Human Ecology, Evolution, and Spontaneous Order

Ecological science addresses the relations between living things and their environments, and the study of human ecology the particular case of humans. However, there is an opposing tradition built into the foundations of modern science which separates living things and particularly humans, from their environments. Beginning in modern times with Descartes' radical separation of psychology and physics (or "mind" from matter), this dualistic tradition was extended into biology with Kant's biology versus physics (or living thing versus environment) dualism, and into evolutionary theory with the rise of Darwinism and its grounding in Boltzmannian thermodynamics. If ecological science is to be about what it purports to be about, about living thingenvironment relations, it must provide a principled basis for dissolving Cartesian incommensurability. A deeper understanding of thermodynamic law, and the principles of self-organizing ("autocatakinetic") systems provides the nomological basis for doing just this, for putting evolution back in its universal context, and showing the reciprocal relation between living things and their environments, thereby providing a principled foundation for ecological science in general, and human ecology in particular. INTRODUCTION http://www.spontaneousorder.net/ (1 of 4) [10/4/2001 12:37:12 AM] Human Ecology, Evolution, and Spontaneous Order The word "ecology" was coined by Haeckel, and used in his Generelle Morphologie in 1866 to refer to the science of the relations between living things and their environments (Bramwell, 1989), and human-environment relations, by this general definition, constitute the central subject of human ecology. The idea of the separation of humans from their environments, however, is deeply embedded in the foundations of modern science. It was Descartes, who, promoting a psychology vs. physics dualism where the active, epistemic part of the world (human "minds") was incommensurably separated from what was taken to be the "dead", mechanical, physical part of the world ("matter" or "other"), provided the world view that became the basis of modern science, and which, at the same time, supernaturally separated humans from the world (see also Dyke, this volume). Later, arguing that the active end-directed striving of living things in general could not be accounted for within the dead, mechanical world of physics, Kant, calling for the autonomy of biology from physics, promoted a second major dualism, the dualism between biology and physics, or between living things in general (not just human minds) and their environments (Swenson & Turvey, 1991). The Cartesian tradition was carried into evolutionary theory with the ascendancy of Darwinism, which, making no use of physics in its theory, provided an explanatory framework where "organisms and environments," in Lewontin's (1992, p. 108) words, "were totally separated." Strong apparent scientific justification for these postulates of incommensurability came with Boltzmann's view of the second law of thermodynamics (the "entropy law") as a law of disorder‹a hypothesis which he developed during the last quarter of the last century in an attempt to save the Cartesian, or mechanical, world view. According to Boltzmann, physical systems are expected to become increasingly disordered or run down with time, and the spontaneous transformation of disordered to ordered states is "infinitely improbable" (Boltzmann, 1886/1974, p. 20). This view effectively set living things, as expressed, for example, in the fecundity principle, perhaps the sine qua non of Darwinian theory (the idea that life acts to produce as much biological order as it can), and in the progressive ordering that characterizes the evolution of life on Earth as a whole (from bacterial ecosystems some four billion years ago [4 GYA] to the rise of civilizations and the global proliferation of culture going on today), against the apparent otherwise universal laws of physics. The world, on this view, was supposed to be running down according to the laws of physics, but biological and cultural systems seemed to be about "running up"‹not about going from more orderly to less orderly states, but about producing as much order as possible. It is "no surprise," under these circumstances, in the words of Levins and Lewontin (1985, p. 19), "that evolutionists [came to] believe organic evolution to be a negation of physical evolution." As Fisher (1930/1958, p. 39), one of the founders of neo Darwinism expressed it, "entropy changes lead to a progressive disorganization of the physical world...while evolutionary changes [produce] progressively higher organization." This view is still found at the foundations of the Darwinian view today, as evidenced by Dennett's (1995, p. 69) definition of living things as things that "defy" the second law of thermodynamics. Cartesian incommensurability precludes an ecological science, and as a consequence, ecological science, if it is to be about what it purports to be about, about living thing environment relations, requires a theory that dissolves it. The postulates of incommensurability came into modern science on the issue of the active, epistemic dimension of the world, and this is precisely the battle ground where they must be defeated. In particular, the confrontation must occur at the interface of physics, psychology, and biology, and the distinguishing characteristic of this interface http://www.spontaneousorder.net/ (2 of 4) [10/4/2001 12:37:12 AM] Human Ecology, Evolution, and Spontaneous Order is that it is defined by intentional dynamics, the dynamics that, not coincidentally for ecological science, distinguishes the living thing-environment relation. By intentional dynamics, I refer to enddirected behavior prospectively controlled, or determined, by meaning, or information about (of which "end-in-mind" behavior is a lately evolved kind). Rivers flowing down slopes, or heat flowing down temperature gradients from hot to cold, for example, are end directed systems, but they are not examples of intentional dynamics because they do not require meaningful relations to determine the paths to their ends. Their behavior is explicable in terms of local energy potentials and fundamental