Stability as the Goal of Evolution
- From: Tom Hendricks <tom-hendricks@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:29:01 -0400 (EDT)
These quotes support my idea of putting more emphasis on stability
over change, to understand life and how it began.
The quotes are from 'Out of Control' by K. Kelly.
"In the prebiotic conditions of early Earth, before there was any life
to evolve, the dynamics of evolution favored the survival of anything
stable.
Stability permitted evolution to operate longer, and so stability
allowed evolution to generate further stability....
At the next stage, evolution evolved self-replicating stabilities.
Self reproduction provided the possibility of errors and variation.
Evolution then evolved natural selection and unleashed its remarkable
search power."
My contention goes further. I suggest that every evolved reason for
life is to make it more stable in its environment. And that change is
just a novel way of better fitting the environment. I can't find
anything that life does that makes it less fit in the environment over
the short or long term.
There is this quote too:
"Open any book on evolution and the pages flow with stories of change.
The terms adaptation, speciation, mutation are all the jargon of
transformation - of differences over time. Through the language of
change, which evolution science has given us, we tell our history as
one of alterations, metamorphosis and novelty.
But rare is the book on evolution theory that tells the story of
steadfastness. The index will not list stasis, or fixity, or
stability, or any of the jargon of permanence. Despite the
overwhelming fact that evolution spends almost all of its time not
changing very much, teachers and textbooks are silent on the ways of
constancy."
This line of thinking has always suggest to me a major clue in the
origin of life. It shows that its goal was not to get to us, or
evolve, or anything else. It was a reaction to the environment that
lasted because it was the most stable reaction to that environment.
Comments?
.
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