Evolving Evolution

[studiot]

Just now, Luc Turpin said:

In the course of my contributions to various scientific forums, I want to emphasize that the ideas that I presented are the work of scientists, not my own original concepts. These scientists propose alternative views that challenge the prevailing scientific consensus. The knowledge I share comes from these individuals, who have developed hypotheses based on rigorous research and empirical data. My role has been to try and convey their ideas, often using their own words, definitions, and explanations.

...

Taking this to mean that you are interested in improving the reception/response to your posts, here is my take on the subject.

 

This is a discussion site.

The controllers here want to hear what the poster has to say about a subject, rather than a report about what others have to say.
particularly if those 'others' are not members of this forum.

I have seen many a mod post to divers members about this.

This means, amongst other things, that the original poster takes responsibility for supporting the veracity of whatever claim he or she makes on behalf of others.
 

I think we are all agreed that the up to date interpretation of the term evolution is very different from the historic one of a century and a half ago.

Not only that but the very word is used in different ways in different scientific disciplines.

For instance Physicists talk about 'the evolution of the wave function accoring to the Schrodinger equation'.

Modern biologists tend tend to restrict the subject to DNA related matters.
This is a shame because I have yet to see acknowledgement for the huge input to the evolution of life in general from geologists and in more recent years from anthropologists. Remember Darwin was also a geologist. Many workers at that time covered more than one discipline.

You have introduced the work of Kevin Lala into this thread and of Lovelock in another in a way that seemed to myself and others that you were presenting them as a done deal we should all be adopting.

 

Evolution is a multifactorial process which is relevant to many disciplines and needs to be approached in a multidisciplinary fashion.
That said different factors will affect different disciplines differently.
 

One important point that we now acknowledge is that evolution is not a steady one way process.
Instead it can proceed slowly and steadily in some circumstances, but is also subject to sudden and rapid changes and even reversals (extinction being the ultimate reversal).

An example of this last is to be found in the last mayan cities of central america, whre unintentional cultural negative evolution might be said to have occurred.

 

 

 

Edited Friday at 02:53 PM by studiot

[Phi for All]

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

In my view, it is likely a combination of both factors: my limited understanding of specific scientific domains, and the broader human tendency to temporarily reject ideas that challenge deeply held beliefs.

This, this right here is a big part of the problem. Science has NOTHING to do with "deeply held beliefs". Read that a few times, please.

In science, you have to trust what you choose to believe, and evidence is what you can base your trust in. You don't "deeply hold" a belief in chemistry; you perform experiments that show you over and over how various chemicals interact. You don't need faith or wishful thinking, you need to trust what the science has shown you, until it shows you that you need a better explanation. 

You seem to really WANT scientists to be as guilty in their "belief system" as religious folks are. You really WANT science to be just another religion with believers who might be wrong. Science is different because it's not asking you to believe in something that can't be observed or quantified, and it gives you a rigorous methodology for examining evidence that either supports or falsifies an explanation. If you challenge a scientific explanation with actual evidence, if you can devise an experiment that shows the explanation isn't sufficient, and can support that among your peers with testable science, your challenge can't be ignored, especially if it's supported by maths. 

[swansont]

46 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

Expecting to provide evidence isn't bias and presenting scientific work of others is evividence.

No, it in fact is not.

”scientific work of others” can be a proposal, or a summary. The evidence is the actual data - the details of the observation or the measurements from an experiment.

Seems to me we’ve been through this before, and you still haven’t learned what evidence is.

 

46 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

However, bias in how certain ideas were received is. Calling me out on the use of "control" when it's was the authors own word might be an indication of bias at play. This appears to be a strategy of shifting the focus or an ideological reaction to what is being presented

I asked you to define what “control” meant, what the context was, and for you to pick one example and discuss it. You didn’t do that.

Your discussion has often been by quoting others. Quotes have their place, because sometime it’s the best way to say something, but in my experience, if you can’t present an argument in your own words, you don’t really understand it.

The problem here is that you saw “control” and assumed it meant one thing, but it’s not clear that the author means the same thing. The first instance of the word refers to controlling the evolutionary fate ( and later “control over our evolutionary future“) but your posts imply it’s control of the process, which is a very different concept.

