Replies

...there must obviously be SOME physical means involved. Could you present them in a non-”Darwinist” argument for us? ... Please explain to me what physical means are involved in the evolution you accept.

I can't say that I have spent a whole lot of time working on a "scientific" alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution. Mainly I've been looking for evidence that the theory really doesn't hold up, on evidentiary and epistemological grounds. In any case, I am neither a working nor a theoretical scientist, merely a student of the history of science, going back to the ancient world and forward.

Darwin's theory calls for gradualism in evolutionary change — which the fossil record doesn't really support. Then when this became more or less generally acknowledged, attempts were made (e.g., punctuated equilibrium) to obviate the question of why the fossil record does not demonstrate the predicted gradualism. Talk about moving the goal post!

But this right there is a major reworking of Darwin's theory. That is, evidently, the theory had to be "fixed" in order better to conform with the evidence we do have.

For myself, I am vastly more interested, not so much in how species change over time, but in what actual biological organisms in general are and how they are organized. In other words, I'm not interested what biological organisms "look like" and how they "change over time," but in what makes them alive in contradistinction to inorganic, non-living systems in the world.

Darwin's theory is absolutely of no help on this question. And certainly I do not subscribe to this description of the evolutionary process:

“Chance alone is the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution. The central concept of biology … is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one compatible with observed and tested fact. All forms of life are the product of chance….” — Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity, 1971

Having said that, the "evolution I 'accept'" would have to conform to my expectation that all living things consist of the material and immaterial.

WRT the "immaterial": This category includes both natural laws and informational processes. The material refers, of course, to physical matter out of which living bodies are formed.

Of course, since Einstein, we know that "matter" is energy in a particular form.

And also of course, that was not the way Darwin regarded matter. His theory is predicated on Newtonian mechanics, in which "matter" is analogous to teensy billiard balls, and all causation is "local." What natural selection "locks in" comes at the end of a "blind, random" process.

Yet biological systems — and biological functions — seem to be organized by means of non-local cause(s), and — rather than merely random processes — are purposeful processes. That is, they represent systems of causal entailment that appear to serve a natural purpose or goal, or what in philosophy is called a final cause. Of course, Francis Bacon — usually credited as the father of the scientific method — banished final cause from science back in the 16th century.

Be that as it may, I do not think it is possible to answer the question, "What is life?" unless science puts final cause back into its tool kit.

Anyhoot, it appears that homo sapiens sapiens has changed very little, if at all, since around 40,000 B.C. Looks like "stasis" at work here, not gradual evolutionary change....

Just some thoughts, dear allmendream. FWTW.

Thank you so much for writing!