Evolution in Four Dimensions: Review

PUBLISHER:

redshirt

Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

Details: Written by Shaun Johnston Shaun Johnston; Published: September 23, 2011 September 23, 2011; Hits: 3551 3551

Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb have created their own genre of science writing, marked by visits to imaginary worlds, end-of-chapter dialogs with an engaged lay person, and fanciful illustrations throughout. of points made in the text by Anna Zeligowski. In this book the playfulness masks an imaginative integration of disparate concepts into elaboration of a single meta-concept, facilitated variation. The four dimensions of the book's title that the authors represent as almost-equivalent agents in the creation of variation are genetic, epigenetic, behavioral and symbolic, "symbolic" standing for human language and culture. By identifying intermediates between the 4 agents the authors imply they actually form a continuous spectrum of agency, from random genetic variation at one end, entirely non-facilitated, to highly facilitated variation in the form of human planning at the other. More...