[FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

[gepr ⛧]

But none of this seems to indicate that *selection* or survival to mating age *creates* the new attribute. Survival to mating age only preserves whatever phenotype was constructed by the genes and ontogeny. Whether you call genes and ontogeny random or not is irrelevant. We could easily call it 'ignorance'... i.e. ignorance constructs the phenotype, then the environment decides its fecundity.

On August 22, 2017 5:25:27 PM PDT, Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> wrote:
>Incidentally, the life-increases-entropy hypothesis.... I first
>stumbled
>upon an excellent statement of that in Comparative Psychology: A
>Handbook
><https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/comparative-psychology-gary-greenberg/1112415063>(1998).
>It was by Rod Swenson, who has some other interesting statements on the
>topic on Research Gate
><https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2118010758_ROD_SWENSON>,
>including one connecting the idea with perception-action systems.
>
>It is definitely insightful in some ways, and I remember being quite
>impressed. However, as I see it pop up more, I start to remember that
>it's
>been a while since most Western intellectuals expected life to be an
>exception to the laws of physics, so I'm not sure it's too terribly
>interesting to note that life conforms to them.
>
>
>-----------
>Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
>Supervisory Survey Statistician
>U.S. Marine Corps
><echarles at american.edu>
>
>On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 7:05 PM, Robert Wall <wallrobert7 at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>> Nick,
>>
>> "Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create
>them."
>>  and  "The idea of evolution groping blindly through morphology space
>is
>> absurd."
>>
>> Not trying to get into a tussle with you, 😊 but Jeremy England
>> <http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/england_jeremy.html> would
>> tend to agree with you, as would I.  According to this analysis
>(*Nautilus
>> *2016) concerning the Hox gene circuit
>>
><http://nautil.us/issue/41/selection/the-strange-inevitability-of-evolution-rp>,
>> there doesn't seem to be enough time for randomness (i.e., blindly
>groping)
>> to be explanatory. The numbers tend to say this *would *be absurd.
>>
>> Take, for example, the discovery within the field of evolutionary
>>> developmental biology that the different body plans of many complex
>>> organisms, including us, arise not from different genes but from
>different
>>> networks of gene interaction and expression in the same basic
>circuit,
>>> called the Hox gene circuit. To get from a snake to a human, you
>don’t
>>> need a bunch of completely different genes, but just a different
>pattern of
>>> wiring in essentially the same kind of Hox gene circuit. For these
>two
>>> vertebrates there are around 40 genes in the circuit. If you take
>account
>>> of the different ways that these genes might regulate one another
>(for
>>> example, by activation or suppression), you find that the number of
>>> possible circuits is more than 10700. That’s a lot, lot more than
>the
>>> number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. What,
>then, are
>>> the chances of evolution finding its way blindly to the viable
>“snake” or
>>> “human” traits (or phenotypes) for the Hox gene circuit? How on
>earth did
>>> evolution manage to rewire the Hox network of a Cambrian fish to
>create us?
>>
>>
>> ​...​
>>
>> ​
>>
>> You could go from one sequence to another with the same shape (and
>thus
>>> much the same function) via a succession of small changes to the
>sequence,
>>> as if proceeding through a rail network station by station. Such
>changes
>>> are called neutral mutations, because they are neither adaptively
>>> beneficial nor detrimental. (In fact even if mutations are not
>strictly
>>> neutral but slightly decrease fitness, as many do, they can persist
>for a
>>> long time in a population as if they were quasi-neutral.)
>>
>>
>> Here is a new explanation *for the rest of us* -- *Wired*:
>CONTROVERSIAL
>> NEW THEORY SUGGESTS LIFE WASN'T A FLUKE OF BIOLOGY—IT WAS PHYSICS
>>
><https://www.wired.com/story/controversial-new-theory-suggests-life-wasnt-a-fluke-of-biologyit-was-physics/>
>> [7-30-2017].
>>
>> ... and here -- *Scientific America*: A New Physics Theory of Life
>>
><https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-physics-theory-of-life/>
>> [2014], where the same science author writes about this when the idea
>was
>> first proposed by England in his 2013 paper
>> <http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsrep.pdf>.
>>
>>
>> A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists
>because
>> the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like
>physical
>> properties
>>
>>
>> Perhaps very much prematurely, England is being touted as the new
>Darwin.
>> His theory, however, does not replace natural selection but provides
>a
>> deeper expanation for "fitness."
>>
>> In an hour-long lecture that I listened to
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91D5UAz-f4> recently, England
>admits
>> that we cannot really attribute any of this to randomness ... we
>don't
>> really know precisely what that is. What it seems to come down to,
>though,
>> are--as you say--the "best" hypotheses for the seemingly improbable
>> (considering the Second Law of Thermodynamics) building of new
>structures
>> in a prevailing heat bath that dissipate the most Gibbs free energy.
>Erwin
>> Schrödinger noted something similar in his 1944 essay *What is Life*.
>>
>> If I understand this, what creates these "fit" structures is this
>> tendency for all matter, not just living matter, (i.e., arrangements
>of
>> atoms or molecules) to self-organize into new organizations--your
>> *hypotheses*--that maximize the dissipation of free energy. It is
>indeed
>> the evolving, prevailing environment that provides the opportunities
>for
>> various, different "hypotheses" to arise at different times in
>geological
>> history. So, in a sense, you *can *say that natural selection
>*creates
>> and preserves* innovations if you see it as an interactive process as
>> both Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead both did at the
>beginning of
>> the twentieth century.
>>
>> From the same *Scientific American* article, this is notable:
>>
>> Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give
>>> researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and
>>> function in living things, many of the researchers said. “Natural
>selection
>>> doesn’t explain certain characteristics,” said Ard Louis, a
>biophysicist at
>>> Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a
>heritable
>>> change to gene expression called methylation, increases in
>complexity in
>>> the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes
>Louis has
>>> recently studied.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> If [*Jeremy*] England’s approach stands up to more testing, it could
>>> further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for
>every
>>> adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of
>>> dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that
>“the
>>> reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not
>be
>>> because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make
>it
>>> easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,” Louis said.
>>
>>
>> For students and practitioners of complexity science, this seems more
>than
>> just interesting.
>>
>> Hope this adds something to this interesting thread.  It got my
>attention.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Robert
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:21 PM, Nick Thompson <
>> nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Wagner seems to support utterly my intuition that what the genome
>offers
>>> up is not random mutations but hypotheses for good living.  The idea
>of
>>> evolution groping blindly through morphology space is absurd.
>>>
>>> "inadequate," my tush.  (};-)]
>>>
>>> N
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>> Clark University
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g???
>>> Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 12:11 PM
>>> To: friam at redfish.com
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, Dave promised to give us a gist of Wagner.  And Grant has
>chimed in
>>> regarding the stochasticity of crossover, which provoked an
>inadequate
>>> response from Nick, if I remember correctly.  Since you're actively
>reading
>>> Wagner now, Nick, perhaps you could give us a summary of what he
>might have
>>> meant by Jenny's quote?  Repeated here for convenience:
>>>
>>> On 8/9/17 8:56 AM, Jenny Quillien wrote:
>>> >
>>> > An excellent foray into such a topic is Arrival of the Fittest:
>how
>>> nature innovates by Andreas Wagner.
>>> >
>>> > From the Preface:  the power of natural selection is beyond
>dispute,
>>> but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve
>innovations, but
>>> it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them
>random is
>>> just another way of admitting our ignorance about it. Nature's any
>>> innovations- some uncannily perfect - call for natural principles
>that
>>> accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innov

-- 
⛧glen⛧