While many ID proposals are based on introducing teleonomy into evolution, I wanted to ask the question as to whether or not evolution, even by a Darwinian definition (i.e., natural selection and materialism) was already teleonomic.
The reason I ask this is because all sorts of things that Darwinian evolution has trouble explaining gets thrown into the basket of “sexual selection”. Basically, the reason why an organism evolved feature X was because that feature was selected by mating. In other words, the other organisms appreciated feature X, and therefore copulated and reproduced more with organisms showing more and more of feature X.
I find this interesting, because, especially if taken materialistically, this gives a teleonomic direction to selection, something that Mayr attempted to rule out.
Think of it this way. If one is a materialist, then what is determining the desires of the organism? It is the organism’s genetics! If the organism is desiring a mate, that’s because its genetics is telling it to do so. If an organism sees mates with feature X as being more desirable, that means its genetics are telling it to do so. Therefore, the organism’s genes are, in a very direct way, directing the selection process themselves.
Mate selection, under materialism, seems to me to definitely fall under the umbrella of teleonomy. And, since it governs a large component of the evolutionary process, it seems that one must then say that to a large extent the evolutionary process is teleonomic, even under Darwinian terms.
I’m curious to your thoughts on this. I am not aware of this idea being discussed in the literature, but if someone has papers or links to other discussions of this, I would love to see them.
HEY! Happy New Year. Nice to see you brother!
Nice to see you’ve found a venue to get some scholarly feedback.
I think Blythian selection (Blyth’s view of selection as a preserver rather than originator of species) is a goal oriented strategy that is utilized by living organisms. We see a picture of this in the anti-body evolution of somatic cells. I think I see the same strategy play out at the population level, but instead of apoptosis of somatic cells in an organism, we see genetic extinction of individuals in a population.
The analogy I suggested seems strengthened by Shapiro and Denis Noble pointing out mutational hotspots. I will add Mary West Ebberhard pointed out developmental plasticity and epigenetic changes that happen that make traits even more selectable (i.e. body weight). My understanding is blindness in cave fish may actually be a reversible epigenetic change. If this is the case, the there is teleonomy in biology and mutations and epigenetic developmental plasticity is not completely random with respect to fitness.
Since fitness is such a central concept to this discussion, I should point out we have an ongoing discussion on the definition of fitness:
Since you do computer modeling, it is nice to see how the ideas you are exploring might be translated to computation by using well-accepted concepts in population genetics.
Cornelius Hunter pointed out the weight changes in birds do not seem random with respect to fitness. These are possibly environmentally induced plasticity changes that may or may not even obey Mendelian laws of inheritance. It suggests a pre-existing inherent mechanically-based adaptive strategy that is non-Darwinian but “Blythian”.
Consider the plasticity seen in the adaptation of grasshopper population going to the locust phenotype. That is adaptation at the population level that does not look Darwinian to me.
Are you aware of West Eberhard’s writings? It was a painful read, but enlightening:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Jane_West-Eberhard
Hi Johnny,
I think mate selection applies to only a very small subset of the living world – sexually-reproducing metazoans – and to a rather small subset of genes within them – those phenotypically visible, typically, when expressed in one gender but not the other. So I would question the ‘large extent’ of your suggestion.
Johnnyb,
I might add, the term “Darwinian Selection” has some ambiguity to it. Some insist it must mean selection acting on RANDOM mutation with respect to fitness. Others like West-Eberhard or for that matter anyone will implicitly drop the notion of RANDOM mutation. I think Caporale leans in the non-random direction.
We could, of course coin our own word for selection of non-random traits. 🙂
So the question you posed may somewhat depend on your definition of “Darwinian Selection”.
To me, the human immune B cell maturation utilizes selection, but there could be a ferocious argument whether the mode of selection is truly Darwinian. The term has too much baggage.
The most exact terms are things like “differential reproductive success” which avoids the problem.
I don’t like using the term NATURAL selection, because it suggests the way Darwin conceived of selection, vs. the way Blyth conceived of it, is what happens in Nature. The phrase “Natural Selection” is somewhat false advertising because it’s not what we actually see happening in nature. It is clever rhetoric and defining something non-existent to be “natural”.
I erred earlier when I said, “genetic extinction”. Epigenetic changes are more subtle than that and they are often reversible transgenerationally. The reason transgeneraltional epigenetics is fascinating is that the changes are more easily reversed, where as genomic changes are relatively permanent and can stay broken for a family of descendants. Epignetic changes (methylation marks, histone modifications) can be reversed and are subject to selection! Whether we call that mode of selection “Darwinian” is something worth re-evaluating.
