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When you think about it, it's not that surprising. Function driven body parts like the eye will evolve to optimize function. Almost by definition there will be

When you think about it, it's not that surprising. Function driven body parts like the eye will evolve to optimize function. Almost by definition there will be one optimal design. The superficial diversity we see in, say, Birds of Paradise plumage has more freedom to evolve in different ways because there are many more ways for a bird to 'look good' to other members of its species than to design an eye that functions well.

vbuwivbiu 9y ago
Sorry to be that person, but nothing evolves "for" any one function. And one can't prestate the potential set of functions of any subsystem of an organism. It's the other way around: systems evolve, we ascribe functions to them after the fact. It's better to say that similar environments, pressures and circumstances result in similarly evolved features.
- posterboy 9y ago
  Are you a nihilist or just parroting? I for one don't even do anything "for" anything. It's funny how your argument can be applied against determinism and free will at almost the same time.
  - vbuwivbiu 9y ago
    Actually I believe in free will, and I don't think the universe is deterministic, and I am partially parroting. But evolution has no purpose and nor does the universe. Purpose is something we humans (and possibly other animals) invent for ourselves, i.e. purposes are created by evolution.
    - posterboy 9y ago
      But evolution does work via purpose, whereas mutations that aren't fulfilling a purpose will not create an evolutionary advantage. So the antropomorphism is just a sylogysm. Maybe eg. the dying of species, broadly taken as an evolutionary mechanism, doesn't seem to serve an advantages purpose, although maybe it's just a mutation of (local) state all the same, so maybe or not that's advantageous for the universe.
  - kahnpro 9y ago
    A purpose implies intent or some kind of forethought, which evolution works completely without. It's not a positive action (there is light so we need to develop eyes), but a passive result (there is light so the ones who happened to have eyes survived more often and reproduced more successfully).
    - posterboy 9y ago
      As a matter of fact, antropomorphisms are a very popular figure of speech and I've never seen much come from a remark against the preoccupation of evolution. The funny thing is, when you talk about human procreation suddenly there is intent and the goal post could be shifted to exclude those cases where pregnancy was not expected and I could probably question the cases where it's intended too because "a child" is a very broad cincept and as after thought not all cases turn out as expected and I would keep shifting in the same way you were about evolution, just to provoke discussion about free will and where to draw the line. Maybe frequent reminders against creationisms are necessary to provoke fundamentalists, which I don't personally have contact with, so this meme is just boring.
tzs 9y ago
But aren't there quite a few ways to design a well functioning eye? Compare insect eyes to human eyes to mantis shrimp eyes, and there are some pretty big differences.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  A given environment will give a certain kind of pressure and demand a certain kind of solution. Bring the ancestors of mantis shrimps to the treetops and neothlithic apes to the ocean floors and they would both die... If you fix that and let them somehow compete on vision they would likely converge on eyes like the those currently living in the environment have.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    Don't insects and monkeys live in overlapping environments with radically different eye structures?
    - joeyo 9y ago
      Path dependency. Insect eyes and vertebrate eyes presumably each occupy their own unique minima in the energy landscape. Even if we could describe a cost function that picked one of them as more globally optimal, moving from one to another would be hideously expensive. It's also possible that compound eyes have an advantage at smaller eye sizes---or maybe a better way to put it: their disadvantage relative to vertebrate eyes is less pronounced for equally small eyes. Pure speculation on my part though.

vbuwivbiu 9y ago

Sorry to be that person, but nothing evolves "for" any one function. And one can't prestate the potential set of functions of any subsystem of an organism. It's the other way around: systems evolve, we ascribe functions to them after the fact. It's better to say that similar environments, pressures and circumstances result in similarly evolved features.

posterboy 9y ago
Are you a nihilist or just parroting? I for one don't even do anything "for" anything. It's funny how your argument can be applied against determinism and free will at almost the same time.
- vbuwivbiu 9y ago
  Actually I believe in free will, and I don't think the universe is deterministic, and I am partially parroting. But evolution has no purpose and nor does the universe. Purpose is something we humans (and possibly other animals) invent for ourselves, i.e. purposes are created by evolution.
  - posterboy 9y ago
    But evolution does work via purpose, whereas mutations that aren't fulfilling a purpose will not create an evolutionary advantage. So the antropomorphism is just a sylogysm. Maybe eg. the dying of species, broadly taken as an evolutionary mechanism, doesn't seem to serve an advantages purpose, although maybe it's just a mutation of (local) state all the same, so maybe or not that's advantageous for the universe.
- kahnpro 9y ago
  A purpose implies intent or some kind of forethought, which evolution works completely without. It's not a positive action (there is light so we need to develop eyes), but a passive result (there is light so the ones who happened to have eyes survived more often and reproduced more successfully).
  - posterboy 9y ago
    As a matter of fact, antropomorphisms are a very popular figure of speech and I've never seen much come from a remark against the preoccupation of evolution. The funny thing is, when you talk about human procreation suddenly there is intent and the goal post could be shifted to exclude those cases where pregnancy was not expected and I could probably question the cases where it's intended too because "a child" is a very broad cincept and as after thought not all cases turn out as expected and I would keep shifting in the same way you were about evolution, just to provoke discussion about free will and where to draw the line. Maybe frequent reminders against creationisms are necessary to provoke fundamentalists, which I don't personally have contact with, so this meme is just boring.

tzs 9y ago

But aren't there quite a few ways to design a well functioning eye? Compare insect eyes to human eyes to mantis shrimp eyes, and there are some pretty big differences.

sqeaky 9y ago
A given environment will give a certain kind of pressure and demand a certain kind of solution. Bring the ancestors of mantis shrimps to the treetops and neothlithic apes to the ocean floors and they would both die... If you fix that and let them somehow compete on vision they would likely converge on eyes like the those currently living in the environment have.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  Don't insects and monkeys live in overlapping environments with radically different eye structures?
  - joeyo 9y ago
    Path dependency. Insect eyes and vertebrate eyes presumably each occupy their own unique minima in the energy landscape. Even if we could describe a cost function that picked one of them as more globally optimal, moving from one to another would be hideously expensive. It's also possible that compound eyes have an advantage at smaller eye sizes---or maybe a better way to put it: their disadvantage relative to vertebrate eyes is less pronounced for equally small eyes. Pure speculation on my part though.