http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-surprising-origins-of-evolutionary-complexity

Charles Darwin was not yet 30 when he got the basic idea for the theory of evolution. But it wasn’t until he turned 50 that he presented his argument to the world. He spent those two decades methodically compiling evidence for his theory and coming up with responses to every skeptical counterargument he could think of. And the counterargument he anticipated most of all was that the gradual evolutionary process he envisioned could not produce certain complex structures.

more on link:

>Unlike standard evolutionary theory, McShea and Brandon see complexity increasing even in the absence of natural selection. This statement is, they maintain, a fundamental law of biology—perhaps its only one. They have dubbed it the zero-force evolutionary law.<

I would have thought standard evolutionary theory takes this view anyway, due to the inevitability of mutations. But it tends to ignore complexity that fails to survive the test of natural selection.

“Charles Darwin was not yet 30 when he got the basic idea for the theory of evolution.”

off Wallace

dv said:

“Charles Darwin was not yet 30 when he got the basic idea for the theory of evolution.”

off Wallace

yeah bloody rip off merchant

his mate held back wallaces ideas so Charles (obviously the right kind of chap) could get in their first.

Bubblecar said:

>Unlike standard evolutionary theory, McShea and Brandon see complexity increasing even in the absence of natural selection. This statement is, they maintain, a fundamental law of biology—perhaps its only one. They have dubbed it the zero-force evolutionary law.<

I would have thought standard evolutionary theory takes this view anyway, due to the inevitability of mutations. But it tends to ignore complexity that fails to survive the test of natural selection.

I agree, it seems quite straightforward to me.

The earliest life forms are likely to be the simplest viable organisms, because the simplest forms will occur by random processes much more often than more complex viable organisms.

After life has developed mutations will arise that will tend to fill the space of all possible viable organisms, and almost all these organisms will be more complex than the original ones, because the original ones were so simple. Of the mutations, the ones that are the best fit to their environment will survive in the greatest numbers, and since new features offering survival benefits will add to complexity, this will often result in more complex organisms.

So it isn’t an either/or thing. The increase in complexity of living thins is due to both “survival of the fittest” and filling of the available space of all possible living things.

and since new features offering survival benefits will add to complexity,
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It always seems to be a logical flaw.

That the new improved gene becomes the steadfast and recurring one…

I suppose if you looked at the cycle of organisms and the spread from replication errors , + factored the environment integration potentials – meaning external environments – then the combination of internal and external environments, the ‘in-betweens’, these almost ‘invite’ the emergence and evolution of life given enough time. Certainly here on earth it seems, apparently.

Probably for this to work something of the order of external environments , initially non-organic I’d guess, would require an evenue to inbed or steer some structure. Some chemistry in that I wouldn’t venture, but likely originated in ponds, or/and of vents under water, and involved sedimentation, stratification of liquids etc that were prototype organisms in a sense.

We tend to look at the organism and puzzle of complexity, personally though I think the magic is probably in ordering possibilities in the ‘in-betweens’, a sort of ‘possibility space’, which aren’t physically occupied. Probably the closest possible conceptual tool available to us that comes near being analogous is consciousness itself, its trick being to bring workings/computations about displaced possible events and different realities into the now for parallel consideration, essentially influencing the now and future.

The physically unoccupied possibility space isn’t entirely unoccupied or devoid, as it could be said to contain information regarding what isn’t happened there, right now, or at some moment.

Probably for this to be so, as might apply to abiogenesis and evolution, you’d have to see the exclusions of any evolving structure as being perhaps something entirely different in their integration or adaptation potentials in the field of possibility space. The ‘in-betweens’ evolve also, but they are more possibilities than physically exist.

Possibilities evolve, and the ‘excluded’ evolve also. The idea that the physically excluded ‘evolve’ is a bit of a headfuck, but it appears to be the situation.