Intelligent Evolution?

[Southwind17]

I’d like to offer a thought countering Intelligent Design (ID) theory. I’ve not heard it before, even from Dawkins, but that’s not to say it’s original. Perhaps it’s flawed, and that’s why, but here goes:

Suppose a person who was alive, say, 2,000 years ago, could have travelled in time forward to the present day. Imagine, then, trying to convince that person (assuming you could communicate!) that absolutely every man-made object or creation around them originated essentially from within the ground: ores, minerals, oil, etc. Even if they could appreciate these raw materials, I’m sure they’d look at things like cars, computers, TVs, jet aircraft, etc. and quickly conclude that it just isn’t possible, given their sophistication, to create such things out of such crude materials.

What this person would fail to realize is that such creations, whilst, technically, ‘designed’, have also ‘evolved’. Take a modern fighter jet, for example. It’s roots can be traced right back to, say, the Wright Brothers’ rudimentary attempts at flight. Or the TV: look at the individual components. They, too, are derivatives of predecessor, more rudimentary, elements. As for the ID argument that an eye, for example, cannot possibly be an evolved organ because anything less than a fully-functioning eye is absolutely no use. Well, you could say the same about a TV set, for example. Remove, or even deform, just one key component and voila, kaput!

Technological development, to my mind, is closely analogous to natural selection. Small but significant changes are made here and there over time such that each new variant becomes more and more sophisticated and capable. The ‘obsolete’ variety becomes less efficient or capable and is ‘discontinued’. It’s widely acknowledged that many major advancements in technology and medicine have come about through chance or fluke. That’s analogous to mutations in my mind.

Considering how technology has evolved over just the last 200 years it doesn’t seem at all amazing to me that animals and plants have only come as far as they have in the last 4 billion (catastrophic wipe-outs excepted)!

Given the foregoing, I find it ironic that ID proponents often use the seriously flawed scrapyard 747 scenario to help their case!

OK - I'll just hide behind the couch now and wait for the 'enlightenment bogeyman' to appear and point out how ridiculous my analogy is, notwithstanding most members would probably prefer that it was watertight!

 

[Foster Zygote]

I’d like to offer a thought countering Intelligent Design (ID) theory. I’ve not heard it before, even from Dawkins, but that’s not to say it’s original. Perhaps it’s flawed, and that’s why, but here goes:

Suppose a person who was alive, say, 2,000 years ago, could have travelled in time forward to the present day. Imagine, then, trying to convince that person (assuming you could communicate!) that absolutely every man-made object or creation around them originated essentially from within the ground: ores, minerals, oil, etc. Even if they could appreciate these raw materials, I’m sure they’d look at things like cars, computers, TVs, jet aircraft, etc. and quickly conclude that it just isn’t possible, given their sophistication, to create such things out of such crude materials.

What this person would fail to realize is that such creations, whilst, technically, ‘designed’, have also ‘evolved’. Take a modern fighter jet, for example. It’s roots can be traced right back to, say, the Wright Brothers’ rudimentary attempts at flight. Or the TV: look at the individual components. They, too, are derivatives of predecessor, more rudimentary, elements. As for the ID argument that an eye, for example, cannot possibly be an evolved organ because anything less than a fully-functioning eye is absolutely no use. Well, you could say the same about a TV set, for example. Remove, or even deform, just one key component and voila, kaput!

Technological development, to my mind, is closely analogous to natural selection. Small but significant changes are made here and there over time such that each new variant becomes more and more sophisticated and capable. The ‘obsolete’ variety becomes less efficient or capable and is ‘discontinued’. It’s widely acknowledged that many major advancements in technology and medicine have come about through chance or fluke. That’s analogous to mutations in my mind.

Considering how technology has evolved over just the last 200 years it doesn’t seem at all amazing to me that animals and plants have only come as far as they have in the last 4 billion (catastrophic wipe-outs excepted)!

Given the foregoing, I find it ironic that ID proponents often use the seriously flawed scrapyard 747 scenario to help their case!

OK - I'll just hide behind the couch now and wait for the 'enlightenment bogeyman' to appear and point out how ridiculous my analogy is, notwithstanding most members would probably prefer that it was watertight!

