Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!pesnta!hplabs!qantel!lll-lcc!lll-crg!topaz!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe
From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.bio,net.origins,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: the Goal of evolution
Message-ID: <1188@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Apr-86 19:17:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1188
Posted: Fri Apr 25 19:17:59 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 1-May-86 03:25:51 EDT
References: <211@spar.UUCP> <1028@cybvax0.UUCP>
Organization: University of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Sci.
Lines: 47
Xref: watmath net.bio:418 net.origins:3051 net.philosophy:5163

Mike Huybensz writes: [replying to Michael Ellis]

>> I guess I shouldn't be surprised that so many are quick to assert that
>> Aristotle's `telos' (roughly `purpose, goal, or aim') has no place in
>> scientific explanation. After all, physics and chemistry flourished only
>> after purging all but efficient causes, yes?

>Yes.  Purpose and goals have no place in scientific theory about (literally)
>brainless subjects because adding them to an explanation adds no more
>predictive or descriptive ability.  Thus Occam's Razor throws out "purpose"
>and "goals" in favor of "function".  (There are meanings of "function" that
>do not imply purpose.)

Actually, the reason for the rejection of "purposes" is much simpler: the
notion of purpose is inherently subjective.

>Wait a minute: who chose survival as a goal over extinction?  While we may
>personally prefer one over the otehr and pay more attention to it, there is
>no reasonable argument that one or the other is a purpose or goal of
>evolution.  Both are phenomina associated with evolution.

Well, I prefer an intermediate position: that evolution enforces survival as
a goal of organism systems/genotypes.  The goal is there, but by the
subjective nature of the thing, it is associated with individuals with
respect to themselves.

>  Evolution operates on
>just plain matter like any other descriptive law.  We make descriptive
>abstractions like matter and species for our own convenience, where it
>is simplest and most compact for us to describe and predict.

I'm note convinced by this last line anymore.  The decriptive abstractions
are backed up by real phenomenological differences, after all.


The question of whether there is goal-oriented evolution is not moot, and it
simply isn't a question of semantics either.  The "punctuated evolution"
school, in its descriptive explanation, begs the question of why certain
morphological changes seem to happen almost instantaneously.  I would
suggest that it is possible that there is some impetus which actively seeks
the completion of the transformation.  THis is rather different from an
explanation which argues that the dispersive force is simply mutation, and
that the favorable changes are simply the ones which persist.  The second is
a more orthodox explanation, but orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth in
science.

C. Wingate