h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Evolution, A Complete Description


The first law of thermodynamics states that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. This implies that everything that is, everything that ever was, and everything that will ever be, was present at the birth of the universe albeit in a more elementary form.
The second law of thermodynamics states that a closed system without the introduction of additional energy from outside will move toward greater entropy, defined as a measure of disorder. This implies that whatever exists will disintegrate without the introduction of outside energy.
Everything that exists, everything that has ever existed and everything that ever will exist is compounded from that which has existed prior to it. This gives rise to the rule of evolution that states that a system far from equilibrium with an excess of energy will move toward the creation of greater varieties of increasing complexity. This is accomplished through the mechanism of complex hierarchical organization.


All of the arguments, discussions, and scientific enquiry surrounding Darwin’s concept of evolutionary change have dealt only with the effect that the process has had on living entities. However, if we extend our examination of the evolutionary process beyond living things, we find that the process stretches back to the birth of the universe. Viewed from this vantage point, Evolution can be seen as the basic source of change. It appears as a force operating through the organization of the basic laws of the Universe with a single inevitable result; to give everything that is possible the opportunity to come into existence. When Evolution brought into existence a living being with true creative power, it created its own master.
Our first step is to answer this question: What do we imply when we say something has come into being, that it now exists? We must answer this question because we are not simply investigating the nature of what lives. We are now involved in understanding the nature of what is. Consider a collection of electrons and protons that make up an atom of gold or lead. At one moment, they were a collection of free electrons, protons, and assorted subatomic particles. Then, an instant later, they became atoms; whether they were now atoms of gold or atoms of lead would depend entirely on the energy levels at that instant. Modern scientists can calculate the energy levels necessary for each of these cases, but for our purpose, we only need to realize that at one moment in time, they were random particles and an instant later, they were atoms of one kind or another. This is a simple example of what we call “emergence,” an event in time where something becomes, when something that was not, suddenly is.
Every sudden appearance of anything in the universe is an example of emergence. The constituents that make up whatever what has come to be have already existed. Then, at some moment in time, a new thing comes into being that may not share any properties with its constituents. Once it has emerged, we can name it, identify it, and examine it, because it now is. Consider anything, an atom of gold, the tree in your front yard, the green house over on Elm Street, Becky Thatcher, a character in a Mark Twain novel, a painting by Renoir. In every case, the constituent parts existed first in time, then that which is under consideration came into being. The aberrant conditions, the creative talent, the traumatic events that bring about emergence may be infinitely varied, but the result is the same, the coming into being of something that did not exist before.
Atoms are not the only entities that are made up of something different, perhaps smaller. If we look at those things we are familiar with in the world around us, we find that everything that we can identify consists of hierarchically ordered constituent parts. In an article entitled “The Architecture of Complexity,” Herbert Simon explained that these “hierarchies” are a variant of what we think of as Chinese boxes. “Opening any given box,” he said, “discloses not just one new box within, but a whole new set of boxes; and opening any of those component boxes discloses a new set in turn. While the ordinary set of Chinese boxes is a sequence, or complete ordering, of the component boxes, a hierarchy is a partial ordering―specifically, a tree.” He used a parable of two watchmakers to show how, only by using this structure, the universe could have developed to the level it has in the period since its inception in what has come to be called the “Big Bang.”
There once was two watchmakers, named Hora and Tempus, who manufactured very fine watches. Both of them were highly regarded, and the phones in their workshops rang frequently. New customers were constantly calling them.
However, Hora prospered while Tempus became poorer and poorer and finally lost his shop. What was the reason?
The watches the men made consisted of about 1000 parts each. Tempus had so constructed his that if he had one partially assembled and had to put it down—to answer the phone, say―it immediately fell to pieces and had to be reassembled from the elements. The better the customers liked his watches the more they phoned him and the more difficult it became for him to find enough uninterrupted time to finish a watch.
The watches Hora handled were no less complex than those of Tempus, but he had designed them so that he could put together sub-assemblies of about ten elements each. Ten of these subassemblies, again, could be put together into a larger subassembly and a system of ten of the latter constituted the whole watch. Hence, when Hora had to put down a partly assembled watch in order to answer the phone, he lost only a small part of his work, and he assembled his watches in only a fraction of the man-hours it took Tempus.
Finally he said, “Nature is organized in levels because hierarchic structures―systems of Chinese boxes―provide the most viable form for any system of even moderate complexity.”