Don't worry, you're actually on to something here.

The creationist argument about the irreducible complexity of the eye is complete bunk, of course. Biologists know how eyes have evolved independently a number of time from simple light sensitive cells to a "cup" eye to a lens-less eye to lensed and compound eyes etc. The creationist argument is not aimed at the educated though, it is aimed at the ignorant. It depends on a lack of knowledge to succeed.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Don't worry, you're actually on to something here.

The creationist argument about the irreducible complexity of the eye is complete bunk, of course. Biologists know how eyes have evolved independently a number of time from simple light sensitive cells to a "cup" eye to a lens-less eye to lensed and compound eyes etc. The creationist argument is not aimed at the educated though, it is aimed at the ignorant. It depends on a lack of knowledge to succeed.

Superficially attractive, but not really a good approximation at all.

What "evolution" changes a cathode ray tube TV into an LCD or a plasma? It is not a matter of gradual change of the CRT to effect this but a major saltation involving new technology not included in the previous design.

 

[Beerina]

Cathode ray tubes, LCDs, Plasmas, and DLP all serve the same function. They are like the eyes that evolved independently at least 6 different times, each from their own history, but not from each other.

 

[Jimbo07]

Technological development, to my mind, is closely analogous to natural selection. Small but significant changes are made here and there over time such that each new variant becomes more and more sophisticated and capable. The ‘obsolete’ variety becomes less efficient or capable and is ‘discontinued’. It’s widely acknowledged that many major advancements in technology and medicine have come about through chance or fluke. That’s analogous to mutations in my mind.

Depends on the technology... see Jaggy Bunnett's CRT to LCD example. It was a sea change, not a small change, in technology.

Worse, most creationists won't disagree with artificial selection. Humans have been breeding/selecting dogs and crop varieties for a very long time (at least 6000 years ). They object to natural selection...

ETA: Beerina, the argument's going to fail to sway Creationists for a number of reasons. If even the components of the argument are not airtight, it has nothing...

 

[Foster Zygote]

Superficially attractive, but not really a good approximation at all.

What "evolution" changes a cathode ray tube TV into an LCD or a plasma? It is not a matter of gradual change of the CRT to effect this but a major saltation involving new technology not included in the previous design.

All analogies are imperfect. My take on Southwind17's post is that saying anything less than a fully functional eye is useless is like saying anything less that an F-22 is useless as a combat aircraft.

 

[Southwind17]

Cathode ray tubes, LCDs, Plasmas, and DLP all serve the same function. They are like the eyes that evolved independently at least 6 different times, each from their own history, but not from each other.

Yes, that's what I immediately thought: CRT = tiger, Plasma = lion, LCD = jaguar. All do the same basic thing(!), but have completely different lineage.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Yes, that's what I immediately thought: CRT = tiger, Plasma = lion, LCD = jaguar. All do the same basic thing(!), but have completely different lineage.

OK, thats an interesting way to look at it that I had not considered.

And of course in a "survival of the fittest" like manner, the arrival of new competitors (Plasma, LCD) may result in the extinction of the existing inhabitant (CRT).

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

All analogies are imperfect. My take on Southwind17's post is that saying anything less than a fully functional eye is useless is like saying anything less that an F-22 is useless as a combat aircraft.

A restatement of the watchmaker analogy? OK.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Yes, that's what I immediately thought: CRT = tiger, Plasma = lion, LCD = jaguar. All do the same basic thing(!), but have completely different lineage.

Well that depends on what you mean by "lineage". Tigers, loins and jaguars all share a fairly recent (on geological timescales) common ancestor.

 

[Foster Zygote]

A restatement of the watchmaker analogy? OK.

More like a restatement of a counter argument to Paley's watch.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

No.

Televisions, airplanes, and Ipods are not organisms that reproduce, passing on hertiable traits. Analogies between the development of machines and evolution of organisms are only useful when you contrast, seeing how incredibly different the two processes are.

 

[cyborg]

Televisions, airplanes, and Ipods are not organisms that reproduce, passing on hertiable traits.

*Sigh* As ever one misses the point that dogs, cats and elephants no more evolve than airplanes. televisions and iPods.

It is the change in the design, not the expression of the design!