[Luc Turpin]

3 hours ago, Phi for All said:

This, this right here is a big part of the problem. Science has NOTHING to do with "deeply held beliefs". Read that a few times, please.

In science, you have to trust what you choose to believe, and evidence is what you can base your trust in. You don't "deeply hold" a belief in chemistry; you perform experiments that show you over and over how various chemicals interact. You don't need faith or wishful thinking, you need to trust what the science has shown you, until it shows you that you need a better explanation. 

You seem to really WANT scientists to be as guilty in their "belief system" as religious folks are. You really WANT science to be just another religion with believers who might be wrong. Science is different because it's not asking you to believe in something that can't be observed or quantified, and it gives you a rigorous methodology for examining evidence that either supports or falsifies an explanation. If you challenge a scientific explanation with actual evidence, if you can devise an experiment that shows the explanation isn't sufficient, and can support that among your peers with testable science, your challenge can't be ignored, especially if it's supported by maths. 

Science has long peered into the universe through an objective lens, uncovering what appeared to be a mechanistic and material world, and presenting it as fact, not belief. This approach often overlooks the notion that the universe also harbors a subjective reality, one that may challenge these deeply held convictions. While science itself may be free of beliefs, scientists, like all individuals, are shaped by their upbringing, culture, emotions, and personal philosophies. These influences inevitably impact the interpretation of data, the formulation of research questions, and even the models used to understand the cosmos. History is filled with theories once accepted as irrefutable truth, only to be later questioned or overturned by new evidence—shifts that arise not solely from data, but from a reevaluation of beliefs about nature.

As for subjectivity, the thoughts and emotions of individuals are not easily captured by material explanations. Many philosophical traditions have long argued that the subjective realm is as real as the objective world studied by science. There exists a tension between the mechanistic, objective world revealed by science and the subjective nature of reality—a tension that science often ignores or downplays. While science strives for objectivity, it is ultimately conducted by humans, whose beliefs and other influences inevitably shape their work.

[iNow]

There might be parts of our cosmos which cannot be confirmed with evidence, but for now there’s no evidence of this so it can be safely ignored. 

[Luc Turpin]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

No, it in fact is not.

”scientific work of others” can be a proposal, or a summary. The evidence is the actual data - the details of the observation or the measurements from an experiment.

Seems to me we’ve been through this before, and you still haven’t learned what evidence is.

The work of the scientist that began all of this thread was replete with examples of studies and data used to corroborate his perception of evolution e.g. orcas, their behaviors and genetic fallout ; that is data and evidence.

3 hours ago, swansont said:

I asked you to define what “control” meant, what the context was, and for you to pick one example and discuss it. You didn’t do that.

Your discussion has often been by quoting others. Quotes have their place, because sometime it’s the best way to say something, but in my experience, if you can’t present an argument in your own words, you don’t really understand it.

3- The problem here is that you saw “control” and assumed it meant one thing, but it’s not clear that the author means the same thing. The first instance of the word refers to controlling the evolutionary fate ( and later “control over our evolutionary future“) but your posts imply it’s control of the process, which is a very different concept.

Definition: control over a behavior, affecting survival to reproductivity and ultimately affecting the gene pool. I pick humans moving to consuming milk during the agricultural shift, which had a incidence on genes. I will be discussing this matter in a later post as I am running out of time with other personal matters. It also think that my definition of control was similar to the author's definition, but as indicated in an earlier post, I might have misconstrued it for something else. I think that my later posts have not been about quotes, but arguments in my own words that I seem to understand.

 

 

7 minutes ago, iNow said:

There might be parts of our cosmos which cannot be confirmed with evidence, but for now there’s no evidence of this so it can be safely ignored. 

Beg to differ and if so, then science cannot contend that the cosmos is mechanistic and material. It then becomes a belief, not a fact.

4 hours ago, studiot said:

Taking this to mean that you are interested in improving the reception/response to your posts, here is my take on the subject.

 

This is a discussion site.

