Mimicry and neodarwinism

MartinV, I see no need to address any questions you raise, as you ignore responses and links that address your questions and assertions. Furthermore you string together comments and links and throw in off the wall tangental topics and think that this suffices for serious debate. It doesn't. I am beginning to think you are not really interested in this debate but just want to stir things up as much as possible in some kind of sophomoric game.

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I do not have book from D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson yet I know he compares for instance jellyfish and the forms of drops of liquid falling into viscous fluid and many more surprising resemblances of forms in living and inanimate world.
It is too far audacious to assume, that fossil fish was created by no-fossilization process, but where is the boundary of which shapes are intrinsic to inanimate and which to living world I do not know.

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Yes it is an interesting question when one looks into the shapes of viruses but if one is sticking with the subjects Thompson informs this is not much of a problematic for me even though I have made it my own problem over the years. The simple idea I have had is that because there is no difference of the application of algebra and geometry to the phenetic conscriptives of biological form one need only spin one's thought around an axis that is concurrent with a backbone to enable a wedge to concieved between any lack of a boundary. If the axis is a problem then this would have been said problematic and not something I find very worthwhile.

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Anyway even if fossil fish was not created by "internal forces" it does not mean, that these forces does not exist at all.

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Your reply here seems to indicate that I am not the person you are writing to here. I have already said that one can relate the "unreal" IN YOUR TERMS to Agassiz's reference to Oken. I may be wrong here but this is what I would have done. Perhaps English is not your primary diction.It is good you saw that the article you and Davison linked confered the same sense of harmonious "wisdom" as found in Kant.Which 'copy page' has the reference to Earth as a living organism?I can write about the issue of ecosystem as a superorganism or not but again if all one is saying in this thread is "internal forces" force one to write that insects that look like leaves is a real connection then unless one tries to ply open the historical facts the contigency will never enounce more than this and this can be said for anything. It is like saying God can control the minds of scientists therefore whatever scientists pronouce is not their's but God's or whatever I see HAS to be what you do when I am restricting myself to 'science.'As to a metaphilosophy of what comes first selection or internal forces, this, I have not given much thought to. You see the issue is the "fact" of evolution (taxaonomy's)first. At least this how I read the history.

I know very well that it is not your opinion, it was not intented for you but for reader who could make wrong conclusions. I am here often charged of faulty logic, that if from {A} does not follow {B} and so on... So I put it there. Kants words you have sended sounded ( 80):

"He can suppose the bosom of mother earth, as she passed out of her chaotic state (like a great animal), to have given birth in the beginning to creatures of less purposive form, that these again gave birth to others which formed themselves with greater adaptation to their place of birth and their relations to each other; until this womb becoming torpid and ossified, limited its births to definite species not further modifiable, and the manifoldness remained as it was at the end of the operation of that fruitful formative power."
In German Edition I found "Mutterscho der Erde" and "...bis diese Gebrmutter selbst, erstarrt, sich verknchert, ihre Geburten auf bestimmte fernerhin nicht ausartende Spezies eingeschrnkt htte,... "He might have expressed himself little bit poetically but I would not say from this sentences, that Kant considered earth as unanimate, passive substantia.Anyway, if Kant supposes forces behind life like those which work in the formation of crystals, it might be noteworthy cite this sentence from 58:
"Formation, then, takes place by a shooting together, i.e. by a sudden solidification, not by a gradual transition from the fluid to the solid state, but all at once by a saltus; which transition is also called crystallisation."
English translation used word "saltus", in German internet version is only "Sprung":
"...sondern gleichsam durch einen Sprung, welcher —bergang auch das Kristallisieren genannt wird."But he did not connect this jump in crystalisation with (gradual) evolution, which he seems to foresee (again 80):
"This analogy of forms, which with all their differences seem to have been produced according to a common original type, strengthens our suspicions of an actual relationship between them in their production from a common parent, through the gradual approximation of one animal-genus to another..."
"Common parent" and "gradual" seems to me to be evolutionary burdened terminus-technicus, Kant used "von einer gemeinschaftlichen Urmutter" and "stufenartige Annherung" but it is baffling anyway.What might be of interest in discussion is following citation.
"So, without detracting from the teleological principle by which we judge of organisation, we may well think that the beauty of flowers, of the plumage of birds, or of shell-fish, both in shape and colour, may be ascribed to nature and its faculty of producing forms in an aesthetically purposive way, in its freedom, without particular purposes adapted thereto, according to chemical laws by the arrangement of the material requisite for the organisation in question."
Some butterflies patterns on wings can be perceived no doubt aesthetically, and even if two different species have same patterns on wings it does not mean, that selection and not other force caused it. I do not know what forces they are, but ascribe to beauty only selective/sexual advantage (as far as it even draw attention of predators!) seems to me queery.Kant would be surprised hearing that beauty on world is due to selective pressure not to be eaten.Online Library of LibertyLiteratur - Kultur - DER SPIEGELEdited by MartinV, : No reason given.

Thanks for the reply. Don’t worry about my comments above that I received as not directed to me. I had a suspicion you were speaking a plural "you" there. Thanks for confirming that.

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Kants words you have sended sounded ( 80):

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"He can suppose the bosom of mother earth, as she passed out of her chaotic state (like a great animal), to have given birth in the beginning to creatures of less purposive form, that these again gave birth to others which formed themselves with greater adaptation to their place of birth and their relations to each other; until this womb becoming torpid and ossified, limited its births to definite species not further modifiable, and the manifoldness remained as it was at the end of the operation of that fruitful formative power."

