[FRIAM] What is the most important selection principle in evolution?

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Hi, Everybody, and Steve, and Miles

 

Please everybody forgive me for what I am about to garble. 

 

Steve Guerin and I have a long standing argument concerning the above
question.  He thinks my answer to the above question will be "natural
selection."  His answer to that question is, is that as energy flows from
high to low concentrations, it seeks, and finds the most efficient route.
Today, steve presented to me a most astounding example, which I am sure most
of you are familiar with, but which I had never quite grasped.  It is
illuminated by a metaphor.  Imagine a beach and a lifeguard standing on the
beach when a drowning swimmer calls out to the lifeguard's right.  Should
the lifeguard run directly toward the drowning swimmer.  No, because he can
make a lot faster progress toward the swimmer while running on the beach
than he can while swimming.  So he should chose a path that minimizes his
time to the swimmer, not the path directly toward the swimmer.  That path,
the path of least action, will carry him to the right of the swimmer until
he reaches he water's edge and starts to swim.   Lifeguards have to be
trained to do this, and lifeguards argue about which direction to head off
under  under which conditions.  

 

Well, light approaching boundary between air and water faces the same
situation.  And the stunning fact is that light finds the least action path.
As I understand it, the light leaves the source in a direction that takes
into account the boundary that it is approaching.  PLEASE correct me if I
have this wrong. Yet, of course, in this situation there is no trial and
error.  Photons of light just "know" how to do this.  If this is true, I
promise NEVER to yawn again when one of you is going on about quantum
physics.  

 

Now, Steve, ==>IF<== I understood you, you also went on to describe ants
behavior and lightening behavior as analogous processes that also find Least
Action Pathways.  And, I think you are also going to perhaps assert that a
tornado is a structure that facilitates a least action pathway. Etc.  But
these are plainly "historical" processes. I.e, in all cases the process
tries out options, and settles on  the LAP.  But with light, here is no
history.  Photons are like lifeguards who know instinctively what path to
set out on to reach the swimmer with the least action 

 

Could I possibly have this right?  Once we get this first bit straightened
out, I have a question about its relation to natural selection. 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

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