Mostly Humankind
The particulars of the observable scientific environment
were in Darwin’s realm Newtonian organisms at the limit of the optical
microscope. The post-Darwin realm was formed by the molecules Kimura knew of at
the limit of the electron microscope. First, simple arithmetic sufficed, and
then it did not. Darwin’s account of “evolution” was too simple. He and his
supporters viewed life as very diverse but they succumbed to the idea that an
explanation of major groupings of life could be approached all too easily. It
has become evident the diversity of life calls for a diversity of explanation
to account for its “evolution”. A major sense of being incomplete was filled
in, they thought, by genetics. A forced pairing of NS and genetics was made to
account for Darwinian “evolution”. But the addition of the explanatory power of
genetics in the service of NS got away from them. Darwin’s views were at the
macro level and a scaling up of genetics at the micro level to the macro level
assumed an unimportant loss of truth in the telling in regard to “evolution”.
Maybe one-fourteenth of the truth was lost and in the new ballgame, a science
reduced by one-fourteenth, still left thirteen-fourteenths. Wasn’t that enough?
The previous Haldane’s Dilemma, a result of placing more mathematical rigor into biology, especially evolutionary biology, had a requirement of too much time needed for genes to change, that is, for species to change. At the micro level of molecular genetics, there were too many genomic variations. No Darwinian “fitness” could match them. There is a drift and flow to derive what comes to be “used”. If it is not Haldane’s Dilemma, it is Kimura’s neutralism – a still greater dilemma.
The peppered moth story was instigated by the advent of
human intervention – the Industrial Revolution’s pollution. This was not Nature
at work and so, in a larger sense, no “natural” selection could result. As
Darwin proposed his notions concerning Nature, their applicability had lapsed
by only a matter of decades. Only rewilding projects could reestablish the
“natural” component to an environment, though still the push that sets up the
project is human. What has been called a “romantic” factor in rewilding has
been used to support a weak, incomplete science. The emotional appeal “to let
Nature take its course” behind fences and to let more ancient ecosystems to
reestablish themselves means the end of the present day ecosystem. Destroying
the present to let the past come again robs “evolution” of meaning.
There are no brightly colored hues of life just for the hell
of it. But there is a linkage of biological structure. This linkage isn’t
accounted for by evolutionary biology, if by Darwin’s resultants or anyone
else’s notions. Certainly not by NS, now, maybe never, though perhaps more
possible in Darwin’s time. Peppered moths, if selected, would not have been
about species but a form of a species. Birds, if involved, would have been
natural enough but soot and smoke are not. What is “natural” and of the “wild” was
not present. They are of the past. “Evolution” (Darwin) studies Nature through
examining the past. It was a theory of historical differences; it was about what
was and can never be again. The additions we make to global warming invalidate
all selection in the Darwinian sense – it throws an artificial blanket equating
to a lack of “natural” processes on a worldwide scale.
In any event, the advent of humankind could never be and
wasn’t explained by Darwinianism or its offshoots. His Origin of Species
was too too slow, and careful to not miss a detail, to have ever been the
origin of humankind. Certainly humankind is not a part of Nature. For homo
sapiens to humankind by what route? The dead-end routes of “evolution” are not
much use for explication. Humankind’s sufficient intelligence isn’t much more
than a phenotype. It isn’t seen but alters behavior (also not seen in the
fossil record structurally speaking) and outcome and “fitness”. How, then, a
transition to intelligence if it affected survival? No “sort of pregnant”
reasoning to get to levels of intelligence, graduations of, and not a little
intelligence vs a zero amount.
However, the condition(s) did obtain, they did/do not
represent “progress” as evolutionists now insist. Once upon a time the evolutionists
were quite certain that a teleological process was occurring. If no “progress”,
what to call it – a trend? An accumulation of change? Once A, then B, B not
dependent on A. Then A+B=C. C not dependent on A+B. There is linkage, but not a
dependent one. “Evolution” (Darwin) is condemned to being a historical and an
unimportant study. It totally ignored humankind. Darwin’s “Nature” in theory
came before humankind.
If one wants “progress” of living things, then NS is the way
to go. If not, randomness has been the alternative – random then random and
after that, random. The first occurrence of randomness precludes certain
further changes in some directions and so a second random event must work on a
prior determination, and a third effective random event must work on what these
random events solidified. You get change not in a preferred direction but in an
established direction, not predetermined but determined by one; by one and one
are two, then three and so on. It is additive but not entirely controlled. Four
is more than three and after that no more can be said.