The controllers here want to hear what the poster has to say about a subject, rather than a report about what others have to say.
particularly if those 'others' are not members of this forum.

I have seen many a mod post to divers members about this.

This means, amongst other things, that the original poster takes responsibility for supporting the veracity of whatever claim he or she makes on behalf of others.
 

I think we are all agreed that the up to date interpretation of the term evolution is very different from the historic one of a century and a half ago.

Not only that but the very word is used in different ways in different scientific disciplines.

For instance Physicists talk about 'the evolution of the wave function accoring to the Schrodinger equation'.

Modern biologists tend tend to restrict the subject to DNA related matters.
This is a shame because I have yet to see acknowledgement for the huge input to the evolution of life in general from geologists and in more recent years from anthropologists. Remember Darwin was also a geologist. Many workers at that time covered more than one discipline.

You have introduced the work of Kevin Lala into this thread and of Lovelock in another in a way that seemed to myself and others that you were presenting them as a done deal we should all be adopting.

 

Evolution is a multifactorial process which is relevant to many disciplines and needs to be approached in a multidisciplinary fashion.
That said different factors will affect different disciplines differently.
 

One important point that we now acknowledge is that evolution is not a steady one way process.
Instead it can proceed slowly and steadily in some circumstances, but is also subject to sudden and rapid changes and even reversals (extinction being the ultimate reversal).

An example of this last is to be found in the last mayan cities of central america, whre unintentional cultural negative evolution might be said to have occurred.

 

 

 

Ran out of free time, will try and get to your post tomorrow.

Many points I agree.

 

22 minutes ago, iNow said:

There might be parts of our cosmos which cannot be confirmed with evidence, but for now there’s no evidence of this so it can be safely ignored. 

Science not you, saying that materialism is in fact a belief not a fact.

No intention of being rude.

Apologies if I appeared to be so!

[iNow]

You’re not rude, just irrelevant and dismissible 

[Luc Turpin]

5 minutes ago, iNow said:

You’re not rude, just irrelevant and dismissible 

All of my posts are irrelevant and dismissible? Really!

So, I am wasting my time in writing them, and you are wasting yours reading them.

Apologies then for wasting your time. 

[iNow]

4 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

Apologies then for wasting your time. 

No worries. Just don’t let it happen again. 

[Luc Turpin]

54 minutes ago, iNow said:

No worries. Just don’t let it happen again. 

Ignore, ignore, ignore; both ways and all will be fine.

 

[swansont]

5 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

The work of the scientist that began all of this thread was replete with examples of studies and data used to corroborate his perception of evolution e.g. orcas, their behaviors and genetic fallout ; that is data and evidence.

That’s good…for the author. But I’m not concerned about their ability to argue about evolution, or science in general. My objection is about what you fail to do.

Your claims of evidence often boil down to “this person said so” and that’s not evidence. That author may have referenced evidence in their work, but you are expected to present evidence here, so that we can all access it and be included in the discussion.

You were asked several times to do this and declined. A couple of us picked an example for you, and then showed how the Mojave desert woodrat‘s adaptation isn’t contrary to the theory of evolution (only to your simplistic/outdated caricature of it)

5 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

Definition: control over a behavior, affecting survival to reproductivity and ultimately affecting the gene pool. I pick humans moving to consuming milk during the agricultural shift, which had a incidence on genes. I will be discussing this matter in a later post as I am running out of time with other personal matters. It also think that my definition of control was similar to the author's definition, but as indicated in an earlier post, I might have misconstrued it for something else. I think that my later posts have not been about quotes, but arguments in my own words that I seem to understand.

Again, control over your fate is not control over the process. You can do things that improved your survivability (some control over your fate) that are in no way controlling how your population evolves.

 

[CharonY]

And this is especially apparent when we use a more precise definition of evolution focusing on gene pool changes. While behaviors influence reproductive success, they do not control as such how the composition of the next generation is going to be. That level of control is virtually only possible with specific and targeted breeding that overrides any other factor. With anything else, it becomes one of many factors, many of which are based on chance (such as, likelihood of finding a partner in the first place).

