Re: remarkable variation & progress

"...perhaps may even imply progress"

Nope and a treacherous concept...Aristotle's Great Chain of Being and the notion of "progress" vanished and vanished again and again, the idea is so illusory that it possibly dies every quarter century of the past 150 years.

Cladists now dispute not only "progress" but also time and evolutionary causation: we may guess degrees of relatedness by shared features but we err when we infer environmental causes for them.

The lineage reported in horses has been shown illusory: the different sizes that we find in rocks do not represent a single line that grew from an "eos hippo" or whatever but a set of parallel lines without an allometric trail to connect them.

Exciting stuff...and still not at all sure that the Honda is progress but simply an ever more refined fit to a particular niche of human preferences and environmental options.

Time will judge...

JimB

Replies:

Re: Refined fits and treacherous concepts, by Fred H., 06/05/04 Synchrony: Refined fits and treacherous concepts, by James Brody, 06/07/04 Re: Belief, volition, synchrony, understanding, by Fred H., 06/13/04 Re: Belief, volition, synchrony, understanding, by James Brody, 06/16/04 Re: Fantasies, by Fred H., 06/17/04 Re: Boundaries, by Fred H., 06/17/04 Re: Refined fits and treacherous concepts, by Todd, 06/10/04

| Behavior OnLine Home Page | Disclaimer |

Copyright © 1996-2004 Behavior OnLine, Inc. All rights reserved.