physical laws. In contrast, when a bacterium swims up a concentration gradient, a bird flies above the Earth, or opens its wings to effect a landing on a branch, a human drives a car, puts a satellite in orbit around the Earth, or moves some food from her plate to her mouth, this behavior is seen to go in directions that are different from, and oftentimes opposite, those that follow causally from local physical potentials and laws. This kind of end directed behavior, the kind that is meaningfully, or epistemically determined with respect to non-local potentials, is what characterizes intentional dynamics. Terrestrial evolution shows the world to be in the order production business, characterized, not by progressive disordering to equilibrium, but by the production of increasingly higher states of order, and the way the production, to use Calvin's (1986) felicitous phrase, of this "river that flows uphill" takes place is through meaningful, or epistemic relations (see Figure 1). http://www.spontaneousorder.net/ (3 of 4) [10/4/2001 12:37:12 AM] Human Ecology, Evolution, and Spontaneous Order Figure 1. The production of progressively higher states of order as function of increasing levels of atmospheric O2 in geological time (PAL is present atmospheric level). Atmospheric oxygen was put into the atmosphere by life, and has been maintained at present levels for some hundreds of millions of years by life at the planetary level. The transformation of the Earth's atmosphere from oxygenless to oxygen-rich, as well as the forms, including human cultural systems, that have systematically arisen as a consequence of it, are measures of the terrestrial system's departure from thermodynamic equilibrium, or progressive ordering. This runs counter to the widespread conception of the second law of thermodynamics due to Boltzmann which predicts that the world should be becoming increasingly disordered. This has led evolutionists to believe that biological, and cultural evolution defy or negate physical evolution, a belief, in effect, of two incommensurable "rivers", the river of physics which flows down to disorder, and the river of biology, psychology, and culture which flows up. From "Engineering Initial Conditions in a Self-Producing Environment" by R. Swenson, in M. Rogers and N. Warren, eds., A Delicate Balance: Technics, Culture and Consequences, p. 71, 1989a, Los Angeles, CA: Institute of Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Copyright 1989 by IEEE. Reprinted by permission. http://www.spontaneousorder.net/ (4 of 4) [10/4/2001 12:37:12 AM] Human Ecology, Globalization, and the Mechanical World View Swenson: Advances in Human Ecology, Vol. 6, 1997 Continuing the metaphor, and summarizing by restatement in different terms what has been said above, if ecological science is to be ecological in more than name only, it must provide a principled basis for unifying what are otherwise taken to be two incommensurable rivers‹the river of physics that flows downhill, and the river of biology, psychology, and culture that flows uphill. The absence of such a principled account invites the otherwise recurrent problem of the Presocratic Parmenides who had a fully coherent theory of the world which, however, could neither account for, nor even accommodate, his own existence. Recent advances in the theory of thermodynamics and selforganizing systems provide the basis for dissolving the postulates of incommensurability‹for providing the nomological basis for intention and intension in a physical world otherwise taken to be collapsing to disorder, and inherently meaningless (defined exhaustively by extension). Rather than being anomalous with respect to, or somehow defying or going against universal laws, the intentional dynamics of living things are seen to be a direct manifestation of them. This provides a principled basis for setting the active ordering characterizing the evolution of life, from Archean prokaryotes to the present rapid globalization of culture, in its universal context, and in so doing provide a principled foundation for ecological science in general, and human ecology, in particular. THE CARTESIAN CIRCLE, AND THE FIRST POSTULATE OF INCOMMENSURABILITY The influence of Descartes, whose ideas were built into modern science at its origins, is hard to overestimate. Although the physics of Newton eclipsed the physics of Descartes it was the latter's dualistic metaphysics that provided the ground on which the former was able to flourish, and because psychology and physics were defined at their modern origins by Descartes, he is often referred to not only as the father of modern philosophy but the father of modern psychology and physics as well. What Cartesianism effected with its dead mechanical, or clock-work, world view was a means for the religious authority of Descartes' time to see science within a context it could accept, and for humans to see themselves, in the words of Descartes (1637/1986, p.67), as "masters and possessors of nature". Humans were taken to be sitting dualistically outside the clock like world learning the laws of physics to manipulate them towards their own, and hence, as privileged creations on Earth, divine ends. There was no theory of cultural ordering, or evolution in general, on this view because humans and the static mechanical physical world they were said to inhabit were taken to have been created full blown by divine act. Cartesianism Defined The Epistemic Dimension Out Of The Physical World A fundamental point to make with respect to the Cartesian world view is that by defining physics and psychology by their mutual exclusivity (call this the "first postulate of incommensurability" [Swenson, 1996]) it literally defined the active epistemic dimension out of the physical part of the world altogether. According to Descartes, the world was said to be divided into an active, purposive, perceiving "mind" (the "free soul", "thinking I," "Cartesian ego," or "self") on the one hand (the psychological part), and passive, "dead", purposeless "matter" (the physical part) on the http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco2.html (1 of 3) [10/4/2001 12:37:20 AM] Human Ecology, Globalization, and the Mechanical World View other. The physical part, defined exclusively by