autonomy v. automaticity (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, March 05, 2018, 12:32 (2453 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: Balance of nature didn’t “allow” anything. Living organisms and changing environments have gone on producing an ever changing balance of nature all this time, and will continue to do so until there is no life left.
DAVID: Again forgetting that imbalance in nature has led to extinctions. Everyone has to eat. Nature's balance supplies that need. Nothing more to understand.

It’s not an imbalance, it’s a different balance. For the survivor it’s balanced, and for the non-survivor it’s imbalanced. You seem to think there is only one correct balance by which all other balances throughout the history of evolution must be judged! Yes, everyone has to eat, and if they can’t, the balance changes. Nothing more to understand, so why do you keep bringing it up? It’s only relevant to ecology, as all your examples make clear, and has nothing whatsoever to do with your hypothesis that God designed the weaverbird’s nest to keep life going until he could produce the brain of Homo sapiens.

DAVID: Look at the knots. Even you would have trouble tying them.
dhw" I would also have trouble flying, climbing trees, living underwater, and doing the vast majority of things our fellow organisms do naturally.
DAVID: We do all the things you describe, just differently with our amazing brains supplied by God.

Yes, we are very clever, but that doesn’t mean the weaverbird can’t also be clever in its own way, and it certainly doesn’t mean God had to teach the weaverbird to tie complicated knots so that life could go on until he produced the human brain.

DAVID: Read the whole article, not my summary. The experimentation clearly proved the individual ant was totally automatic. Talk of close minded!
dhw: Read Gauci: “Maybe they’re not as simple as people think.” Read Turell: “There could be a degree of group think not yet uncovered.” Have you forgotten that all organs and organisms are groups of cells?
DAVID: I did which is why I commented as I did. And each cell in an organ has its automatic duty, just like the automatic ants so beautifully outlined in the study.

And “there could be a degree of group think not yet uncovered”. Of course there are automatic actions, but how did they originate, and what happens when the automatic processes are disrupted? Must all innovations, lifestyles, natural wonders and problem-solving be divinely preprogrammed or dabbled, or do single cells (e.g. bacteria)/cell communities (“group think”) work things out for themselves? I like the quotes from Gucci and (much though he may regret it) my friend David Turell.