Hard to say, and I suppose it depends on what you mean by “teleonomic”. Darwin probably would have said “no”, but that’s just my guess.
What evolves does partially depend on the behavior of existing organisms, and that behavior is often seen as teleonomic (at least at the level of the individual organism).
johnnyb, have someone show you how to turn this into a Feature article. No need to have it buried so far down the page.
In One Long Argument, Ernst Mayr provides the following definitions:
Teleology. The actual or only seeming existence of end-directed processes in nature, and their study. See Finalism.
Teleomatic process. A seemingly end-directed process that is strictly controlled by natural laws such as the law of gravity or the first law of thermodynamics.
Teleonomic process. A process or behavior that owes its goal-directedness to the operation of a program.
Oh, here’s a good one:
Creationism. A belief in the literal truth of the story of creation as recorded in the Book of Genesis.
If you ask me, Mayr got his definitions backwards, nomos being the Greek word for law, and a program doesn’t just run on it’s own but it’s behavior can be described as automatic.
“(2) Processes in living organisms – as well as their behavior – that owe their goal-directedness to the operation of an inborn or acquired program are called teleonomic. This includes all changes in ontogenetic development as well as end-directed behavioral activities. Such processes can be analyzed strictly scientifically, since the end-point or goal is already contained in the program.
(3) Adapted systems … which seem to work toward a goal have also been called teleological. An organism has hundreds, if not thousands, of such adapted systems… These systems have the capacity for teleonomic behavior, but, being stationary, are not themselves goal seeking.”
– Mayr, Ernst. One Long Argument. p 67
Honestly, I’ve never been able to make sense of Mayr here. When it comes to living organisms, what is teleonomic and what isn’t, and how do we tell?
What Darwin called “natural selection” refers to any attribute that favors survival … However, an individual may make a higher genetic contribution to the next generation not by having superior survival attributes but merely by being more successful in reproduction. Darwin called this kind of selection “sexual selection.”
– Mayr, Ernst. One Long Argument. p 88
No wonder so many people here are so confused about natural selection. They don’t understand the difference between natural selection and sexual selection.
Weismann saw clearly that sexual selection gave an advantage to certain individuals, and he remarked that the driving force of sexual selection is not the external environment but rather the preferences of the individuals in their selection of a mate. Characters acquired by sexual selection do not offer any advantage in the daily struggle for existence.
– Mayr, Ernst. One Long Argument. p 117
No wonder so many people here are so confused about natural selection. They don’t understand the difference between externally imposed environmental constraints and internally motivated choices. It’s the external environment! Unless it isn’t.
Q: What is the difference between kin selection and group selection and are they both considered to be sexual selection, “selection for reproductive success”?
Mayr, p. 156
…advances in genetics continue to strengthen rather than weaken the theory of natural selection. Darwin was remarkably astute in his conceptualization of selection. He clearly saw (better than A. R. Wallace and most other contemporaries) that there are two kinds of selection, one for general viability leading to survival and the maintenance or improvement of adaptedness, and this he called “natural selection,” and another that leads to greater reproductive success, and this he called “sexual selection.”
– Mayr, Ernst. One Long Argument. p 164
sez the OP:
It depends what “teleonomic” means. I see that Wikipedia defines “teleonomy” as “the quality of apparent purposefulness and of goal-directedness of structures and functions in living organisms brought about by natural laws”; at first blush, it seems to me that evolution would indeed qualify as “teleonomic”.
Are you sure that you didn’t mean to type “teleological” instead of “telenomic”? I ask because Creationists generally get very fussy about how living things really do possess genuine “purposefulness” & such, and the word “teleonomic” is all about stuff that merely seems to possess “purposefuness” without really possessing that quality. So: You tell me what you mean when you say “teleonomic”, and I’ll give my best guess re: whether or not evolution qualifies as “teleonomic” by your definition.
My question to cubist would be
How would you scientifically determine if evolution had purposefuness or just seemed to posses that quality?
peace
Here’s an article by Allen MacNeill.
Teleological and Teleonomic: A New(er) Analysis
The Wikipedia article has some useful history without bringing much clarity.
Teleology and teleonomy in behavior analysis
The Misappropriation of Teleonomy (pdf)
It doesn’t seem to posses that purposefulness quality at all because for all I know mutations follow random patterns. Unless the purpose is to make it random. Maybe god does play dice with mutations?…
So in contrast to cubist your answer would be that evolution was not teleonomic or teleological.
Got it
peace
Here is the stock materialist answer you will get here Johnny:
Evolution is goal oriented if a materialist says it and they get to invoke that as some sort of property of nature, that doesn’t require an explanation as to why.
