Balance of nature: man making a bad balance (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, November 07, 2016, 14:44 (2726 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID’s comment: There is a moral here. A naturally attained balance of nature works correctly until some outsider organism is introduced with no prior study as to the possible consequences. History is replete with the examples, especially in Australia. Everybody has to eat somebody, but a new body is disruptive unless proven otherwise. The bush of life provides for balance, as the oak/ acorn study shows.

dhw: Absolutely right, and human interference could eventually do for us all. However, it should be pointed out once more that the balance of nature was disrupted on a catastrophic scale over and over again long before humans appeared on the scene. That is one of the major problems you and I keep grappling with in our interpretations of life’s history, as you try to make up your mind whether each disruption was an accident or a deliberate intervention by your God. Whichever it was, we can say that a “naturally attained balance of nature” works for some organisms until a new environment is introduced by God’s design or by accident to change it. This process may result in innovations (the Cambrian) or extinctions (Chixculub), and these changes have produced the bush of life. There is no balance of nature that "works correctly" - there is only a particular balance of nature that suits particular organisms at any given time.

You are right, but, there is a vast difference between your examples: " This process may result in innovations (the Cambrian) or extinctions (Chicxulub)". Chicxulub has an obvious mechanism, while the Cambrian is unexplained. This is an important difference to think about. The Cambrian requires agency, while Chicxulub is simply an extension of objects flying around all through the development of the solar system, a physical process.