its extension in space and time, was seen to consist of reversible, qualitiless, inert particles governed by deterministic causal laws from which the striving mind, seen as active, boundless, and without spatial or temporal dimension, was said to be immune. An immediate implicate of this view was that spontaneous ordering in general, and intentionality and meaning in particular, were thus eliminated from the physical world by definition, and needed to be extra-physically imposed from the outside. For Newton, Boyle, and other believers in Descartes mechanical world view who took the world to be extra-physically ordered by God, this was not a problem, but instead a reaffirmation of their belief. The Problem Of Dualist Interactionism Even if such a world were extra-physically given, there is an insurmountable problem with respect to how such a system could ever possibly work, and this was recognized almost immediately by many of Descartes own followers even in his own time. This is the problem of dualist interactionism. In particular, if psychology and physics ("mind" and "matter", or "self" and "other") are dualistically defined the way Descartes did by their mutual exclusivity there is no way, in fact, that they could ever interact. Leibniz recognized this central problem of Cartesianism by anticipating the law of energy conservation (the first law of thermodynamics). For one thing to interact with another, he argued, requires something conserved over the interaction, and if something is conserved over the two things or processes they are, at some level, part of the same thing. "There must be something which changes, and something which remains unchanged," wrote Leibniz (1714/1953, p. 27), anticipating, it could be argued, the second law of thermodynamics too. Without a conservation, the point is here, the two would be truly incommensurable‹two separate worlds without any possible relation or causal connection. This separateness of the physical and mental was reinforced by Descartes theory of perception, and his famous cogito ego sum‹that what is known indubitably is the self reflective mind perceiving itself. The indubitability of matter, for Descartes, was not so clear, and with mind ultimately perceiving itself (the physical world exhaustively defined by extension is not in the category of mental or meaningful things), and his strong claim as to what is known, or what might exist, therefore, did not include an "outside" world at all. The epistemic dimension of the world, on Cartesian principles, it was soon realized, became a closed "Cartesian circle" with no way in or out, the immaterial mind perceiving itself, and no grounds to assert meaningful relations with, or the existence of, anything outside the individual self, ego, or self-motivating, self-reflective mind‹no environment at all, in effect, the active epistemic act, the subjective, simply given. It is seen with little elaboration that this view is inimical to a theory of ecological relations. Closed-Circle Theory, Cultural Ordering, And The Epistemic Dimension It is not surprising that post-Cartesian theories of knowledge, intentionality or meaning would become linked, explicitly or not, with theories of culture and evolution. Culture is clearly an epistemic process effected by meaningful relations, and the epistemic process itself would clearly seem to be evolutionary. What is interesting, however, is that post Cartesian theories of knowledge are typically seen to be allied with either cultural or evolutionary accounts as two competing paradigms, the work of the later Wittgenstein, Kuhn and others being exemplars of the first, and that of Popper, Campbell, Lorenz and others being exemplars of the second (Munz, 1985, 1987). http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco2.html (2 of 3) [10/4/2001 12:37:20 AM] Human Ecology, Globalization, and the Mechanical World View Supporters of the first view ("closed-circle theorists"), who have worn incommensurability and relativism almost as a kind of badge of enlightenment, look to sociology or social psychology as the basis for meaning and intentionality, while evolutionary epistemologists, supporters of the second view, look to evolutionary theory, or, more particularly, to Darwinian theory, as the ground for the epistemic dimension. In this sub section, I will briefly review the former. The latter will be discussed in the context of the next section dealing specifically with evolution. The roots of closed-circle theory can be found in Durkheim and Malinowski, in the "sociology of knowledge" of Mannheim, and earlier in Marx and Engels' work on ideology, and in Spencer's work before them. All of these, however, should not be construed as closed-circle theorists in the extremized post modern sense of Wittgenstein and Kuhn. The common thread that unites this lineage is that cultural ordering is seen to determine individual action. This core idea was later associated with what came to be known as "functionalism" in contrast to what is sometimes called "psychologism", the idea that cultural systems are rational constructions of individual intentional agents. On the former view, rather than culture being taken as the rational construction of individuals, individuals, instead, are taken as component productions of cultural systems. The contributions of the functionalists were substantial in that they recognized cultural system as self-organizing systems. The problem, however, was that they had no theory of self organization. Malinowski, in explicit reaction to psychologism, as well as the then prevalent evolutionary views of history or culture, held that cultural systems were effectively closed circles where the parts all function to maintain the whole. Given that, on this view, the circular relations that define the system are seen to refer back to themselves‹that the function of the system is to maintain itself‹cultural systems were said to exist sui generis. Everything is explained with respect to something else that happens internal to the circular relations of the system. Here we see the beginnings of the transposition of the Cartesian circle from the individual to the cultural or social psychological level. http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco2.html (3 of 3) [10/4/2001 