An expression of a design will forever remain that design - a cat is a cat, a television a television.

It is the change in one design to the next that is of interest.

Analogies between the development of machines and evolution of organisms are only usesul when you contrast, seeing how incredibly different the two processes are.

In my experience this is not the case. The development of human technology is mostly evolutionary. The main reason for this being that the more complex a design is the less certain you can be sure about how a change will affect the overall result of the design as far as what you want from it.

Incremental design is the order of the day for success.

 

[Foster Zygote]

No.

Televisions, airplanes, and Ipods are not organisms that reproduce, passing on hertiable traits.

True. But an Ipod isn't the first and only means for listening to recorded music.

Analogies between the development of machines and evolution of organisms are only useful when you contrast, seeing how incredibly different the two processes are.

I may have misinterpreted the OP, but my impression is that Southwind17's intent was to say that a less than "perfect" aircraft is no more useless than a less than "perfect" eye, not that the evolution of technology is remotely like biological evolution.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

*In my experience this is not the case. The development of human technology is mostly evolutionary. The main reason for this being that the more complex a design is the less certain you can be sure about how a change will affect the overall result of the design as far as what you want from it.

Incremental design is the order of the day for success.

No. When a machine is deliberately designed, the creation process in no way resembles a machine embyro growing acording to a recipie of parts generated fro a blueprint taken from the blueprints of two other machines without any intelligently directly oversight, editing, or testing. The machine embryo does not interact autonumously with its environment, struggling to reproduce its blueprints in a populations of competing machines. Real machines can be designed from whole cloth, springing fully formed from the brow of their inventors like Athena. Living things only arise from other living things.

While a living thing can resemble a machine in function, living things never resemble machines in their origin.

 

[plumjam]

huh?
you're actually arguing for intelligent design here.
technology only evolved through progressive improvements in design made by intelligent beings.

 

[Foster Zygote]

No.

Televisions, airplanes, and Ipods are not organisms that reproduce, passing on hertiable traits. Analogies between the development of machines and evolution of organisms are only useful when you contrast, seeing how incredibly different the two processes are.

Actually, having reread the OP, I think you may be right. Southwind17 did make a direct comparison between technology evolving and species evolving. Of course they really aren't the same because, as you said, technology like airplanes and stereo systems doesn't self reproduce. But the analogy might be somewhat useful regarding artificial selection, but it falls apart because the available options for selection still are not determined randomly. And maybe (and I'm just tossin' out an idea here) one can think of technology as an emergent property of biology that evolves as a meme?

 

[Foster Zygote]

*Sigh* As ever one misses the point that dogs, cats and elephants no more evolve than airplanes. televisions and iPods.

It is the change in the design, not the expression of the design!

An expression of a design will forever remain that design - a cat is a cat, a television a television.

It is the change in one design to the next that is of interest.

As a biology professor of mine used to say: Individuals don't evolve, populations do from generation to generation.

In my experience this is not the case. The development of human technology is mostly evolutionary. The main reason for this being that the more complex a design is the less certain you can be sure about how a change will affect the overall result of the design as far as what you want from it.

Incremental design is the order of the day for success.

I agree, as long as one makes it clear to the person you're trying to explain evolution to that whereas technological design is usually driven by intent ("How can we redesign the current car to make it turn faster lap times?") evolution by natural selection is driven by no such goal oriented force.

 

[Foster Zygote]

huh?
you're actually arguing for intelligent design here.
technology only evolved through progressive improvements in design made by intelligent beings.

Which is how it differs from biological evolution.

 

[Wowbagger]

huh?
you're actually arguing for intelligent design here.
technology only evolved through progressive improvements in design made by intelligent beings.

I think the OP's point is that if you took someone from 2000 years ago, they would never believe that! They could not imagine those progressive improvements intelligent beings had made, from simple minerals in the ground. They would only see the final products, and probably be convinced that they are all "irreduicbly complex", could not have possibly "evolved" from dirt, etc.

Although, I do think the argument is flawed precisely for the reason that folks like plumjam, here, are going to try to claim that it is an argument for ID.
(The same way creationists used Dawkins' own biomorphs argument as an argument for ID. In that case, they miss the point of genetic variation over time, regardless of what is shaping the design.)