Blind Evolution Research Articles

Meaning and Replicability of Social Psychological Experiments: A Personal Account

In this paper I describe the gradual evolution of experimental social psychology from a so called “science of discovery”, with invariant findings over time and space, to an art of theatrical reflection with self-made reproductions of social life to so engage in more thoughtful action. I do this by means of a narrative account of my sixty year long personal experience with the various changes in the discipline, from the many cases of non-replicability early in my career, to the splendid discovery by vigilant students at my department of the probably most impressive case of fraud in the history of the social sciences, to the persistent denial of a need for a new logic by orthodox positivists in the discipline, even after more than half of the carefully designed replications of important experiments in the discipline failed. I look at this evolution through the lens of gradual objectification in science as a whole, from the most distant objects, such as stars, to the closer and closer reality of our own existence, namely the production and processing of meaning, and the inevitable recursivity (historicity) and incompleteness (one cannot include one’s own discourse in the discourse one has at that moment) of that endeavour. I also describe moments of institutional evolution, its political besides scientific interest, and encounters with the most influential protagonists in the development of the new logic. I also reflect a moment on the theoretical and methodological implications of that new logic, and end with showing how the theme of social engagement and the move toward cultivated action, rather than by freezing history in the so called truth of invariance, was actually the core idea in the work of Kurt Lewin, and has been used inadvertently in the subsequent use of experiments in the discipline, even by those who pretended to be the astronomers of the mind. But with the clear note that reflection on social life in the form of self-made reproductions of that life, is probably the most human thing we can do, and enables us to create culture, rather than blind evolution in merely physical or biological terms. So, making experimental social psychology a valuable tool of humanization as well, but only when properly used.

Prediction markets as meta‐episteme: Artificial intelligence, forecasting tournaments, prediction markets, and economic growth

AbstractThis paper presents a speculative framework suggesting that prediction markets (or its epistemic cousins such as artificial intelligence or forecasting tournaments) may constitute a break in the expansion of human knowledge in a manner similar to the impact of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. Just as the scientific understanding of the natural world facilitated the development of useful technologies to move far faster than what is allowed by blind evolution and tinkering, tools such as prediction markets allow for scientific knowledge to move faster than its current evolutionary process. The intellectual bases for these tools, such as the interpretation of probabilities as bets, are relatively recent additions to human knowledge, which may have significant implications for how we evaluate past thinkers, versus what is now possible or may be possible in the future.

David Frost: Blind Evolution? The Nature of Humanity and the Origin of Life

Peter Stork reviews “Blind Evolution? The Nature of Humanity and the Origin of Life” by David Frost. Cambridge: James Clark & Co, 2020; 176 pages. ISBN-13: 9780227177112.

The role of selection in the evolution of blindness in cave fish

AbstractThe forces driving regression of biologically functionless traits remain disputed. There is ongoing debate regarding whether selection, as opposed to disuse and neutral mutations, is involved in this process. Cave species are of particular relevance for study in this regard because in continuous darkness all traits that depend on information from light, such as eyes, dark pigmentation and certain behaviours, abruptly lose their function. Recently, strong selection driving reduction has again been proposed, which relied on modelling analyses based on assumptions such as immigration of surface alleles into the cave forms or no fitness difference existing between Astyanax surface and cave fish. The validity of these assumptions, often applied to reject neutral processes in functionless traits, is questioned in this review. Morphological variation in a trait resulting from genetic variability is typical of biologically functionless traits and is particularly notable in phylogenetically young cave species. It is the most evident indicator of loss of selection, which normally enforces uniformity to guarantee optimal functionality. Phenotypic and genotypic variability in Astyanax cave fish eyes does not derive from genetic introgression by the surface form, but from regressive mutations not being eliminated by selection. This matches well with the principles of Kimura’s neutral theory of molecular evolution.

How Does Evolution Explain Blindness in Cavefish?