Evolution is not goal oriented if a creationist says it is.
There’s a difference between purposefulness and apparent purposefulness.
Natural selection is non-random and can “appear” to produce design, but mutations are random and that’s what NS works with. There’s also genetic drift which is random but it’s unclear how much of what we see is due to NS or GD.
Question is, and this is probably more of a theological question, if there is a purpose and the “guy on charge” keeps making the same mistakes over and over again producing horrid mutations in innocent babies, what does that tell us about the purpose or the aptitude of the guy?
I know someone will rush to argue that it’s all genetic entropy, but 1. those fatal mutations are not increasing in frequency, and 2. why would there be DNA repair if the idea is to have it degrade progressively?
Ask a theologian or a philosopher. I don’t see that as a scientific question.
But there is a different question that I consider relevant:
Is it apparently acting on its own purpose, or is it apparently acting on the purpose of an external agent?
I see biology as full of things acting on their own purpose. And I see design as resulting in things that act on the purpose of the designer. In my opinion, this already makes ID implausible, unless ID is concerned with self-design.
we agree again
I’m pretty sure that ID does not rule out self design.
I know you are familiar with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
peace
OK,
Scientifically how exactly would you go about determining if you were looking at “purposefulness” rather than “apparent purposefulness”?
peace
I think It’s probably impossible. It looks so random anyway, so what’s the point?
Indeed. I call it the Dawkins Dilemma.
Scientifically, how exactly would you go about determining if you were looking at “design” rather than “the appearance of design”? Three decades now, and still no answer.
Happy New Year fifth!
So are you going to start proclaiming that ID is unprovable, unfalsifiable and unscientific now?
Neil Rickert,
How does something act on its own purpose? What made it do so?
I have often seen you walk this fine line of saying organisms have some kind of intent to evolve in a direction, while still calling it unguided. I never have any idea what you mean. It seems like an equivocation of meaning. This mysterious ability to foresee and transform, without saying how or why-and yet still precluding any outside entity.
Isn’t that the scientific consensus, and don’t we all know that the scientific consensus is the only means to discern what is sort of true but may not be true?
Happy New Year dazz!
dazz,
Its has been proclaimed here by several, including the site owner, that falsifiability is not essential to any theory. Heck, they say a theory doesn’t even has to be specific, you know like the theory of modern medicine.
Do you agree with them?
Yes, that’s basically correct. You may not find it as compelling as its only competition, Making Stuff Up. And according to most polls, Making Stuff Up is the preferred avenue to “knowledge” for a sizeable majority.
Dear Flint,
You had parents, like all the rest of us. Perhaps your parents taught you things, and perhaps they abandoned you to the elements. Perhaps you decided at a very early age, based on your incredible knowledge gained elsewhere, that your parents were liars.
Happy New Year!
Not sure what you’re trying to say here. Like most of us, most of what I “know” takes the form of Received Wisdom, since I’m no more capable of replicating everyone else’s work than anyone else is. Perhaps a good deal of what I know, is incorrect to some degree. When I was much younger, most of what I knew WAS incorrect to a greater degree than it is today. There are good methods for improving the correctness of your knowledge, but Wanting To Be Right Real Real Hard is not one of them.
Indeed.
But you don’t really “know” it, because Received Wisdom is antithetical to Real Knowledge.
Only if it’s incapable of being verified if you should wish to do so.
This too vague to be useful.
How do you “know” that what you “know” can be verified?
Do you simply assume that all “Received Wisdom:” is false?
If so, most of what you know is false.
Including your skepticism.
johnnyb,
It’s not much, but the best article I found on the topic you are interested in is this one. I at least covers the topics and names the thinkers I think should be referenced in this discussion:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200732/
Thanks for the responses!
By the way, someone else made this featured, as I still don’t know how to do it, but thanks to whoever it was!
Sal –
Thanks for the encouragement. My point was that it doesn’t really matter which version of selection or evolution you go with, you are going to wind up with teleonomy.
Alan Miller said:
I agree with the first part but not the second part. Sexual selection deals with the entirety of the organisms, including its general health, not just specific sex-specific features of sexually dimorphic organisms. However, I don’t think it reduces the question in importance at all to say that it refers only to sexually-reproducing organisms. In addition, it actually does apply to non-sexual organisms because apoptosis is a self-selective process that performs similar functions.
Neil Rickert:
Yes, precisely. In addition, with sexual selection, the end-goal of the teleonomy *is* the offspring. Therefore, it is specifically directed towards evolution on some scale.