12:37:20 AM] Cultural Relativism, Ecological Science, and Darwinism Swenson: Advances in Human Ecology, Vol. 6, 1997 Wittgenstein took this latent idea of cultural Cartesianism, and made it more explicit. The epistemic dimension of the world, rather than constituted through the self-referential circular relations of the individual human mind as it was for Descartes, was constituted through the intersubjective circular relations of humans within a cultural system. Meanings, said Wittgenstein, are formulated and stated in "language games" consisting of a set of rules that constitute closed circles of meanings. There are no individual meanings because there is no individual language, and because such systems are closed circles there can be no ostensive pointing or reference to anything outside the system (i.e., an objective "world"). What is more, because meaning is entirely relative to the rules of each system, and thus meaning invariance across cultural systems is denied, such circles of meaning are incommensurable with respect to each other. Truth thus varies from one closed circle to the next, and can only be measured with respect to the rules, or authority, of a particular community. In the influential history and philosophy of science of Kuhn, Wittgenstein's closed-circle language games were turned into paradigms, and the history of science seen as the shift from one paradigm to another (scientific revolutions). Because reality is taken to be the ideal construction of human cognizers operating under particular paradigms, and since paradigms as closed circles are incommensurable with each other, there is no way to talk of progress in science, a direction in time, or advancement from one paradigm shift or revolution to the next. Without meaning invariance there is no way to make a comparison. On this view, Einstein's physics, for example, does not subsume or explain Newton's but is simply different. Neither one is "truer" than the other‹they are simply incommensurable. The post modern structuralism of Foucault, Derrida, and the post-modern pragmatism of Rorty, which uses Foucault, in effect, to justify Wittgenstein (Munz, 1987), are all closed circle theories that share the common premises of the relativity of meaning to circularly closed systems, and the incommensurability of such systems with respect to each other and an external world. Closed-circle theory carries forward the anti-realist position of positivism, but at the same time challenges its rationality. While closed-circle theory is often given as a kind of enlightened alternative to modernism, it is itself modernism carried to a certain post-Humean, post-Kantian, extremized conclusion‹the Cartesian core is still there only wrapped in sociological packaging, and regressed from the individual to cultural level. The most severe problems fall into three main areas: 1) Closed-Circle Theory Is Anti-Evolutionary The first main problem area concerns the fact that because closed circles are incommensurable with respect to each other there is no way to assert that they are part of an evolutionary process, or that any such process even exists. There is no way to provide an ordinal measure with respect to time. Closed-circle theory is time-symmetric. From the view of closed-circle theory, Einstein's theory could just have well have preceded Newton's, the theory of oxygen could have preceded the theory of phlogistan, the theory of heat, and the conservation of energy could have preceded the caloric, and the periodic table of elements might just as well have come before the theory that earth, fire, air, and water constituted the basic elements. Closed-circle theory thus fails to recognize, or account for evolutionary dynamics (or cares too), and this includes the active, and expansive nature of the epistemic act, or epistemic dimension, itself. This anti-evolutionary foundation is underpinned by the http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco3.html (1 of 7) [10/4/2001 12:37:30 AM] Cultural Relativism, Ecological Science, and Darwinism intersubjective idealism of closed-circle theory which extends, and extremizes the Cartesian-Kantian anti-ecological tradition of effectively putting humans at the center of the universe. 2) Closed-Circle Theory Invokes An Illegitimate Teleology The second main problem area is the illegitimate teleology at the core of closed-circle theory. Closed-circle theory, including its functionalist ancestors, by making the fundamental reality the circular relations that define a cultural system, substitute formal causality (the form, or shape of a thing, in this case the circular relations) for the usual efficient cause that constitutes the usual notion of causality in modern science (e.g., such as that found in various bottom-up rationalist schemes such as "psychologism", or in billiard-ball mechanical models in physics). Cultural systems, are seen to be selforganizing systems of sorts, that function, in the production of their components or component relations towards their own ends, which, in particular, is to maintain themselves. This takes causality beyond the simple efficient causes of mechanical reductionism (it adds a kind of formal causality), but from the ground of modern science from which it starts, and for which no replacement theory is offered, there is no principled basis provided for where such ends or end-directed behavior can come from. The ends simply point back to themselves, and this is precisely the problem that discredited virtually every one of closed-circle theory's functionalist ancestor's before it (Swenson, 1990; Turner and Maryanski, 1979). The teleology of closed-circle theory is thus more of a kind of religious than scientific assertion. It requires defeating some widely held scientific assumptions, but provides no principled basis for doing so. In particular, downward causality has traditionally been rejected by biology, on the one hand, because it does not fit into the explanatory framework of natural selection, which, as will be discussed more fully below, does not include populations of one, and by physics, on the other, because downward causality constitutes macroscopic ordering in a world which according to the received view of thermodynamics, should be collapsing to microscopic disorder. In addition, no matter how it is assumed closed-circles get ordered in the first place, the fact that they remain so sui generis, or without outside relations or ostensive pointing, makes them perpetual motion machines of the second kind, a flight in the face of what many (e.g., Eddington, 1958) have called the most fundamental and unbreakable of all the laws of physics. 