Evolutionary
Theory Beyond “The Modern Synthesis”.
Dear Reader,
I recently posted a comment to an [old] blog-entry, entitled
“Is the “Modern Synthesis” Effectively Dead”, at --
-- as follows:
I have become aware of a new tradition in ‘‘‘evolutionary
theory’’’ -- and in ‘meta-evolutionary theory’ -- that is also critical of the
fetters upon evolutionary theory that had been imposed by “The Modern
Synthesis”.
This new tradition is even critical of the very term
“natural selection”, because of its subliminal connotations of some human-like
agent [as in the “artificial” selection involved in human domestication of
plant and animal species], i.e., some [pseudo-]subject, even some “divine”
agent, “choosing” genomes, whereas the scientific essence of the Darwinian
paradigm is one of differential rates of self-reproduction of populations, such
that the populations exhibiting the highest SUSTAINED rates of self-expansion/of
self-reproduction are the “fittest”.
More central to this new tradition is an evolutionary
paradigm that extends -- and rigorously so -- the category of “evolution” to
trans-genomic processes, and, hence also, to ‘meta-dynamics’ of
‘self-developing process’ in our cosmos that arose both before and beyond
“biological evolution” per se, via their concept of ‘self-meta-unit-ization’,
or of ‘self-meta-holon-ization’.
This new evolutionary paradigm can be stated, in general
form, as follows: populations of
individual units of a given kind arise, by an earlier process of
‘meta-unit-ization’, which then successfully self-reproduce in expanding
quantities [quantitative change as “mere” evolution], to the point where local ‘physical-spatial
concentrations’, or ‘self-densifications’, of those units become sufficient to
trigger the next consecutive step in ‘meta-evolution’; the irruption
[‘meta-evolution’ as qualitative, ontological change, via a kind of ‘metafinite
singularity’] of a new kind of units’ populations, via combinations of some of
these units into ‘meta-units’, each such ‘meta-unit’ being made up out of an
organized, heterogeneous multiplicity of its predecessor units.
Specific cases of this general ‘meta-evolutionary
meta-dynamic’ would include the irruption of eukaryotic living cells from
‘pre-eukaryotic’ or “prokaryotic” living cells, by “endosymbiosis”, or
“symbiogenesis”.
But such specific cases would also include the irruption of
“composite” bosons and fermions from their “non-composite” brethren/ancestors;
of atomic nuclei from composite “particles” [protons and neutrons] in
“cosmological nucleosynthesis”, and; of molecules from atoms, e.g., in primordial
“atomic clouds”, self-becoming “molecular clouds” -- all pre-biological
cosmological phenomena.
Such specific cases of ‘meta-evolution by population
meta-unit-ization’ would also include the formation of humans-led
‘meta-societies’, wherein multiple “social animal” and ‘social plant’
species-populations, as units, unite to form a higher kind of unit, via ‘‘‘mutual
domestication’’’.
The latter constitutes a necessarily post-biological
phenomenon, in that the ‘meta-evolutionary’ irruption of such ‘humans-led
meta-societies’ presupposes the prior stages of biological
‘meta-evolution’: ‘pre-eukaryotes’
--> ‘pre-eukaryotes’ + eukaryotes --> ‘pre-eukaryotes’ + eukaryotes +
[asocial] multi-[eukaryotic-]cellular organisms [“metazoa” and “metaphyta”] + social
organisms [“social animals” and ‘social plants’].
Regards,
Miguel