The human intelligence is critically dependent on the human
brain. The size of the brain and size of the body containing the brain aren’t
enough to adequately characterize intelligence. It is maintained that a dense
packing of neurons plus resorting to cooked food brought about sufficient
intelligence. Within that intelligence the actual causes of species-level
changes of life could be very complex, hidden, and only given over to worthless
discussion. For example, the lack of hubris regarding reductionism might see a
push beyond molecular genetics into quantum genetics or leave off “genetics”
entirely and make the transitions of all life coupled to quanta.
The search for “fitness” on the quantum level would seem to
be futile. In any case, “fitness” does not apply to humankind. It is odd that
humankind, the source of the propagation of ideas about “evolution” and all
else, should have been turned by human reasoning into animals to apply “fitness”
to ourselves. Or is humankind odd and its hallmarks of “only human”, “to err is
human”, and “all too human” establish a special province of life for us? In that province physicists reason about the
never-having-lived and Darwin and others reasoned about the dead and the
living, including those like us, and obviously we are of the living, but Darwin
was absolutist (like Newton) and sought to have us “ape” the dead. He rid us of
fixed species, but that was not enough ambition, and he overreached himself and
made the dead and us like objects of physics – known and determinate. T. H.
Huxley did not think Darwin had an experimental science. He said Darwin showed
no proof of NS, but that it must occur. Then “fitness”. Many agreed with
Waddington in 1966 that NS got tangled in a tautology. The survivors survive.
To survive is to also to age. The aging of a phenotype can
have a connection with the stress of air pollution. Kettlewell was aware the
forms he made use of could have differing ages. Telomeres may be causally
related to aging. Telomere length shortens with each cell division. Telomeres
act as a cell’s “memory” of exposure to air pollution. To compensate for
telomeric DNA loss, telomere length is maintained by the enzyme named
telomerase. In addition, if you die, I die, but then again we don’t all die.
Humankind does not die. It doesn’t have a mortality rate at 90% nor births in
the hundreds or more per source. Evolutionists have no role for intelligence
nor recognition of its existence. We do have similar structure vis-à-vis
apes or monkeys or chimps or whatever but we did not “descend” from them or
“cousins”. We transcend death, apes do not. “Evolution” is a mathematical
combination of life and death. Darwin read Malthus into Nature. “Evolution”
should have had determinate relations concerning brain size and body size, and structures
derived from them. Yet humankind has “evolutionary” structure but the
interaction has an outcome transcending “evolution”. We shouldn’t be here and
have been there. We are and we were. We gave up on God, got “evolution” and
some fight viciously and desperately to keep “evolution”. It doesn’t work,
something else acknowledging humankind as paramount vs the never-having-lived
and the dead and other life can be sought for answers. Start from we aren’t
part of Nature. For some a representative of the much admired intelligence came
up with “evolution” and so, nevertheless, we aren’t as smart as we think we
are. But now it isn’t 1859. The quantum world may bubble up into molecules and
some of those molecules could be DNA or RNA or…
Another fundamental problem is to have regarded Darwin and
Wallace as scientists. Very early on theory got divorced from empirical test.
One needed confirmation from others. No bias in hypotheses, data, and
conclusions was needed. Lurking underneath it all was the conviction that God
was gone and good riddance. The central facts of biology were posited to be in
human prehistory. That’s where the hypotheses were relegated to and multiplied
if needed so that causal importance could be drawn out. Acceptance of Darwinism
is more about “climate change”, how dreary, dark, and cold God “died” and how
cheery, bright, and warming was the intellectual fashion that received a
climate not hostile to intellectual acceptance of biology and its disciple,
evolutionary biology.
Where, then, does the truth reside? In the specifics or the generalizations?
Can one separate the two? Supposedly truth about data could lead to a false generalization.
Good data doesn’t automatically mean good generalizations. A certain kind of
thought must be along the rope leading from the specifics to a generalization.
A concern for truth must be brought along. Should it go part of the way to the
generalization? Half? One-third? Three-fourths? Perhaps one-fourteenth. Once upon
a time, a court of law would have a recitation of the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth, and a reference to a deity. In our day the partial
truth is all the rage. In support of this laxity is our sloppy use of language
– the words, especially the scientific ones that were once thought to be significant
and precise in usage. Now the words, improperly punctuated in a fragment
represent mostly a worthless piece of thought. Let your usage be your guide –
not any standards, however low, are allowed. A try for high standards
“obviously” lets “elitism” in and that cannot be sanctioned. Thus the language
has a simple and obvious lack of truth, absolute and unequivocal and resolute
beyond anything the Hebrews got from God via Moses.