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If you remove reproduction, remove evolution, what else is left? Evolution doesn't necessarily involve reproduction. A sufficiently advanced human (or computer
by 21 9y ago
If you remove reproduction, remove evolution, what else is left?
Evolution doesn't necessarily involve reproduction. A sufficiently advanced human (or computer) could enhance itself technologically, continuously replace it's organs (Ghost in the Shell), even change it's form and this would count in my book as a form of (non-biological) evolution. You could say the same thing about culture.
I think that definition is more for lower level life forms, where is not clear (see viruses).
Higher forms of life could be defined differently - agency, ability to sustain/repair itself, opposition towards environment. But then you might encounter difficulties with classifying a self repairing (non-sentient) robot as "alive".
- Koshkin 9y ago> Evolution doesn't necessarily involve reproduction. According to Darwin, it does. A giraffe got its long neck not by stretching it but by dying if the neck was not long enough to survive and letting the ones with (accidentally) better genes to live on and - importantly - reproduce.
- alextheparrot 9y agoMy apologies, I was being a bit pedantic - Evolution is formally traits changing over generations, while adaption is changing traits over an organism's lifetime, though I believe you are using them interchangeably as "something changing". I don't know what is left, but I have a hard time using such an embattled definition.