3) The Intersubjectivity At The Core Of Closed-Circle Theory Begs The Old Cartesian Questions And Doubles The Problem The third main problem area is that the intersubjectivity at the core of closed-circle theory begs the old Cartesian questions, and simply regresses, or doubles, the problem. Briefly put, meanings for the closed circle theorist exist in the persistent and invariant relations constituted through the intersubjective relations that define the closed circle. To each individual, however, this requires persistent and invariant relations with a world outside herself or himself, and this requires a nonCartesian theory of perception. In short, the intersubjectivity of closed-circle theory requires breaking the Cartesian circle at the individual level since the individual mind is no longer simply perceiving itself, but something external in relation to which it comes to be determined or defined, and this requires a commensurability between knower and known which undercuts the ground of closed-circle theory. Once the individual Cartesian circle is broken, there is no principled basis to maintain the cultural one (viz., one has admitted the fundamental existence of a self-other relation, there is no principled basis to confine this only to other humans). http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco3.html (2 of 7) [10/4/2001 12:37:30 AM] Cultural Relativism, Ecological Science, and Darwinism EVOLUTIONARY EPISTEMOLOGY, ECOLOGICAL SCIENCE, AND THE PROBLEM(S) WITH DARWINISM AS THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION The Second Postulate of Incommensurability Cartesian metaphysics, as noted above, came full-blown into modern biology with Kant who argued correctly that the active striving of living things could not be fathomed as part of a dead, reversible mechanical world. Rather than questioning the impoverished physics, however, he called for a second major dualism, the dualism between biology and physics, or between living things and their environments (call this the "second postulate of incommensurability" [Swenson, 1996]). The argument, grounded on the view of the incommensurability between the active, striving, intentional dynamics of living things and their "dead" environments, is still promoted today by leading proponents of Darwinian theory (e.g., Mayr, 1985). Boltzmann's interpretation or hypothesis of the second law of thermodynamics has played a crucial role, as already noted, in giving apparent legitimacy to the view that physics has nothing to say to biology, its principles being not simply foreign, but hostile to it. Darwinian theory, from its beginning with Darwin had little use for physics in its theory. Darwin, in Lewontin's (1992, p. 108) "completely rejected [the] world view...that what was outside and what was inside were part of the same whole system..." thereby carrying the antiecological Cartesian-Kantian postulates directly into evolutionary theory, and making it as inimical to ecological science as its ancestral relatives. Evolutionary epistemologists, as noted in the preceding section, have a view almost directly opposite to that of the closed-circle theorists (e.g., see Callebaut & Pinxten, 1987; Radnitzky & Bartley, 1987). Whereas closed-circle theorists such as Wittgenstein and Kuhn are arch antievolutionists, evolutionary epistemologists look to evolutionary theory, in particular, Darwinian theory, to provide an account of the epistemic dimension. Evolution, on this view, is taken to be a continuous, and progressive knowledge acquisition process, in Popper's words, "from amoeba to man" following from natural selection. Every living thing, according to this view, has knowledge in the expectations on which its intentional behavior depends, and this knowledge, as a consequence of natural selection, is taken to be true (hypothetically) since if not, to put it simply, the living thing in question would be dead. While true knowledge to the closed-circle theorist follows from cultural authority under a particular paradigm, to the evolutionary epistemologist it is determined with respect to the performance of an epistemic agent in the world. Scientific knowledge is seen to be continuous with evolution by natural selection since it too involves a trial and error process of selection through the proposal and refutation of falsifiable hypotheses (Campbell, 1987). The problem with evolutionary epistemology is its reliance on Darwinian theory. Darwinism's Cartesian postulates eliminate it a priori from the task that evolutionary epistemologists would like to have it perform. More specifically, two immediate problems, either of which by itself would be sufficient to disqualify Darwinian theory with respect to providing an account of the epistemic dimension can be quickly given. They will only be mentioned here, but will be discussed in more detail with the other "big" problems of evolution below. The first is that Darwinian theory assumes intentional dynamics to begin with, and this puts an explanation of intentional dynamics outside its theory. The second, is that the claim that evolution is a progressive knowledge acquisition process is an assertion that can neither be made nor explained from the ground of Darwinian theory because the relevant observable (fitness) is relativized to members of breeding populations. These and the other problems below can all be seen to follow from the position evolutionary theory has backed itself into http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco3.html (3 of 7) [10/4/2001 12:37:30 AM] Cultural Relativism, Ecological Science, and Darwinism as a consequence of the Cartesian postulates at its core. General Versus Specific Theories Of Evolution The dream of uniting the two apparently opposing rivers, it should be noted, did not escape Fisher (1930/1958, p. 39), who imagined that the two apparently opposing directions of biology and