What Simon called “complexity” is nothing more than the organization of particles that make up anything that we can identify as something that exists. We can call this special hierarchical organization, complex organization. If we think about this seriously, there is only one conclusion. When we say something is, that it exists, we are saying that it has emerged through complex organization so that we can experience it as it is itself rather than as a collection of its component parts. However, though it has emerged, it is still undergoing change because nothing remains the same over time; the universe is not in a state of equilibrium. Everything we can know about what we experience must be abstracted from its existence and from its trajectory in the universe. Therefore, knowledge of what is, is essentially knowledge of what must be true if we do experience it
If everything that is, that is what we agree exists, exists because it has emerged out of the interactions of some things that have already existed; they too, at some prior time, emerged out of the interactions of what they are made of, then we are looking at a temporal sequence as well as a hierarchical structure. We are accustomed to seeing the hierarchical sequence described by Simon, but this new view adds another dimension to our examination of the universe. We are therefore looking not only at a series of hierarchically structured objects; we are also looking at a sequence of ordered events.
These events mark the coming to be of each something that is but was not. Whatever it is that constitutes the new existence has now become part of our experience. Yet its component parts still exist in their own right. This event has triggered a change, not in the constituent parts themselves, but in the interactions between the parts such that they now act together as a new existence. Taking a cue from H. H. Pattee and other researchers in hierarchical theory, I will identify this as the coming into being of "Complex Hierarchical Constraint.” This constraint emerges out of the interactions and communications among the constituent parts. By constraining the variability of the component parts, it gives identity to the new existence, determines its properties, and opens up a new world of possibilities.
Let us begin with language, an example that is certainly not simple but is at least familiar to us. In any given culture, over perhaps millennia of experimenting in communications, there has emerged something those within the society call a language. This consists of an alphabet of sounds and symbols and a set of rules for organizing them into meaningful sequences. This is the constraint that language places on the sounds and symbols. These constraints provide the power through which the members of a society conduct their day-to-day, to say nothing of the entire repertoire of literature developed throughout the history of the culture. A simple examination of the variety of languages and cultures that have existed on the planet Earth illustrates dramatically that it is not the sounds and symbols that provide the variety that gives life to a culture (In many languages there is no correlation with its sounds and those of any alien language). The meaning lies in the structure of the hierarchical constraints.
Using this same kind of constraint, a small variety of subatomic particles form the hundred or so elements that make up our physical universe, and for those hundred or so to combine to form every physical object we are aware of in the universe. None of these constraints existed in the products of the Big Bang. Each set of these hierarchical constraints has emerged through the interactions of free particles at each stage of the evolution of the universe.
The universe exists. It is a structural hierarchy. Some of us use tools, from the Hubble Telescope to electron microscopes, to look at it. Although we may know very little about the forces that make it a unity, we can still talk about it to one another, even among those who have never seen a telescope or looked into a microscope. Each thing in the universe that we can identify is also a structural hierarchy. When I use the term hierarchical constraint, I am referring to the myriad ways that these hierarchies are held together. Regardless of the details of these constraints, we can still follow the trail from the universe to galaxies to star systems to planets to the materials that make up the planets, to the molecular structures, the atomic structure, even down to the hadrons. We can look at any point in the scale and identify at least some of the characteristics of the constraints that bind it into existence. When we reach the lowest level, have we reached the ultimate particle? No, we have reached, the limits of our tools. Because hadrons come in assorted flavors, it would seem that they too are organizations of an alphabet of smaller particles, but we lack the tools to find out. Considering the success of the wave theory of matter, perhaps we lack even the language to explain it.
According to recent scientific thought, the hadrons emerged during the first few microseconds following the Big Bang. However, this view of time is irrelevant. Time has two characteristics: sequentiality and periodicity. As far as we know, only man experiences the periodicity of time. Everything else experiences only sequentiality. A weathered stone is not weathered because it has been out in the elements for a long time; it is weathered because of the repeated actions of the weather. Events in a dog's life might imprint themselves on the dog's memory, but I have never heard anyone suggest that the dog knows how long the event took or where he was last week. The point here is that before there could exist any more complex particles, there had to be hadrons, and before there could be complex atoms, there had to be both the hadrons that comprise them and the structures that developed regions of concentrated energy required for them to emerge into existence. The lengths of time for these activities to occur are just numbers for any entity on the planet Earth other than man.
