This idea came out pondering the question if scientific research is limited in what it can achieve.
Evolution is the process that can lead to the organization of matter as complex as the human mind. Scientific research can lead to different (not necessarily as complex) organizations of matter. There may be other processes in the universe which do not follow neither evolution nor man’s scientific research to achieve even more complex and sophisticated organizations of matter. Maybe plasma effects at the center of stars or similar. The point is that matter may be organized into very complex structures like the mind but through different processes. There may be barriers between one process and another, for example evolution can only lead to a certain subclass of organized matter, man’s scientific research can lead to another certain subclass of organized matter but may never be able to reach the class of objects that evolution can. Evolution may never be able to evolve silicon chips without having first evolved man. These may be barriers between progressing processes that limit what each process can achieve. The real point is that matter as such can be potentially organized into very complex structures, we may just never be able to force it past a certain limit. In this sense science may have a limit, but matter may not. And even if matter were organized in an alien very complex structure and internal process, we may not even be able to recognize it!
Say you smash a rock with a hammer and produce thousands of small rocks each containing the various minerals that was in the rock itself. Has the rock evolved? I would say no. The rock “involved”. It is no longer a rock but has transformed into many rocks, each a fraction of its former self.
Evolution for me is not quantitative but qualitiative. Where involution is the process of change from “unity” into the many, evolution is the process of transformation of the quality of the “unity” itself. The concept “rock”, for example, can “involve” into many forms of rocks and this process is involution: the one into the many. However, if a rock transforms into a plant, it has evolved. Its being, its isness, has grown by the change from inanimate to animate life. Its materiality, reflecting the esence of organic life, is of a different quality.
Evolution requires replication. Plasma cannot replicate (I am assume), therefore plasma cannot evolve.
If a decrease in local entropy* is to consitute evolution, then me organizing my sock drawer is evolution. Somehow this doesn’t seem to be consitant with what we call evolution.
*Note that anytime you invoke the word “entropy” you have to realize the context in which you are using it. There can be local decreases in entropy with more broad increases elsewhere. The Earth and the Sun are a good example.
My point is more about how complicated can matter be organized in general whether through evolution or man made devices OR SOME OTHER PROCESS. We could force matter into an incredibly entangled construction of chips, neurons and mechanical parts WITH NO PURPOSE OR GOAL WHATSOEVER just to see how complicated matter can be organized. Now the resulting object would not have evolved through natural evolution, and neither through scientific - technological reasoning, so it would be a completely ALIEN object that has been produced according to a completely alien process. From our point of view as man, this object would be considered a work of ART or an ART form since it has no purpose except that of testing the limits of how complicated matter can be organized. In general how complicated can matter be organized whether for a goal or not ?
Can we imagine a planet that naturally evolves color TVs without evolving any lifeform ? The fact that it coincides with a function useful to us could be just a quirk chance. Is evolution the only process capable of creating vastly complex organized mechanisms ? What are the real limits of MATTER as such disregarding the processes that organize it ?
It is not just complex order that gets produced by the process of evolution, it is complex operational order. All the biological complexity in the world is of no importance if it has no use. Everything in biology has work to do, and if it does not work then it is scrapped or appropriated into another system that does work.
It is useless to talk about human activty without goals.
The goal would be to see how complicated matter could be organized.
Again, you are using the term evolution apart from its natural meaning. Evolution requires replicators. If you can imagine color TVs replicating, then no one will stop you from imagining they evolve.
I like how this contrasts with the idea that “God is One”. If God were to replicate himself into two gods, would God have evolved? Replicators are necessary for adaptation and continuation of the species but for evolution defined as a change of actual being, I doubt it.
And in fact it has NO USE! only within its local domain does it have any meaning, but globally it is just a complicated piece of matter. A planet with a living population of humans is just a complicated ball.
IF science does evolve to a standstill along with its technology, this does not mean that MATTER and physics doesn’t have the potential for vastly more intricate and involved processes. We may just never be able to reach them because of our limits. Everything from a single mind to societies have LOCAL (I have to buy a car, my country has to win a war etc.) goals, but seen as a whole from a more abstract viewpoint have no goal at all. It is just a complex system-mechanism-process that is operating. So we can experiment creating a kind of matter-mechanism as complicated as possible just to see how far we can reach.