physics "may ultimately be absorbed by a more general principle." Lorenz (1973, p. 20), one of the founders of evolutionary epistemology wrote that the aspect of life "most in need of explanation, is that, in apparent contradiction to the laws of probability, it seems to develop from ...the more probable to the less probable, from systems of lower order to systems of higher order." For Spencer (e.g., 1857/1892, 1862), who defined the term "evolution", and popularized the idea in numerous bestselling books prior to Darwin, biological evolution was part of a more general universal process of evolution. He defined evolution as a process of the transformation of less ordered to more ordered states following from natural law (the "law of evolution"). Although Spencer was never able to supply the physical basis for his law of evolution, as a consequence of its asserted, if not demonstrated, nomological continuity (viz., biological ordering was seen as a special case of universal ordering), his general theory of evolution, an early statement of evolution as a law-based self-organizing process, was at least an attempt at a commensurable rather than incommensurable theory. It was with the ascendancy of Darwinism that evolution was taken out of its universal context, and the meaning of the term reduced to biological evolution alone (see also Swenson, 1991b, 1992, 1996, in press-a, in press-b). According to Mayr (1980, p. 12), the "almost universally adopted definition of evolution [today] is a change of gene frequencies" following from natural selection, the "final implementation" of the basic Darwinian concept except that the focus was shifted by neoDarwinism from organisms to genes. It was with the reduction of the meaning of the term evolution from a universal to a biological process that the Cartesian-Kantian postulates were built into the core of evolutionary discourse, and with them the major anomalies of Darwinian theory. These are not simply the problems of evolution, but true anomalies with respect to Darwinian theory because, as will be seen, they are problems that its core postulates preclude it from answering. The Problem(s) With Darwinism As The Theory of Evolution Six main problems are as follows: 1) Natural Selection Requires The Intentional Dynamics Of Living Things In Order To Work, And This Puts The Intentional Dynamics Of Living Things Outside The Explanatory Framework Of Darwinian Theory. The core explanatory concept of Darwinian theory in all its various forms is natural selection (Depew and Weber, 1995). Evolution, according to Darwinism, follows from natural selection and natural selection is entailed by a situational logic (Popper, 1985)‹if certain conditions hold then natural selection will necessarily follow. These conditions are heritable variation, finite resources and the fecundity principle, a biological extremum principle that captures the active striving of living things. Natural selection, said Darwin (1959/1937, p. 152), follows from a population of replicating or reproducing entities with variation "striving to seize on every unoccupied or less well occupied space in the economy of nature". Because "every organic being," he said (Darwin, 1959/1937, p. 266), is http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco3.html (4 of 7) [10/4/2001 12:37:30 AM] Cultural Relativism, Ecological Science, and Darwinism "striving its utmost to increase, there is therefore the strongest possible power tending to make each site support as much life as possible." Paraphrasing Darwin, in Schweber's (1985, p. 38) words, the fecundity principle, which refers to the intentional dynamics of living things, thus says that nature acts to "maximizes the amount of life per unit area" given the constraints. But notice that the situational logic from which natural selection follows makes natural selection dependent on the intentional dynamics of living things‹natural selection does not explain the intentional dynamics of living things, it is a consequence of them, and this puts intentional dynamics outside the explanatory framework of Darwinian theory. 2) Darwinism Has No Observables By Which It Can Address Or Account For The Directed Nature Of Evolution That evolution is a progressive or directed process (meaning going in a direction) is seen in the cited statements of Fisher, Lorenz, and is evident to anyone who looks at the planetary evolutionary record (e.g., see Figure 1). It is a core idea for evolutionary epistemology which sees evolution as a progressive knowledge acquisition process, per Popper, from "amoeba to Einstein" where the knowledge of a thing has is measured by its "fitness". But Darwinism, which, in effect, is a timesymmetric theory, has no observables that can be used to measure the direction of evolution at all, and this, in particular, includes fitness. Because fitness is relativized to members of breeding populations, the fitnesses of different kinds of things, as in the case with closed circles in closed-circle theory, are incommensurable with respect to each other, and cannot be compared (e.g., Fisher, 1930/1958; Sober, 1984). A zebra who runs faster than another zebra, avoids predators better, and thus produces more offspring, can be said to be more fit than the slower zebra, but a zebra can not be compared on the same basis to a mouse, or an amoeba. Mice can only be judged more or less fit than other mice, and amoebas with respect to other amoebas, and this makes fitness an incommensurable observable with respect to evolution writ large. Darwinian theory has no ground from which to measure, or account for, the directed nature of evolution, and no ground, in particular, for evolutionary epistemology to claim evolution as a progressive knowledge acquisition process. To justify this claim would require evolution to be about something other than fitness. 