We are usually cognizant of the constraining effect of scientific laws on physical entities in a stable equilibrium. Einstein's special theory of relativity says that scientific laws are consistent for all bodies in uniform motion. The universe has never been in an equilibrium state at any time since the Bang itself. The universe in a state of equilibrium would be a state of infinite entropy, or in other words, heat death. In a state far from equilibrium, we can add another trait of scientific laws―that is, they become the tokens of an alphabet that produces what we call hierarchical constraint. As such, they not only produce stable physical structures, they are also the fundamental source of freedom and variety.
If we examine the picture of evolution provided by modern science, we run into a very important problem. The engine of evolution according to the scientists is natural selection. In their description, it appears that in the early years of the planet earth, God, or nature, sent a lightning strike into the primordial ooze and bang, there was life; then after a few million years of natural selection, we get man. This description, regardless of how they dress it up, does not fit their own data. For natural selection to be the primary engine for evolution, it would require that life begin as a large variety of forms and gradually, through the elimination of the less fit, evolve into a smaller selection of stronger individuals. The available scientific data, however, show that life on the planet Earth began as a few molecules of amino acids and has evolved into millions of types over the millions of years since.
What is required for anything to emerge, as we have seen in the above descriptions, is that the materials that were to make them up be present in the environment. Then, under the right energetic conditions, including perhaps a little lightning, amino acids, and later living cells, emerge. Evolution did not begin with a lightning strike in the primordial ooze; it began with the Big Bang. The forces that form the constraints that bring about the emergence of anything are organized physical laws. This is the only source of the variety needed to make the universe emerge.
Emergence, however, is only the fist step in the process. What has emerged then must persist. External pressures determine the lifetimes of inanimate things. This includes both half-lives and environmental forces. Natural selection provides the living entity with the capability of adapting itself through succeeding generations to changing environmental conditions. However, by itself it does not account for the steady increase in the variety of living organisms since the origin of life..
Complex Hierarchical Constraint is simply a term that refers to any mechanism that gives rise to the hierarchical order through which anything that we can say exists has emerged into existence. In every case, the constraint is adapted to meet the requirements of the emergence even if it means that the constraint itself is complex. Clifford Grobstein said that if we examine the emergence of inorganic matter, we find that it is outside conditions that force the emergence itself. If we gather the right combinations of subatomic particles in a location with the proper energetic relationships, an atom of a particular element will emerge. Which element emerges is completely predictable from the properties of the energetic conditions. With living organisms, the determination of the outcome of any change is formed inside the organism itself.
One of the most important discoveries in modern cell theory is that in any given organism, regardless of how complex, a complete set of instructions for creating that particular organism is contained in the nucleus of each cell. A sequence of nucleic acids will specify a particular protein; the sequence of such protein specifications is a program for the development and maintenance of that specific organism. That program itself is a complex system. James Bonner discussed how such a program operates.
We know, for example, that in humans, we have two genes for making the two protein chains of hemoglobin; we know that those two genes are turned on for transcription of the messenger RNA for making hemoglobin in certain body cells, those of the bone marrow, which gives rise to the reticulocytes and thence to the erythrocytes. In addition, we know that those same genes do not make the messenger RNA for making hemoglobin in other cells of the adult organism. Clearly the genes for making hemoglobin are turned on in one kind of cell and make their appropriate messenger RNA, but in other kinds of body cells they are turned off and do not make their messenger RNA. We can think of many cases, which show that particular elements of the genetic material turn on only in particular places.
Hierarchical control programs, he said, must have the capability of turning on the right genetic specifiers at the right moment, in the right place, and in the proper sequence. By removing chromatin from a specific cell then transcribing it with RNA polymerase, researchers have determined that in any given cell between one and five percent of the DNA is available for transcribing. Ninety-five to ninety-nine percent is turned off. Every cell in every organism must have a set of tests that will tell it where it is in the organism, and at what stage of development or maturity the organism is. Even in a simple organism, it is quite evident that this will require a complex program, and thus it will be hierarchical
Complex Hierarchical Constraints always appear arbitrary. As far as we can see, the same type of life could exist with a number of different genetic codes―that is, with different assignments of nucleic acid codons to amino acids. Molecules that perform the function of messengers, such as hormones or activator molecules, appear to have only arbitrary relation to what they control. Other hierarchical rules are more obviously conventions. We know we can drive on either the left or right side of the road as long as there is collective agreement, just as we know we can give the same instructions in many different languages using different alphabets. In other words, hierarchical constraints embodied in structures are to some extent "frozen accidents." Although we recognize structural hierarchies in both living and non-living matter, it is the hierarchical control program that is the distinguishing characteristic of life."