[Luc Turpin]

 

Those that find me irrelevant and dismissible, should not read beyond this point.

The main argument of the article, as indicated in the opening post, is that species have extraordinary ways of influencing their evolutionary fate. However, neither the post's author nor the article's author intends to suggest that organisms directly control their gene pool or have total control over their evolutionary course. Rather, the author of the main article emphasizes that non-genetic inheritance plays a significant role in evolvability, though not in the sense of having direct or total control over genetic changes. As for the author of the original post, he also suggests that behaviors may be within an organism's control, which can potentially affect their survival and reproduction, leading to changes in the gene pool. This aligns somewhat with CharonY's point that "behaviors influence reproductive success, but do not control how the composition of the next generation is going to be."

To further explore this, it is important to first establish the possibility of intentional learned behaviors in nature. Intentional learned behaviors refer to actions that individuals consciously acquire through social interaction, education, or self-reflection, and that can be passed down across generations via social learning. The idea of intentionality in behaviors is well supported in research, particularly in the field of cultural evolution. Boyd and Richerson highlight that cultural behaviors, including intentional ones, can influence biological evolution by altering the environment in which selection pressures operate. Additionally, Csibra and Gergely discuss how human cognition is uniquely capable of intentional learning, which accelerates cultural transmission and transformation. Empirical studies, such as those by Michael Tomasello, demonstrate that humans as young as 12 months old engage in intentional learning through imitation, where they actively choose to learn specific behaviors.

Moving on, it is also worth considering how behaviors influence an organism’s survivability and reproductive success. The orcas discussed in the article provide an example of learned behaviors that directly impact survivability. By learning to make waves to dislodge seals from shorelines, these orcas improve their access to food, thereby increasing their chances of survival and reproduction. Research supports this idea; for example, Stephens and Krebs emphasize that learned behaviors are essential for survival, enabling organisms to forage more efficiently, avoid predators, and mate more effectively. Studies on birds and bees further corroborate this. In an experiment by Krebs and Davis, birds adjusted their foraging strategies based on past experiences, leading to higher success rates in finding food and avoiding predators. Similarly, bees in Royer’s study learned to associate specific cues with the presence of predators, enhancing their chances of survival.

Now, it’s clear that survival to reproductive age is critical in shaping the gene pool. Organisms that survive to reproduce pass on their genetic material to the next generation, while those that do not are effectively removed from the gene pool, a process known as natural selection. I argue that traits favoring cognitive flexibility, which in turn support learning, are part of the genetic material passed on to the next generation. For example, bees that can learn to forage more efficiently or avoid predators are more likely to survive and reproduce, thereby passing on genetic traits associated with better learning abilities (e.g., improved memory, neural efficiency). Over time, these cognitive traits may become more prevalent in the population. Boyd and Richerson suggest that cultural evolution, in which learned behaviors play a key role, influences human cognition and facilitates the transmission of cognitive traits across generations.

In conclusion, I believe I have demonstrated that intentionaly learned behaviors exist, they can affect survivability and reproduction, and that survivability to reproduction ultimately shapes the gene pool. Cognitive traits related to learning, such as improved memory or neural efficiency, may indeed be passed down through generations, further supporting the role of learned behaviors in evolutionary processes.Through this indirect route to the gene pool, I also assert that I have demonstrated a form of partial and indirect control over it.

Now, if there is possible control over the gene pool, is there then some sense of direction in evolution?

Edited Saturday at 02:17 PM by Luc Turpin

[studiot]

Just now, Luc Turpin said:

I argue that traits favoring cognitive flexibility, which in turn support learning, are part of the genetic material passed on to the next generation.

 

Over recent years there have been many 'Nature' or 'Natural World' documentaries on TV in England.

Following the development of youg animals have been in vogue.

 

Now it is interesting to note the fate of the more adventurous bear cubs and meerkat pups as they seem more likely to come to grief by wandering too far before they are ready.

 

So you would need to show compaative studies where this cognitive flexibility helps and where it hinders before drawing the above conclusion.

 

What are the percentages for and against ?