Well, that makes sense because actual beings do not evolve. You will be hard pressed to find a scientist willing to expand the definition of evolution to metaphysical beings.
Replicators are the key issue here, if an organism changes or adapts to their environment, it is not evolution unless that organism is a replicator and is able to pass on the said changes to their “offspring” (I’m using this term very loosely here).
When I go hiking in the dessert I put on my long sleeve Columbia GRT wicking shirt. This makes me more suited to my environment, but it is hardly evolution.
Evolution is just one possible process that manipulates MATTER. Man’s science and technology is another possible process that has very LITTLE to do with Natural evolution and alot with arbitrary culture and “aesthetical choices”.
So there could be other mechanisms and processes in the universe that manipulate MATTER in a vastly more intricate manner without being either evoultion or man’s science.
Man can try to invent vastly complex organizations of matter for the pure reason of seeing how far he could manipulate. These objects would serve no purpose except that of demonstrating how complicated we can manipulate MATTER and how compicated objects can get. This would be something like an ART form.
While it is correct to say that evolution manipulates matter (and it doesn’t always include matter), it is not “just” that. In the same way you can say that murder is an action, but it doesn’t follow that every action is a murder. Murder is a specific type of action and evolution is a specific kind of manipulation.
I don’t think you realize that our scientific theories (all of them) can be described also in evolutionary terms.
Lets say I get a theory from a scientist, proposition “p” that I believe to be true. I can then try to expand or change that theory (mutation) and make it proposition p’. If p’ has a greater explanitory power (fitness) then it can out compete the original proposition p (natural selection).
Does evolution lead to most complex organization of matter ?
If there was replication in evolution, wouldn’t the evolution stop right there because an exact identity has been created, which would be the point of evolution? Otherwise what would be the point of evolution happening? Anyway…
When technology advances and becomes more complex everyday, it is not evolving because we are creating it at every stage. Since we are considered complex matter considering our biological get-up, is it not possible then, that we were created because of that complexity? Just like we create complex technology, it’s possible God creates more and more complex beings. Because as far as I see, evolution would move towards simplicity and not complexity in order to survive. But we and our environment being highly complex, not to mention mysterious as well, I would believe that we were created. If we had evolved, there would be no mystery at all regarding who we are and how we got here, etc.
Therefore, I’d say, evolution does not lead to most complex organization of matter but creation does. Whatever, I may be wrong.
Although it is a common misconception, natural biological evolution does not have a direction that tends toward greater complexity.
If you look at the vast number of organisms over time, it is clear that evolution randomly hovers around a low single-cell point of complexity. There is a bell curve, with less complex and more complex organisms to either side of single celled organisms. Even after billions of years, the vast majority of biomass is in the form of simple organisms. Although we pay more attention to them, the macro-level organisms we see around us are a tiny sliver of life at the extreme fringe of that bell curve. We are an over-complicated “residue” that has washed up on the edges of life on this planet - not indicative of the general nature or direction of evolution.
The reason, by the way, that it seems like the bell curve is only a one-way gradient, is because you can’t get much simpler than single-celled organism and still be life. So, the bell curve is “chopped” just past one side of it’s highest point, by a wall of “minimal complexity” for life.
Interesting reply. What are the limits of MATTER in general ? how deep in complexity can a material object get even if not through natural evolution ? Is evolution the only mechanism that creates complexity ?
Maybe there are precise scientific ways of “measuring” complexity in matter or systems.
I happen to read recently, by chance, about the prospect of measuring complexity in a journal for Complex Systems research. Apparently there is a method, among several, of mathematically defining how “complex” something is and is used a lot, but it isn’t entirely satisfying in all cases. I think they’re still looking for a “perfect” way to quantify complexity precisely.
Your comparison reminds me of the same situation with microproceesors and microcontrollers. Almost all “microprocessor and microcontrollers” are hidden and embedded, so the bulk of computers are smaller 8 bit chips working in microwave ovens, cars etc. The desktop PC (being the most complex example) is actually a small minority of the use of microprocessors. So even in this case you have most of the chips in simple devices and only a small amount of them in the complex PC. I think there are 10 embedded microcontrollers for every PC. Interesting analogy.