There has been a lot written about the evolution of man from homo habilis, or perhaps the australopithecines to homo erectus, to the various Neanderthals, and finally to homo sapiens. However, we are not interested in man as a smart animal. Nor are we interested in the point where his brain case reached a certain volume or where he lost his brow ridges or began to stand up straight. We are interested in man as an entirely different kind of living creature. The emergence of man as we know him occurred when hunters went beyond finding a stone for scraping or drilling and improving it by chipping. It is when men, looking at a stone, could see in it something that was not in any way involved in what the stone looked or felt like. The earliest known example such a stone sculpture is called is the Venus of Willendorf , and it was formed about c. 30,0000 - 25,000 BCE, However, it is not necessary to constrain ourselves to sculpture. Any stone tool whose form goes beyond what is required for utility becomes an aesthetic object. Man is not the only tool-using animal and some, like the bowerbird, can be quite creative. However, to see something that is not there and to bring forth a statue from blank stone or a poem from a set of words, this is the province of man. When did it begin? By BCE 50,000 The pre-man hominid Homo Erectus had already spread to every continent in the world. The emergence of Homo Sapiens, modern man, occurred over a very short period time geologically speaking. Unlike other animals whose precursors spread before their emergence, there is only one species of man.
For our purposes, that is, understanding the meaning of the process we call evolution, we have enough background now to see the relationship between man and the process of evolution that began at the instant of the Big Bang. Physical forces acting on the hadrons resulted in the emergence of first atomic elements and later inorganic molecules. Most elements emerged in the interior of stars, which. then went nova and spread the atoms across space, and the same physical forces acting on these atoms lead to the emergence of planets. In the earlier years of the planet Earth, these same physical forces in the primordial soup brought about the emergence of amino acids and later life. In each of these cases, what emerged from the pattern of physical forces was what we call Complex Hierarchical Constraint, the pattern of forces that bind the emerging objects to form identifiable existences. In each step in the hierarchical process, the possible variety of emergences becomes greater. The more complex constraints we find in living things increases the possible variety exponentially. With the advent of man, we have something we call mind. The brain is a physical structure that all higher animals possess. It too has emerged through the interplay of physical forces. Animals also interact with their environment in quite complex ways, but it is only man who can see in a stone something that is more than simply an improvement in the stone's utility that is not obvious in the stone's appearance and then, through creative talent, make that thing come into being. It should be obvious that this opens an entirely new world of possibilities.
From this we can conclude that the primary purpose of evolution is the creation of variety. Each step, each succeeding level of complexity opens the possibility of greater varieties of existences. The initial result of what we call the “Big Bang” was the emergence of a vast amount of free energy, and an alphabet of physical laws. The process we call evolution is the expression of physical laws driven by this energy. Its purpose is to create variety, to provide an opportunity for anything that is possible to come into being.
From the infant using what George Mead called a "conversation of gestures," to the scientist with his telescopes and cloud chambers, to the doctor with his scalpel, the highest level of physical evolution probes the world around him. To be, to exist, means to be capable of being detected, identified, and possibly to be analyzed by man. This statement is not made on a faith in the capabilities of man. We are certainly a long way from understanding the interior of gas planets or the composition of distant galaxies. It is a conclusion from one basic assumption, and who knows, it might even be true, that the universe is a rational place and man is in fact a rational animal. Yesterday, last week, the eighteenth century: these things do not exist for any, even the most sophisticated animal on our planet. These things exist only in the mind of man. They have been assembled just as everything else that exists has been assembled, out of components, the neural patterns of the brain. Just a few years ago, such a concept would seem preposterous to any objective person. Today anyone who has played a video game or watched his or her children play can understand the idea of a world completely developed in software. It is because of these worlds and the ability to use what was discovered yesterday to understand what is experienced today, that man is able to expand his knowledge of the universe of which he is a part.
In the place of the energetic forces of inorganic materials and the complex programs of living systems, man has been given the power of choice. Just as inorganic atoms cannot avoid the energetic forces of their environment. Just as organic entities cannot resist of the programs embedded in their world. Man has no possibility of avoiding choice. Even to not choose is a choice. The existentialists have a favorite saying: "without God man is condemned to be free.” If you have been paying attention, you should be able to see that it is evolution, and the resulting complex hierarchy of physical laws that has condemned man to be free. Choice is the preeminent source of creativity. Each man must create the world in which he lives. He is therefore is completely responsible for not only its success but also the effects it has on the worlds of those around him.
Finally, biologically speaking, Man is an animal. However, Man is not determined by biology. What Man has that animals have not is freedom. However, this freedom comes at a cost. This will be the subject of my next paper. Meanwhile, please critique this essay. Point out the weak points, the errors. And Thank you
wally

