teleological
complexity
In everyday life, something is called
complex if it’s hard and/or confusing to deal with it.
In physics, which is just a reasonable abstract of
everyday life (well, till recently), complexity has the
same meaning: there are well defined and workable
definitions of order and disorder but complexity is
something between the two, troublesome to deal with
because you have to justify the islands of order in the
vast sea of disorder. In biology, however, complexity has
a meaning of higher order in structure and functionality
of species - and that is even more troublesome because
there is a simple question: why (regardless of how) has
evolution introduced complexity?
Bacteria
showed up billions of years ago, and they are still the
dominant living beings on Earth by number and mass,
showing no urge for complexity. On the other hand,
evolving biological complexity built the huge hierarchical
tree of life on the top of which we place ourselves
because our complexity includes the highest functionality
(by our standards, of course): human intelligence. All
living beings process information about their environment
to be able to adapt to the environment. We believe our
ability for the processing is the highest around (on
Earth, at least). Question stays: did evolution introduced
complexity for us to show up? Is evolution directional
(teleological)? (Please, don’t mix God and similar
ingredients into the present discussion.) Do we have a
right to consider ourselves the dominant species on Earth,
not bacteria, because we write research papers about
bacteria? |
from
Nonzero by Robert Wright (2000)
Let
me reiterate the meagerness of my aspirations. I’m not
saying there is a proof that biological evolution has a
purpose and is the product of design. I’m just saying
that it’s not crazy to believe this. Biological
evolution has a set of properties that is found in such
purposive things as animals and robots and is not found in
such evidently purposeless things as rocks and rives. This
isn’t proof of teleology, but it’s evidence of it.
Or,
to put the point another way: It may indeed be that
evolution is not teleological. But if that’s the case,
then evolution is the only thing I can think of that
exhibits flexible directionality via information
processing and isn’t teleological. |
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I
would somewhat distance myself from Robert. On the rocks and
rives, I mean. If Earth itself is considered to be a life being,
how would he prove that the changes of rocks and rives are
purposeless?
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