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Luc Turpin said:

The main argument of the article, as indicated in the opening post, is that species have extraordinary ways of influencing their evolutionary fate

Is extraordinary the author’s characterization or yours? In what way are these extraordinary?

We know that ingesting small, non-lethal, amounts of poison makes you resistant to it (mithridatism) and have known that for more than 2000 years, so it’s hardly surprising that similar effects happen in the wild. We know animals have intelligence and some use tools.

Quote

In conclusion, I believe I have demonstrated that intentionaly learned behaviors exist

What’s the evidence that this is intentional? Did an orca decide one day that they were going to figure out a way to dislodge seals? Or did they just notice that it happened, and learn from it? 

Quote

Now, if there is possible control over the gene pool, is there then some sense of direction in evolution?

You just started out agreeing that the gene pool is not controlled, but now we have the switch, like this is three-card monte, and (of course) the agenda that you keep claiming you don’t have. 

Cherry-picking results and trying to shape data to force it to support a conclusion is not science. 

[Luc Turpin]

41 minutes ago, studiot said:

 

Over recent years there have been many 'Nature' or 'Natural World' documentaries on TV in England.

Following the development of youg animals have been in vogue.

 

Now it is interesting to note the fate of the more adventurous bear cubs and meerkat pups as they seem more likely to come to grief by wandering too far before they are ready.

 

So you would need to show compaative studies where this cognitive flexibility helps and where it hinders before drawing the above conclusion.

 

What are the percentages for and against ?

Point well taken!

Will work on finding comparative studies where cognitive flexibility helps and hinders survival.

 

2 minutes ago, swansont said:

1-Is extraordinary the author’s characterization or yours? In what way are these extraordinary?

2- We know that ingesting small, non-lethal, amounts of poison makes you resistant to it (mithridatism) and have known that for more than 2000 years, so it’s hardly surprising that similar effects happen in the wild. We know animals have intelligence and some use tools.

3-What’s the evidence that this is intentional? Did an orca decide one day that they were going to figure out a way to dislodge seals? Or did they just notice that it happened, and learn from it? 

4-You just started out agreeing that the gene pool is not controlled, but now we have the switch, like this is three-card monte, and (of course) the agenda that you keep claiming you don’t have. 

5-Cherry-picking results and trying to shape data to force it to support a conclusion is not science. 

1-The author's not mine.

2- Obvious, but still needed to provide evidence of it.

3- The literature is replete with examples of intentional behavior. I will present more finding to that effect if I can find time during the holidays.

4- I said that it was not directly controled, but indirectly yes.

5- At leat I am showing evidence this time. 

[swansont]

22 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

The literature is replete with examples of intentional behavior. I will present more finding to that effect if I can find time during the holidays.

You specifically pointed to learning, in more than one place. What differentiates intentional learning from unintentional learning?

[Luc Turpin]

2 minutes ago, swansont said:

You specifically pointed to learning, in more than one place. What differentiates intentional learning from unintentional learning?

 Intentional learning - using cognitive flexibility to chose between venues of actions

Unintentional learning - mimicking; those that adopt the behavior survive; those that do not, do not survive.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Luc Turpin said:

 Intentional learning - using cognitive flexibility to chose between venues of actions

So, learning, as far as I see it. Developing some amount of understanding.

1 hour ago, Luc Turpin said:

Unintentional learning - mimicking; those that adopt the behavior survive; those that do not, do not survive.

So, not actually learning. But isn’t imitation just mimicry? You called it intentional learning. How does one tell the difference?

And how does any of this mean that evolution has a direction (meaning that you get an outcome that’s not governed by the current environment)?

[studiot]

20 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

Point well taken!

Will work on finding comparative studies where cognitive flexibility helps and hinders survival.

I rather think these (mine and yours) are minor variations in the wider context of 'evolution' in the full.

Wikipedia has several summary articles that cover some of the variations you raise, but not always in accordance with your explanations.  I have highlighted a couple.