Critique?

This is a verbose, poorly formatted answer to a question nobody asked, posted in the wrong place. It's not engaging, it seems pompous, and veers between stating the blindingly obvious as though it's revealing secrets, and incompletely explaining complex concepts that the author cannot assume his audience knows anything about, much less understands.

SoRB

But apart from that, how did you enjoy the show Mr Blake?

Did you read *all* of it SoRB?

Still, better here than in Peer Review.

TRiG.

tl;dr

Link ping-pong anyone?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tl%3Bdr

>> man has been given the power of choice
Yeah - if choice was power we wouldn't have SatNav!

what about (wo)man? we don't need SatNav because we can just wind down the window and... gasp!... ask someone for directions!

I've just bought a SatNav.

<>

Ask for directions? What is this strange concept you speak of... everybody knows the best way to find your way anywhere is to get lost, pull into a layby, spend 20 minutes looking at an out-of-date road atlas, go to a garage, buy a new atlas, finally get to your destination 3 hours later than intended.

I find sat-nav to be a vast improvement on the previous method - the wife with a map.

Or tw@t-nav as I call it.

The paragraph structure alone offends my eyes. I don't want to waste a month digging in to the written equivalent of the Gordian Knot, so judging from SorB's review, I think you might want to reconsider this monstrosity.

I used the SatNav for the first time in the car with Mrs WA alongside me. At the first turning I got a b*llocking 'It said TURBN LEFT'

Some things will never change despite the advance of technology. A woman's innate ability to navigate, usually to the wrong destination, is one.

Grabs protective clothing and retires behind the rubber plant.

Drat, come ere you, yes you the B, go on, get out.

Sat Nav is very worrying sometimes... I really didn't trust the taxi I was in a few weeks back who actually bothered putting the sat nav on for our destination.... maybe a mile or two of a drive from one pretty central town location to another inspired me with confedence that one did. Maybe one day taxi drivers will evolve to a stage where htey can inspire confedence and not have to rely on sat nav

well, I can read a map. I can relate map to ground and I can make a route plan.

But I realise that's too much work for some people

<>

Actually I thought the best way to get anywhere was to follow someone who looks like they know where they're going

Deb

hi <----this smiley is here to show you i hold you no ill will but need to tell you this because i dont think you know it

i think if you guys look you will see that Wallyn4bz is new... September 10th... and that he did take this to peer review thinking that was the place for it... it was treated very well there and with great politeness and respect... and interest in what he wrote and said.

He was subsequently directed to bring his discussion here to the forum or perhaps a science forum... if you look in the PR thread F48874?thread=4568216 you will see that he was only trying to find his way around h2g2...

so he comes in here under the impression he would be treated as well as he was in PR...

i think what the dynamic here is that you guys get bored... have a rapport with each other and like to joke around... amongst friends... but you, i think, forget sometimes that your witticisms and clever repartee shouldn't be made at someone else's expense. I am trying to be nice here but.... it is hard because...

It really saddens me to see what you guys did here... to a newbie...

i think what you might do here is to apologize to him for making fun of his sincere attempt to strike up a lively discussion... and for then hijacking his thread and using it for one of your little conversations completely off topic from the thread.

then i think only people who want to discuss his ideas or offer their own should post here.

this is advice not me telling you what to do... you have a choice on how to make amends.

"and for then hijacking his thread and using it for one of your little conversations completely off topic from the thread."

Hi, welcome to h2g2. Round here we embrace topic drift and don't particularly like being condescended to. Just out of interest, will you apologise for taking our off-topic musings further off-topic?