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A general notion of "universal Darwinism" exists, whereby any system that implements variation, selection, and retention is said to exhibit "Darwinism".
by TaupeRanger 7y ago
A general notion of "universal Darwinism" exists, whereby any system that implements variation, selection, and retention is said to exhibit "Darwinism".
- yters 7y agoAh I see. I now propose the theories of typing Darwinism, shopping Darwinism, snacking Darwinism, 'making up my mind' Darwinism, Darwinism Darwinism, 'picking my boogers' Darwinism, 'doing my homework' Darwinism, 'programming' Darwinism. We should come up with a Darwin award for all the different sorts of Darwin theories and the most Darwinian of them all.
- r34 7y agoActually many of those "darwinisms" can be classified under "cultural darwinism", so you are quite right :) I wrote my master thesis on "Stanislaw Lem's evolutionary view of development of technology" - just another darwinian view. The definition is so universal, that universal darwinism [1] is natural consequence (althought I'd prefer term "evolutionary", too). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Darwinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Darwinism
- dag11 7y agoWhat's the point you're trying to make here?
- yters 7y agoIf everything is 'Darwinism,' what's the point of the theory? What does it tell us? What explanatory power does it have? What possibilities does it exclude? Darwin's original theory was groundbreaking because it could explain how you can get a large variety of species from one or a few simple organisms. But, if all one has to do to have a brilliant insight is to prefix 'Darwinian' to any process of change, then it all seems exceedingly pointless. I can write an app where you give it a name, and it prefixes 'Darwinian' and now you have a brilliant insight. I can replace a whole host of researchers with a Python script. It just seems ridiculous.
- trhway 7y ago>If everything is 'Darwinism,' what's the point of the theory? Not everything is Darwinism. Darwinism trajectories in the parameter space are driven by local optimization. >What does it tell us? What explanatory power does it have? What possibilities does it exclude? well, as usual. You define your topological space and find a solution for your local optimization problem. Bingo :)
- n4r9 7y ago> any process of change The previous comment was fairly clear: it's not any process of change, it is evolution within a system that has mechanisms of variation, selection and heredity.
- yters 7y agoMy point is that there are so many processes that fit under that characterization that it seems fairly meaningless to prefix "Darwinism". Plus, that something follows a process of variation, selection and heredity seems fairly uninformative. I still fail to see why it is considered such a breakthrough, as per all my tongue in cheek examples.
- n4r9 7y agoI don't think it's meaningless; it's a tool or perspective that can be used to explain and predict observations in systems that possess certain characteristics. A loose analogy could be made with e.g. systems that have an observed variable which responds linearly to an input. This applies to a very wide array of systems. The theory of linear dynamics was nevertheless an insightful breakthrough at the time, and it's still interesting to explore whether particular systems can be modeled effectively with it.
- yters 7y agoI agree with linear response systems (elec. eng. class), but what predictions can we make from this 'Darwinist' definition?