Mung –
As for Mayr, I think he is at least consistent in his naming. His point is that because he thinks you can decouple the process of evolution from the programming of a being, therefore the programming isn’t teleological – it is operating unplugged from any teleology.
You are quite right, however, in noticing that there is a big issue with considering kin selection, group selection, and sexual selection as part of natural selection. They simply don’t fit either terminologically or even theoretically.
cubist –
My point is about teleonomy by Mayr’s definition.
dazz –
While this is outside the topic of discussion, you are incorrect that mutations are random in any sense of the word. While there are some mutations that can sincerely go by that designation, I would argue that a very large percentage of them are not. Take for instance somatic hypermutation. This is where the cell focuses mutations on the 0.000001% (I don’t have the exact numbers with me, but near here) of base pairs that are likely to generate a beneficial result, and skip the other ones. It then switches off the mutation process when it finds a match.
Neil –
I think ID can certainly be concerned with self-design. It requires simply that the self be an intelligent agent, which I think could easily qualify for a great many living organisms.
Sal –
Thanks for the article – I will give it a read tomorrow!
Good night everyone, and happy new year. Thanks for the conversation!
Mung,
Thank Heaven you are here to sort us out.
phoodoo,
Nope. Evolution is not goal oriented regardless who says it.
Mung,
Doesn’t say much for the ID research program then, does it?
johnnyb,
Apoptosis is very distinct from selection – and you are still focusing on metazoans as if they were the only organisms worth mentioning.
johnnyb,
You haven’t really supported your ‘large percentage’ assertion there. Somatic mutations (by definition) do not take place in the germ line, which is where evolutionary change of the kind generally talked of must take place. There is a limited amount of evolution possible in the somatic line – but, again, this is all very metazoan-centric for something supposedly based on general evolutionary principles.
Most mutations are not concentrated in the places most likely to yield benefit. There is an interplay between mutation and selection that filters the distribution. The ones that happen to be beneficial are differentially conserved.
johnnyb,
With health, it’s hard to tease apart the sexual component from the general not-dying thing. Healthy individuals are more likely to have offspring generally, not just because mates prefer them.
Whether it is properly ‘selection’ at all depends on the heritability of ‘health’, since selection ultimately sorts genotypes (through the lens of phenotype).
I guess that’s in line with Sean Carroll’s position about falsiability
If a theory with plenty explanatory power, that is consistent with all previous observation, is developed to explain something but we lack the technology to test it’s predictions, is that theory falsifiable? what if it’s likely we will never have the means to test it?
I would say that’s still science. It’s part of the scientific process to propose tentative explanations, and whether supportive or refuting evidence is found at a later date or not doesn’t change that. The problem is that if there are competing theories, we wouldn’t know which one is right or wrong, so they would be scientific, but not well supported theories or scientific “facts” as other theories that do have plenty supportive evidence.
I don’t think I said that mutations are random in any sense of the word. Must clarify, and it’s something I should have done already and like to do in forums like this, that I’m not a biologist, a scientist or even a particularly knowledgeable layman in the field of biology. It probably shows but anyway.
I’ve heard of regions of the genome with higher rates of mutation than others. That wouldn’t be random in the sense of being equally probable anywhere in the genome, but still individual mutations are random in the sense that they don’t target a goal. Somatic hypermutation seems to me like it’s no exception. It’s a mechanism that amplifies and selects random mutations until a useful antibody is produced. Does the mechanism use non-random mutations? I don’t think so
Purposeful?
and to you
peace
Which part? Probably a mix of both
I’m pretty sure you intended to post the image so we can say at least that part is purposeful
I can conclude that the bottle did not arise by accident but was designed and manufactured again purposeful
I expect that I would find the individual capsules in the bottle take on a more or less random pattern so no purpose there.
It really depends on what part of the image we are evaluating
etc etc
I’m pretty sure that I have been talking of “apparently purposeful behavior”. Perhaps it would be clearer if wrote “behaves as if following a purpose”. I am not claiming any magical ability to detect an actual purpose.
As for “own purpose”, just look at the beneficiary of the behavior (or “follow the money” if you prefer). If the apparently purposeful behavior benefits the organism, then it is appearing to act on its own purpose. If the behavior benefits something else, but not the organism, then drop the “own”.
No you haven’t seen that “often” — or even once.
That was me. Near the “publish” button, there’s a setting for “visibility” which you (as an admin) can change.
It depends on what type of evolution you are talking about. Intelligent Design evolution is goal oriented whereas blind watchmaker evolution is not. That is just another reason why blind watchmaker evolution is unscientific as it is nothing more than contingent serendipity.