3) Because Natural Selection Works On A Competitive Population Of Many, And The Earth, As A Planetary System Evolves As A Population Of One, Darwinian Theory Can Neither Recognize Nor Address This Planetary Evolution One of the most important empirical facts that has come to be recognized in recent decades is that the Earth at the planetary level evolves as a single global entity (e.g., Cloud, 1988; Margulis & Lovelock, 1974; Schwartzman, et al., 1994; Swenson & Turvey, 1991; Vernadsky, 1986/1929), and the present oxygen rich atmosphere, put in place and maintained by life over geological time, is perhaps the most obvious prima facie evidence for the existence and persistence of it (see Figure 1). With the shift of the Earth's redox state from reducing to oxidative some two billion years ago evolution undeniably became a coherent planetary process. Because the evolution, development, and persistence of all higher-order life has depended and continues to depend on the prior existence and persistence of evolution at the planetary level, this single planetary system may well be considered the fundamental unit of terrestrial evolution. Without question an understanding of planetary evolution is fundamental to evolutionary theory, to ecological science, and to a theory of cultural evolution and human ecology. Yet this poses a major problem for Darwinian theory because the planetary system as http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco3.html (5 of 7) [10/4/2001 12:37:30 AM] Cultural Relativism, Ecological Science, and Darwinism a whole cannot, by definition, be considered a unit of Darwinian evolution (Dawkins, 1982; MaynardSmith, 1988). Darwinian theory, which defines evolution as the consequence of natural selection acting on a competitive replicating or reproducing population of many cannot address or even recognize planetary evolution because there is no replicating or reproducing population of competing Earth systems on which natural selection can act. The Earth evolves as a population of one. Natural selection is seen to be a process internal to the evolution of the planetary system, and thus rather than explaining terrestrial evolution, it awaits an explanation of planetary evolution by which it, as a manifestation, might be explained (Swenson, 1991a). 4) Darwinian Theory Has No Account Of The Insensitivity To Initial Conditions (Like Consequents From Unlike Antecedents) Required To Account For The Reliability Of Intentional Dynamics Or The Evolutionary Record Writ Large Contemporary Darwinian theory is characterized by a commitment to the assumptions of gradualism, continuous change, reductionism, and efficient, or mechanical cause. The dynamics of its theory are based on the difficult (if not impossible) marriage of a kind of Laplacean determinism, namely, that like antecedents produce like consequents‹that, for example, if the initial conditions or microconditions are changed the macroscopic dynamics will be different, and the belief, at the same time, that there exists a certain amount of microscopic randomness, variation, or "error" in the world. The latter is supported by the most widely held views of quantum mechanics (viz., that probability is, in fact, objective). The consequence of these assumptions, for example, with respect to terrestrial evolution writ large is that it is seen as a process where, in effect, "anything goes", and that, given the fact of microscopic randomness, if one rewound the tape of evolutionary history back to some point in the distant past and played it again, it would turn out "entirely different" every time one rewound the tape (e.g., Gould, 1989; Williams, 1992, p. 3). Yet if such a micro-macro relation were true, if living things were sensitive to initial conditions in this way, the characteristic properties of terrestrial evolution writ large, and, in particular the intentional dynamics of living things, would be inconceivable. Real-world systems of this kind show a remarkable insensitivity to initial conditions‹they are "end-specific" not "start-specific" to use Dyke's (this volume) felicitous terms. They repeatedly produce the same end states from different initial conditions, and they are required to do so in order to survive because, regardless of the ultimate facts of quantum mechanics, real-world initial conditions are never the same twice. This remarkable insensitivity to initial conditions on which terrestrial evolution as we know it depends is unrecognized and unaccounted for by Darwinian theory. 5) The Incommensurability Between Biology And Physics Assumed By Darwinian Theory Provides No Basis Within The Theory According To Which Epistemic Or Meaningful Relations Between Living Things And Their Environments Can Take Place The fecundity principle on which evolution on the Darwinian view crucially depends assumes the active intentional dynamics of living things‹it assumes the meaningful determination of the enddirected behavior of living things. Given the Cartesian psychology or theory of perception at the core of Darwinian theory, however‹the rejection by Darwinism that what is inside and what is outside are part of the same whole system (Lewontin, 1992), there is no principled basis for meaningful relations to take place. The outside or physical world is a world of extension, while the inside world, the biological or psychological part of the world is a world of intension, and this re-creates the Cartesian problem of dualist interactionism. An ecological science requires an ecological evolutionary theory, http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco3.html (6 of 7) [10/4/2001 12:37:30 AM] Cultural Relativism, Ecological Science, and Darwinism and such a theory requires a non-Cartesian theory of perception, or an ecological psychology, that shows a principled basis according to which meaningful relations can take place. A theory such as Darwinism that holds biology and physics or living things and their environments to be incommensurable cannot provide a principled basis for meaningful relations, and, because the evolution of life is distinguished by intentional dynamics or meaningful relations, such a theory is not only deficient with respect an evolutionary epistemology, and an ecological science, but as a theory of evolution in general too. 6) Evolution According To Darwinism Is Defined As a Change In Gene Frequencies, And This Puts Cultural Evolution Outside The Reach Of Darwinian Theory Clearly cultural evolution, as a consequence of the rate at which it is transforming the planet, is of great interest to those interested in terrestrial evolution in general, as well as ecological science in particular. For evolutionary epistemologists cultural evolution