Commonly used evolution assessments often ask about the evolution of blindness in cavefish or salamanders, running speed in cheetahs, and/or the long necks of giraffes. Explaining the loss of function in cave animals, however, is more difficult than explaining evolution involving gains of function resulting from natural selection. In fact, the evolution of cavefish blindness is not yet well understood by scientists. This article presents the three current hypotheses for explaining the evolution of blindness in Mexican tetras (Astyanax mexicanus), related to the Next Generation Science Standards and the Advanced Placement curriculum.

Evolution of blindness in scolopendromorph centipedes (Chilopoda: Scolopendromorpha): insight from an expanded sampling of molecular data.

Relative to its diversity (34 genera, 700 species), Scolopendromorpha has been undersampled in molecular phylogenetic analyses compared with the other chilopod orders. Previous analyses based on morphology have not resolved several key controversies in systematics and evolutionary morphology unambiguously. Here we apply new molecular and morphological data to scolopendromorph phylogenetics, with a focus on the evolution of blindness. The taxonomic sample includes 19 genera, many lacking previous molecular data, and diverse, cosmopolitan genera of Scolopendridae are sampled by multiple species. Phylogenetic analysis with Direct Optimization used 94 morphological characters and ca. 4.5 kb of sequence data from two nuclear (18S and 28S rRNA) and two mitochondrial (16S rRNA and COI) loci. A single most-parsimonious cladogram selected after sensitivity analyses resolves Scolopendromorpha as monophyletic, and divides it into a blind clade of three families (Plutoniumidae, Cryptopidae, Scolopocryptopidae) and its ocellate sister group, Scolopendridae. Some species-rich, cosmopolitan genera (Cormocephalus, Otostigmus, Scolopendra) in Scolopendridae are non-monophyletic, and in several instances (e.g. New and Old World Scolopendra) relationships are more congruent with geographical distributions than with traditional classifications. The tribe Asanadini is particularly subject to parameter-sensitivity, nesting in the combined analysis within Scolopendrini but as sister to all other Scolopendrinae for molecular data alone. The total-evidence tree unambiguously optimizes trunk segmentation: a 23-segmented trunk has a single origin in the blind clade. © The Willi Hennig Society 2011.

Evolution of Blindness in Cavefish

The fish species Astyanax mexicanus exists in a form that exists above ground and has normal eyes and in forms that exist in caves (cavefish), which are blind and undergo degeneration of the eye. In evolutionary terms, the loss of the eye might simply reflect lack of selection for eyesight in cavefish. However, Yamamoto et al. present evidence that, instead, eye degeneration appears to have been derived as an adaptive trait driven by natural selection. Critical signals for eye development come from the cells of the anterior embryonic midline in the form of so-called hedgehog (Hh) proteins. In cavefish, eye primordia form but stop developing and degenerate. This phenotype appears to arise not from failure of Hh signaling, but rather from increased expression of Hh proteins in the developing cavefish embryo. Increased Hh signaling in wild-type embryos (induced by injection of mRNA encoding Hh proteins) produced adults that lacked an eye. Application of a pharmacological inhibitor of Hh signaling in cavefish partly restored development of the eye. It is estimated that loss of the eye probably results from modification of four to six genes. The authors suggest that changes in genes encoding Hh proteins or other genes that regulate the Hh pathway further upstream may represent these critical events. Y. Yamamoto, D. W. Stock, W. R. Jeffery, Hedgehog signalling controls eye degeneration in blind cavefish. Nature 431 , 844-847 (2004). [Online Journal]

How Science Is a Resource and a Challenge for Religion: Perspective of a Theologian

Religion is characterized by the attempt to create a worldview, which is in effect the effort of worldbuilding. By this I mean that religion aims to focus on all of the elements that make up a person's world or a community's world and put those elements together in a manner that actually constructs a total picture that gives meaning and coherence to life. In this activity of worldbuilding, science and religion meet each other at the deepest level. Science makes a fundamental contribution to this worldbuilding effort and also poses a challenge. There are good grounds for this twofold role of science: (1) scientific knowledge is basic to any worldview in our time, and (2) science and its related technology engender new and often confusing experiences that require inclusion in any worldbuilding.The challenge of science is that its contribution does not easily accommodate worldbuilding because of the factors of chance, indeterminacy, blind evolution, and heat death that are ascertained through scientific knowledge. Science is a resource for us in that the features of its knowledge can lend actuality and credibility to worldbuilding.Religion needs science for its worldbuilding if its interpretations are to be credible and possess vivid actuality. Science needs religion because, unless its knowledge is incorporated into meaningful worldbuilding, science forfeits its standing as a humanistic enterprise and instead may count as an antihuman methodology and body of knowledge.

Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology by Michael Ruse

BOOK REVIEWS 159 human experience, could not the same be said of such notions as "community," "narrative," or even "Christian"? It is not always clear how appealing to the notion of "Christian" is much more helpful than the appeal to "rational agency" when the questions concern holy orders, the Eucharist, war, marriage, divorce, contraception, homosexuality, revelation, Scripture, and authority-in short, all of those areas of vital importance to embodied, historical Christian life. Amore extensive account of the issues of authority and the "Christian life" would be very helpful. The chapter on "obedience" offers one of the most compelling beginnings. Such questions are hardly new to scholars in these conversations. They simply affirm that Hauerwas and Pinches are to be counted among the more engaging Christian thinkers of the age. University ofSt. Thomas St. Paul, Minnesota CHRISTOPHER}. THOMPSON Monad to Man: The Concept ofProgress in Evolutionary Biology. By MICHAEL RUSE. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Pp. 628. $49.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-674-58220-9. No concept has caused more difficulties for the philosophy of biology than that of progress. For "progress" (from the Latin for "going toward" some direction) implies a goal, and goal conjures up the dread specter of teleology, that supposedly revanchist relic from the days of Aristotle and his medieval commentators. In fact much of the historiography of science in the West couches its narrative in terms of modern science's gradual weaning from teleology toward a more mechanical framework, as in the abandonment of Aristotle's "push" explanation of motion as motion toward a goal (that is, something falls because, as Aristotle once said, it is seeking its natural place) in favor of Newton's "pull" model of bodies moving toward other objects by virtue of their mutual gravitational attraction operating by a mechanical law that knows nothing of goals or "natural" places for objects. Inside this narratology Darwin takes pride of place, for according to the standard interpretation Darwin freed the world of biology from William Paley's (and Aristotle's) explanation for organs and organisms as obvious objects of design in favor of his theory of natural selection: a process that seems designed (as the word "selection" implies) but is in fact blind and unthinking (in contrast with the "artificial" selection of professional breeders who breed with an end in mind). 160 BOOK REVIEWS An everyone knows, Darwin's hypothesis revolutionized not just the world of biology but also that of culture at large. However, there is an irony to his wider influence: for to the extent that one denies any role for teleology in evolution, the less applicable the theory is to other philosophical issues (especially ethical ones, but also extending to other areas), whereas if evolution displays a record of increasing progress in its history of increased complexification , then one is able that much more easily to apply that record to human behavior by extrapolating that directedness into the future. This is because, however blind evolution might be, man is certainly an animal who designs things all the time (in fact, so ubiquitous is the human species' design-making habit that it misled Paley to apply it everywhere). Therefore, if evolution is as blind as many theorists hold, then it cannot by definition be of much use in helping to guide the goal-determined behavior of humans, especially in their ethics, an inherently teleologically determined form of reflecting and behaving. But if evolution does have a goal "in mind," so to say, then the way is at least open to using that extrapolated goal as an end in view for determining our own undeniably goal-driven activities. This fusion of the notion of progress with applied Darwinism is strikingly obvious in the case of the career of social Darwinism, the failed attempt to base ethics on Darwinian principles. For without the notion that evolution is going somewhere, there was no way to generate a norm for judgment out of the zigzagging that would otherwise characterize evolutionary tracks. As is well known, this initial foray of evolutionary theorists to generate an evolutionary ethic, now called social Darwinism, ended in a total failure. This collapse of social Darwinism as an influential option...