 

Quote

Wikipedia

Evolution is not a random process. Although mutations in DNA are random, natural selection is not a process of chance: the environment determines the probability of reproductive success. Evolution is an inevitable result of imperfectly copying, self-replicating organisms reproducing over billions of years under the selective pressure of the environment. The outcome of evolution is not a perfectly designed organism. The end products of natural selection are organisms that are adapted to their present environments. Natural selection does not involve progress towards an ultimate goal. Evolution does not strive for more advanced, more intelligent, or more sophisticated life forms.^[25] For example, fleas (wingless parasites) are descended from a winged, ancestral scorpionfly, and snakes are lizards that no longer require limbs—although pythons still grow tiny structures that are the remains of their ancestor's hind legs.^[26][27] Organisms are merely the outcome of variations that succeed or fail, dependent upon the environmental conditions at the time.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_evolution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

 

However you have entitled this thread 'evolving evolution', which implies change of some sort.

 

So really it is worth starting right at the beginning.

And the beginning is the use of the English word evolution to stand for a group of ideas.

Interestingly the word evolution is borrowed from Science from its original English meaning and comes from the Latin 'evolutio'.

This was Latin for the specific activity of unrolling a scroll, the origin of which is lost in antiquity since scrolls predated the Romans by at least a thousand years.
But it is an interesting loan from the original English which applied it to unfurling sails several hundred years before its application in Science.

 

OK so onwards towards its modern application.

The first stage in the evolution of life involved single celled organisms. With a modern eye we can observe that each type of such organism had the same genes.
Even today such simple organisms move away from danger - chemicals, radiation etc.

Is that 'learning ?'  are they cognitive ?

or what?

 

At some point these organisms developed or learned or what? the way to club together as multicellular organisms. Still simple, and still with all the same genes.

Having done this the ability to specialise arrived so that they had a mechanism to switch off or on genes particular to their function as specialised cells.

 

Later still a big development occurred as such multicellular groupings began to reproduce so there there were then (larger) multicellular organisms with different gene sets.
This marked a huge change and the beginning of what most people mean when they talk about 'evolution'.

 

[Luc Turpin]

On 12/21/2024 at 9:33 AM, studiot said:

 

Over recent years there have been many 'Nature' or 'Natural World' documentaries on TV in England.

Following the development of youg animals have been in vogue.

 

Now it is interesting to note the fate of the more adventurous bear cubs and meerkat pups as they seem more likely to come to grief by wandering too far before they are ready.

 

So you would need to show compaative studies where this cognitive flexibility helps and where it hinders before drawing the above conclusion.

 

What are the percentages for and against ?

I queried the net and obtained 6 studies on cognition influencing survival. All collectively demonstrated that cognition is essential for evolutionary survival. Tolman, Kasper, Dunbar, Janson, Lima, and Pinker provided substantial evidence showing that cognitive abilities enhance survival and reproductive success in various species.

I also queried for cognitive flexibility in influencing evolutionary survivability and obtained 10 studies, all identifying a favorable role of cognition in survival. Emery & Clayton; Toth & Schick; O'Keefe & Nadel; Gagliardo; Dunbar; Bussey & Muir; Jaakkimainen; Reader & Laland; Rutherford; Borgia & Coleman; and Hamilton.

 

On 12/21/2024 at 12:20 PM, swansont said:

So, learning, as far as I see it. Developing some amount of understanding.

Correct

On 12/21/2024 at 12:20 PM, swansont said:

 

So, not actually learning. But isn’t imitation just mimicry? You called it intentional learning. How does one tell the difference?

 

Imitation is a learned behavior, usually in a social learning process

Mimicry is a genetic adaptation shaped by natural selection.

On 12/21/2024 at 12:20 PM, swansont said:

And how does any of this mean that evolution has a direction (meaning that you get an outcome that’s not governed by the current environment)?

Behaviors influencing survival, then in a cascading effect, influencing the gene pool. So, does that level of influence make some outcomes of evolution more probable than others? Asking the question without necessarily having the answer.

 

[swansont]

3 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

Imitation is a learned behavior, usually in a social learning process

Mimicry is a genetic adaptation shaped by natural selection.

You previously presented mimicking as a behavior. How does one know if this is genetic?