is part of a continuous process of knowledge acquisition, and for human ecology cultural evolution is clearly central to its subject matter. By defining evolution as a change in gene frequencies, however, Darwinian theory can have little to say about cultural evolution at all, which "is not really evolution at all" (Dawkins, 1986, p. 216) under this definition. This is not a mere technical point. The interests of genes, and the interests of "memes" (roughly speaking the ideas that are replicated by cultural systems as their principle hereditary component [Dawkins, 1986; Dennett, 1995]) are incommensurable, and so are biological, and cultural evolution on this view. http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco3.html (7 of 7) [10/4/2001 12:37:30 AM] Human Ecology, Spontaneous Order, and Autocatakinetics Swenson: Advances in Human Ecology, Vol. 6, 1997 AUTOCATAKINETICS: A THEORY OF EMBEDDED CIRCLES Identity Through Flow Symmetry Breaking And Symmetry Making: Autocatakinesis, And The Generalized Metabolism Of Dynamic Flow Structures An ecological science requires a demonstration of why, contrary to what most evolutionary theorists believe biological and cultural evolution are not a negation of physical evolution‹a principled basis for uniting the two rivers, or otherwise apparently two-direction universe, that Fisher, and many others have pointed out. It requires answering the question of Lorenz about why, with the fecundity principle, according to which life produces as much order as it can, and with evolution as a whole, the world produces what appears as a progressive process that goes from what appears to be more probable to increasingly less probable states. It needs to show why, if the transition from disorder to order is infinitely improbable, as Boltzmann argued, the world, in effect, is in the order-production business. What is more, it must show the basis for the meaningful relations by which the intentional dynamics of biological and cultural ordering are distinguished. As noted briefly above, part of the attraction of Descartes' passive, "dead", qualityless world of physics to the proponents of the mechanical world view was that it required extra-physical ordering to get it ordered. The mechanical world, made of inert, reversible, particles incapable of ordering themselves, as Boyle (Lange, 1877/1950, p. 255) pointed out, like the "ingenious clock of Strasburg Cathedral" must have an intelligent artificer to account for it. In addition to Boyle, the argument from design was made repeatedly throughout the rise of modern science. Paley's famous version about finding a watch on a beach, and knowing that it had to have had a watchmaker to design it, is the one Darwin is credited with undermining with the idea of natural selection which Dawkins (1986) has consequently termed the "blind watchmaker". But there is a serious category error in these arguments, namely, that non-artifactual systems, such as living ones, are not the same kinds of things as mechanical artifacts. In different terms, if you found a watch on a beach, or wherever, it certainly would make sense to imagine that it had an artificer to design it because nothing like it has ever been found in the universe as far as anyone knows that was not artifactually produced. Machines or artifacts are defined by static order‹their identity constituted and maintained by static components, the same components, external repairs excluded, in the same positions with respect to each other. Living systems from bacteria to cultural systems, as self-organizing, or spontaneously ordered systems, are defined by dynamic order‹their identity is constituted through the incessant flux of their components which are continuously being replaced from raw materials in their environments, and expelled in a more dissipated form. Persistence (the form of the thing) at one level (the "macro" level) is constituted by change at the component level (the "micro" level). In more technical terms, living systems are autocatakinetic systems while artifactual systems are not. The class of autocatakinetic systems includes more than just living systems, and this immediately suggests a connection between living and non-living things that will http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco4.html (1 of 9) [10/4/2001 12:37:39 AM] Human Ecology, Spontaneous Order, and Autocatakinetics Figure 2. A tornado is an example of an autocatakinetic system, a dynamically ordered flow structure whose identity, in contrast to a machine, or artifact, is constituted not by a set of particular components typically occupying fixed positions with respect to each other, but by the ordered relations maintained by the incessant flow of its components. The dynamical order that defines the persistence of an autocatakinetic system as an object at the macro level, is maintained through constant change at the micro level. This incessant flux of components can be thought of as a generalized metabolism by which the system maintains itself by pulling environmental potentials (or resources) into its autocatakinesis, which it returns in a more dissipated form. All living things from bacteria to human cultural systems as well as the planetary system as a whole, which maintains a constant level of oxygen, for example, by this same generalized process, are all members of the class of autocatakinetic systems. Photo courtesy of the National Severe Storms Laboratory. be more apparent later on. Dust devils, hurricanes, and tornadoes, for example, are all examples of autocatakinetic flow structures whose identities are constituted in just this way‹by the incessant flux of matter and energy pulled in from, and then excreted or expelled back into, their environments in a more degraded or dissipated form (see Figure 2). An autocatakinetic system is defined as one that maintains its "self" as an entity constituted by, and empirically traceable to, a set of nonlinear (circularly causal) relations through the dissipation or breakdown of field (environmental) potentials (or resources) in the continuous coordinated motion of its components (from auto"self" + cata"down" + kinetic, "of the motion of material bodies and the forces and energy associated therewith" from kinein, "to cause to move")(Swenson,