It seems as if evolution, as every natural mechanism, searches for the most stable form.
We might even use the word ‘perfection’.
What is weak or imperfect or wanting is inevitably assimilated, absorbed or destroyed in the process.
As such, individual humans appear to be destined for such a fate.
As more complex unions form, the members of those unions lose power and freedom within it.
We can see this occurring in our everyday lives from a social perspective.
We talk about Democracy or the rights of individuals – we actually glorify individualism in the west- and yet we act and believe is similar ways.
The ‘super-organism’, as Baudrillard would say, usurps personal motive and freedom of action and thought, by making the individual a willing participant or an ignorant follower of the ‘norm’ or the average.
By doing so it enslaves or it enlists its parts to its own interests by making them accept the meme it is founded on, or it discards them and casts them aside as outcasts, labelling them criminals or losers or terrorists or whatever derogatory label serves to ostracize them.
This process is inevitable and natural.
Its primary cause is weakness and imperfection and so any deterioration or pause or deconstruction will only postpone it by making it restart the process.
The social evolution from individual, to herd, to tribe to community, to city-state, to nation state, to culture, to globalization cannot be stopped but only resisted.
We can see evidence of this process in how the weakest or less self sure are the easiest to assimilate within groups and the easiest to convince of ideas.
You seem to suggest that the loss of individual freedom should be dreaded. That the “state” is a negative opposition to human freedom. You go on saying that everywhere man is in chains, complain about it a few times, and then twist the plot suddenly into a dualism of stronger/weaker types, where the sense of dread is lost when one becomes the leader, the manipulator, the governing force behind the “state.”
Well, which is it? So it now becomes a battle of assimilation between people…Sartre’s Other in constant conflict, eh?
You are a very eloquent nihilist, I think. You certainly recognize the difference between weaker and stronger people, as there are many, but then you use your own intelligence to compliment the situation you were just complaining about. “Freedom is lost so everybody fight one another” because that’s the essential “state” of affairs.
The ruling classes have one responsibility. Encourage the weaker to become stronger. If they are real leaders they are strong enough to do this. Every strong man can carry two weaker men on his back. The state should consist of two distinct classes which are always converging. The ideal man and the designing of ideal men by the ideal man. Eventually there will happen a balance and the ideal will be a composition of settled states between the two, and the distinction is destroyed.
One thing that really ticks me off is when I see an elite mocking the weaker. The strong should fight the strong, the weaker are to be carried.
I don’t like the battle cry: “everything is pointless and its every man for himself.”
The civilization I imagine is spectacular. A super construction of individuals functioning perfectly.
I am merely describing a natural occurrence.
I could say: The sun will come out tomorrow, which will warm some people and burn others.
Not complaining really, just commenting.
My position is that this unification of weaker entities is at the root of evolution and of every natural force.
Whether one is weaker or stronger, in relation to each other, determines how easily or confrontational the assimilation will be.
Some will go down kicking and screaming or choosing to retain ‘self’ rather than capitulate, while others will bend over willingly and call it virtuous.
Nihilism is the first stage of mental awakening.
Schopenhauer got stuck in it, as do the Buddhists.
What the Hellenes taught us, above all else and this is why we still honour them and admire them, is that even if there is no truth, then let man be the creator of it.
Even if there is no love or dignity or freedom, let man define it or make it.
Hellenism, as Nietzsche discovered causing him to break with Schopenhauer, is man standing up to nihilism and cowardice and the unknown.
Here lies the secret to the Greek phenomenon.
Science and philosophy are only possible when both fear and doubt are cast aside.
As long as there is imperfection, distinction will always occur.
The question is: What criteria of distinction will we use to measure man?
Under the present environments, wealth and privilege is how e measure western man.
What irks me is closet Christians and supposed altruists hiding their egotism and selfishness under clever ideals.
The weak should only be carried if they serve a purpose and then never be allowed to acquire authority or political power.
If they do, then we get this present situation where the weak maintain power balances by being so thoroughly manipulated by those that have the means or are descendants of past superiority.
That’s not my “battle cryâ€.
Mine is: ‘Everything is pointless so let man create a point’.
It’s not every man for himself, its every self uniting with its own kind for its own purposes.