289
depredations, that absence of blame accompanying ecological disaster has about it
a mature commentary that explains how John Ruskin could calmly wish for the
past: “There would be hope if we could change palsy into puerility; but I know not
how far we can become children again, and renew our lost life.”
5
Acknowledging that neither mathematics, cosmology, nor personality equal personal destiny (no matter how eloquent Plutarch, Ovid, Shakespeare, and Saul
Bellow were on the topic), the mere desire, even firmly fixed hope, to deflect catastrophe does not add up to tactic. Our life-strategies are not fixed in any biological
code. Some will disagree, particularly those hard incompatibilists whose logical
deterministic theology is driven by the proverbial intuition pump, or Pierre Simon
Laplace’s (1749–1827) demon, as theorized in his Philosophical Essay on
Probabilities.
6
This dialectic can be simplified by declaring a general belief, or not,
in free will.
In seeking to understand heredity and its endless types of information, many
geneticists have posited that “an RNA world existed on Earth before modern cells”,
a world in which autocatalysis occurred in the mechanism of polynucleotides (linear polymer nucleic acid molecules crucial for evolution) capable of creating their
own endless templates of themselves, a capacity abetted by protein enzymes and—
following a breakthrough in 1982—the realization that RNA itself was that very
“templating mechanism”
7
along the way to the profoundly emblematic expression
of DNA. DNA has its own duplication capacity during cell division, and with it the
complex processes of ushering heritable traits. One such behavioral descendent of
those traits has been described as fitting into that realm of “functional cognitive
biases [which] are… ‘designed’ to err in adaptive ways.”
8
But this is merely one of countless other debatable design issues upon which
evolutionary biologists have focused. These include (but are not limited to) those
endless fundamentals of coping with threat, during both waking and sleeping hours;
the multiplicity of complex cellular mechanisms spontaneously arising; the cohesiveness of a system that has genes, but also nomadic, floating bits and pieces of
genes that may or may not have anything to do with adaptive individuals, gaps in the
5 John Ruskin, Seven Lamps Of Architecture, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, New York, 1900,
p. 199.
6 Laplace, Pierre Simon, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, translated into English from the
original French 6th ed. by Truscott, F.W. and Emory, F.L., Dover Publications, New York, 1951,
p. 4.
7 From “The RNA World and the Origins of Life,” in Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th edition,
NCBI Resources, Copyright © 2002, Bruce Alberts, Alexander Johnson, Julian Lewis, Martin
Raff, Keith Roberts, and Peter Walter; Copyright © 1983, 1989, 1994, Bruce Alberts, Dennis Bray,
Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, and James D. Watson, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
books/NBK26876/, Accessed March 21, 2020.
8 See “Darwin’s Influence on Modern Psychological Science,” by David M. Buss, Psychological
Science Agenda, May 2009, Science Briefs, “Evolutionary Theory and Psychology,” https://www.
apa.org/science/about/psa/2009/05/sci-brief, Accessed March 21, 2020.
31.2 Variables in Evolutionary Theory
depredations, that absence of blame accompanying ecological disaster has about it
a mature commentary that explains how John Ruskin could calmly wish for the
past: “There would be hope if we could change palsy into puerility; but I know not
how far we can become children again, and renew our lost life.”
5
Acknowledging that neither mathematics, cosmology, nor personality equal personal destiny (no matter how eloquent Plutarch, Ovid, Shakespeare, and Saul
Bellow were on the topic), the mere desire, even firmly fixed hope, to deflect catastrophe does not add up to tactic. Our life-strategies are not fixed in any biological
code. Some will disagree, particularly those hard incompatibilists whose logical
deterministic theology is driven by the proverbial intuition pump, or Pierre Simon
Laplace’s (1749–1827) demon, as theorized in his Philosophical Essay on
Probabilities.
6
This dialectic can be simplified by declaring a general belief, or not,
in free will.
In seeking to understand heredity and its endless types of information, many
geneticists have posited that “an RNA world existed on Earth before modern cells”,
a world in which autocatalysis occurred in the mechanism of polynucleotides (linear polymer nucleic acid molecules crucial for evolution) capable of creating their
own endless templates of themselves, a capacity abetted by protein enzymes and—
following a breakthrough in 1982—the realization that RNA itself was that very
“templating mechanism”
7
along the way to the profoundly emblematic expression
of DNA. DNA has its own duplication capacity during cell division, and with it the
complex processes of ushering heritable traits. One such behavioral descendent of
those traits has been described as fitting into that realm of “functional cognitive
biases [which] are… ‘designed’ to err in adaptive ways.”
8
But this is merely one of countless other debatable design issues upon which
evolutionary biologists have focused. These include (but are not limited to) those
endless fundamentals of coping with threat, during both waking and sleeping hours;
the multiplicity of complex cellular mechanisms spontaneously arising; the cohesiveness of a system that has genes, but also nomadic, floating bits and pieces of
genes that may or may not have anything to do with adaptive individuals, gaps in the
5 John Ruskin, Seven Lamps Of Architecture, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, New York, 1900,
p. 199.
6 Laplace, Pierre Simon, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, translated into English from the
original French 6th ed. by Truscott, F.W. and Emory, F.L., Dover Publications, New York, 1951,
p. 4.
7 From “The RNA World and the Origins of Life,” in Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th edition,
NCBI Resources, Copyright © 2002, Bruce Alberts, Alexander Johnson, Julian Lewis, Martin
Raff, Keith Roberts, and Peter Walter; Copyright © 1983, 1989, 1994, Bruce Alberts, Dennis Bray,
Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, and James D. Watson, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
books/NBK26876/, Accessed March 21, 2020.
8 See “Darwin’s Influence on Modern Psychological Science,” by David M. Buss, Psychological
Science Agenda, May 2009, Science Briefs, “Evolutionary Theory and Psychology,” https://www.
apa.org/science/about/psa/2009/05/sci-brief, Accessed March 21, 2020.
31.2 Variables in Evolutionary Theory