Re: Minimization principal for evolution
- From: "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:52:14 -0500 (EST)
"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dsug75$1bg8$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Yes, most notably by Sewell Wright, though just about everybody has
been influenced by his thinking. However, there is a difference in
conventions between thinking about evolution and thermodynamics.
Wright saw things upside down from the way you do. Instead of a
ball rolling into a valley to minimize free energy, he thought of
a more active agent climbing a hill. Same basic idea, but it means
that biologists think in terms of maximizing something whereas
thermodynamicists think of minimizing.
Once again, you have said something I tried to articulate and was unable to
say as well.
I still feel that something is not getting addressed as to the "growth" of a
bio-system.
My thoughts about evolution evolve around a series of challenges which are
surmounted by the fortunate accidents which get by changing filters and
hence morphs by virtue of survival of those "errors" which make it through
the filters, and get to move to the next level, versus those that don't.
This paradigm (a construct of my imagination, at best) DIVERSIFIES by virtue
of the circumstance that more resultant forms (COPYING ERROR DRIVEN,
ONLY) tend to succeed, as time goes on, than are the minima necessary for
the process to go on at all.
This model (in my head) behaves exactly -- it seems to me -- as what you
describe in relation to the hill-climbing metaphor but also speaks to the
issue of diversification.
I am not omitting to consider species demise. But as between "growth" of
global bio-mass and bio-energy on (and in) Earth, as the numerator of a
fraction (with Earth's total mass and energy as the denominator) to be -- if
not increasing, then certainly holding its own.
Although I respect anyone's right to argue that viruses are not living
things, I tend to include them in my imagination as a part of
bio-mass/energy.
Wouldn't it be interesting if we could measure the global ratio from time to
time and see whether the fraction BIOME over ABIOME (i.e. the total
biologically-active- biological mass and energy divided by the total
abiological mass and energy) may have reached a saturation level and the
fraction become a conserved ratio in equilibrium?
There is a continuous and ubiquitous interplay going on between bio and abio
whereby mass that is clearly a part of a "living" organism (such as a
molecule of carbon) today can be a part of a lump of coal another day. But
if the overall ratio is conserved, then a corresponding molecule of carbon
might get
taken in and made a part of a biological unit.
It's just a thought.
But getting back to the main thought: It is important to note that between
the time when there was nothing, as we like to define it, "living" on Earth
and a time when there was anything resembling a "saturation" level in the
fraction, there must have been a heck of a fermentation going on. And that
fermentation (as it exists in my imagination not a mere growth of the
limited nature of a yeast culture in a wine vat, but a growth of all diverse
and diversifying 'forms.'
For me this works (in my imagination) far more intuitively than an example
of something leaping from valley to valley, from mountain top to mountain
top, or climbing up an inclined plane.
g
.
- References:
- Minimization principal for evolution
- From: Don
- Re: Minimization principal for evolution
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