large, versatile apes, capable of thriving in and dominating a wide range of ecological niches – and in other large part due to technology - primarily agriculture and agriculture-related. I’m making an unscientific guess in doing so, but strongly suspect that, no matter how perilous and uncertain the future looks to us now, this trend will continue.

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

I believe the science of emergence, systems theory, and complexity, can provide a much needed pragmatism to Darwinian models that will,.. by there nature, promote and assist mankind in a self-organizing global society.

I believe these concepts and disciplines not only will, but already have, profoundly influenced the Darwinian theory of evolution and its models. Although they are not always apparent and popular and specialized scientific literature, complexity and chaos theory permeate the thinking behind conventional science, especially the life sciences.

However, as I noted above, I’m skeptical – with the exception of two areas - that these ideas will alter human and animal evolution more dramatically than the once new ideas of the past did in their time. The two areas:

• Bioinformatics and molecular biology - These related disciplines have the potential for humans – or at least information systems created by humans – to completely understand biology, much as we can say we have essentially completely understand ideal gases for more than a century. As I’ve previously said, the impact that such an understanding could have on biological nature exceeds my ability to confidently speculate.
• Space travel – Although the engineering challenges are daunting, if human beings are no longer confined to our current single world, the future is, to me, very uncertain.

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

Caveat: These models are not mine, and certainly are not new to science, they are currently being utilized in virtually in every scientific field, and even in evolutionary biology, although the ID movement is attempting to misappropriate these models as a religious wedge within the academic community. We cannot let this happen. If you believe this cannot happen, you need to wake up.

I agree.

On the former, all I can add is a tentative recommendation for Kevin Kelly’s “Out of Control” (available online) – tentative, because in places, Kelly’s wide-ranging and little checked style wanders into the realm of the simply, obviously wrong, and it’s very long and at times dense.

On the latter subject, ID, it appears that, fortunately, the majority of the US and the world do also.