Quote

Behaviors influencing survival, then in a cascading effect, influencing the gene pool. So, does that level of influence make some outcomes of evolution more probable than others? Asking the question without necessarily having the answer.

The question was about direction.

Influencing survival is just natural selection. Direction implies you are developing a trait that is anticipating that the trait will be useful under different, not current, conditions.

[Luc Turpin]

19 hours ago, studiot said:

I rather think these (mine and yours) are minor variations in the wider context of 'evolution' in the full.

Wikipedia has several summary articles that cover some of the variations you raise, but not always in accordance with your explanations.  I have highlighted a couple.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_evolution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

 

However you have entitled this thread 'evolving evolution', which implies change of some sort.

 

So really it is worth starting right at the beginning.

And the beginning is the use of the English word evolution to stand for a group of ideas.

Interestingly the word evolution is borrowed from Science from its original English meaning and comes from the Latin 'evolutio'.

This was Latin for the specific activity of unrolling a scroll, the origin of which is lost in antiquity since scrolls predated the Romans by at least a thousand years.
But it is an interesting loan from the original English which applied it to unfurling sails several hundred years before its application in Science.

 

OK so onwards towards its modern application.

The first stage in the evolution of life involved single celled organisms. With a modern eye we can observe that each type of such organism had the same genes.
Even today such simple organisms move away from danger - chemicals, radiation etc.

Is that 'learning ?'  are they cognitive ?

or what?

 

At some point these organisms developed or learned or what? the way to club together as multicellular organisms. Still simple, and still with all the same genes.

Having done this the ability to specialise arrived so that they had a mechanism to switch off or on genes particular to their function as specialised cells.

 

Later still a big development occurred as such multicellular groupings began to reproduce so there there were then (larger) multicellular organisms with different gene sets.
This marked a huge change and the beginning of what most people mean when they talk about 'evolution'.

 

DNA mutations are random changes that occur by chance, such as errors during DNA replication or due to external factors like radiation. Natural selection then "selects" the mutations that help organisms survive and reproduce, while those that are detrimental are eliminated. This process makes evolution non-random, as it results in improvements in survival. However, evolution itself lacks any inherent purpose—it is simply a process.

The concept of "evolution" has evolved over time. While the fundamental process remains unchanged, it now encompasses more than just genetic alterations. However, even with the notion of only being encompassed by genes, single-celled organisms eventually evolved into more complex life forms, which challenges the conventional idea that evolution is purely unintentional, as this progression suggests an increase in complexity. I digress a bit here.

Things become even more fascinating—and possibly intentional—when we consider culture. Traditional evolutionary theory focuses on genetic mutations and natural selection, but organisms such as humans also shape their environment through cultural practices, which in turn influence evolution. By altering the very environment in which natural selection occurs, more advanced organisms, especially humans, take a significant step in the evolutionary process. Again, more advanced organisms can intentionally modify their surroundings, creating feedback loops that impact evolutionary outcomes.

For example, human language is shaped both by biological and cultural evolution. Cultural traits such as intelligence or cooperation can influence genetic selection, making these traits more prevalent in future generations.

When we consider culture and human behavior alongside biology, evolution becomes a more dynamic and interactive process. While natural selection remains an important factor, cultural actions and practices can modify or amplify its effects, creating new environments and challenges.

In this perspective, random mutations and environmental factors are not the sole drivers of evolution, but the whole process is also affected by the changes humans and other organisms make to the world. Evolution becomes a more complex and multi-dimensional process, with culture playing a crucial role in shaping one’s future.

 

 

[swansont]

Put another way:

The theory of evolution is more subtle and complicated than any Cliff’s-notes-five-paragraph summary you might read, and, like any science topic, is more subtle and complicated than what you learn in high-school. 

[Luc Turpin]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Put another way:

The theory of evolution is more subtle and complicated than any Cliff’s-notes-five-paragraph summary you might read, and, like any science topic, is more subtle and complicated than what you learn in high-school. 

Yes, I agree with both points in your post. Without critiquing your criticism of me, I simplified my argument to highlight that there may be intention behind the evolutionary process, rather than it being purely mechanical.