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I have taken this passage, in the past and discussed on EvC, as refering to the habitat or niche or environmental parameters necessary to keep *relatively* more helpless young creatures and living things ,alive. The "female" body and more often than otherwise the feminine behavior causes the existence of these variables of differential early time offspring (development that is not necessarily growth) survival. Kant has another passage where he speaks of sex(es) explicitly and as in this last part of the Critique of Judgment he sustains that it is the habitat that must be attended to reflexively first, I do not see that this need mean that the physical Earth is "alive." This is the same kind of issue dealt with in discussions if ecosystem dynamics are complex enough to have organism-like properties or if they are simply sums of individual other organized (causally) parts. I do not think of the Earth as a unitary Giaist might etc. so I do have the opinion that what becomes "torpid and ossified" in Kant's sense really refers to what organisms rely on the "woman" for, or man it today’s society. Rather it is my own personal reading that the entire Critique is partially directed to Newton's ideas of the organism as like the central Earth fermenting and with a gentle heat. I do not read German so I would have to defer to you on that. It reads simply so to me and as such to how later Kant can say then, that no Newton of blade of grass will arise historically that no design has not already ordered.On the basis of Kant's saying in this passage above, I "predicted" that there should be creatures that might live within a torpid an ossified Earth and so I went looking for creatures that might be able to use the fossil concavities to facilitate embryogeny. Within two hours I had found mites that lay eggs in cavities of shell fossils. I did not follow up the initial retrodiction however as you have started to do going backward through Kant's Critique. It is wonderful that you seemed interesting in reading Kant this way. I have been waiting for some one so inclined to discuss with. I will respond with fuller use of the Kantian text next time.I indeed have tried to read for myself, the phrasing in the part 1 including section 58 as applying directly to mechanics in evolution, but I have disuaded myself that this can only be so read if one was to reread Newton's Principia on fluid motion differently than is currently done in physics (aka beyond “chaos” studies to say Gladyshev’s hierarchical thermodynamics etc). I do not find that the "transition" here can be directly related to biological change (unless issues such as direct imposition of force on form had been resolved (It has not. ( I will explain this if you need it to be clarified))).Largely I think any discontinuity can not be read back to both the sublime and beautiful because Kant wrote in “or”@62

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All geometrical figures drawn on a principle display a manifold, oft admired, objective purposiveness; i.e. in reference to their usefulness for the solution of several problems by a single principle, or of the same problem in an infinite variety of ways. The purposiveness is here obviously objective and intellectual, not merely subjective and aesthetical. For it expresses the suitability of the figure for the production of many intended figures, and is cognised through Reason. But this purposiveness does not make the concept of the object itself possible, i.e. it is not regarded as possible merely with reference to this use.

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In so simple a figure as the circle lies the key to the solution of a multitude of problems, each of which would demand various appliances; whereas the solution results of itself, as it were, as one of the infinite number of elegant properties of this figure. Are we, for example, asked to construct a triangle, being given the base and vertical angle? The problem is indeterminate, i.e. it can be solved in an infinite number of ways. But the circle embraces them altogether as the geometrical locus of the vertices of triangles satisfying the given conditions. Again, suppose that two lines are to cut one another so that the rectangle under the segments of the one should be equal to the rectangle under the segments of the other; the solution of the problem from this point of view presents much difficulty. But all chords intersecting inside a circle divide one another in this proportion. Other curved lines suggest other purposive solutions of which nothing was thought in the rule that furnished their construction. All conic sections in themselves and when compared with one another are fruitful in principles for the solution of a number of possible problems, however simple is the definition which determines their concept.” It is a true joy to see the zeal with which the old geometers investigated the properties of lines of this class, without allowing themselves to be led astray by the questions of narrow-minded persons, as to what use this knowledge would be. Thus they worked out the properties of the parabola without knowing the law of gravitation, which would have suggested to them its application to the trajectory of heavy bodies (for the motion of a heavy body can be seen to be parallel to the curve of a parabola). Again, they found out the properties of an ellipse without surmising that any of the heavenly bodies had weight, and without knowing the law of force at different distances from the point of attraction, which causes it to describe this curve in free motion. While they thus unconsciously worked for the science of the future, they delighted themselves with a purposiveness in the [essential] being of things which yet they were able to present completely a priori in its necessity. Plato, himself master of this science, hinted at such an original constitution of things in the discovery of which we can dispense with all experience, and at the power of the mind to produce from its supersensible principle the harmony of beings (where the properties of number come in, with which the mind plays in music). This [he touches upon] in the inspiration that raised him above the concepts of experience to Ideas, which seem to him to be explicable only through an intellectual affinity with the origin of all beings. No wonder that he banished from his school the man who was ignorant of geometry, since he thought he could derive from pure intuition, which has its home in the human spirit, that which Anaxagoras drew from empirical objects and their purposive combination. For in the very necessity of that which is purposive, and is constituted just as if it were designedly intended for our use,”but at the same time seems to belong originally to the being of things without any reference to our use”lies the ground of our great admiration of nature, and that not so much external as in our own Reason. It is surely excusable that this admiration should through misunderstanding gradually rise to the height of fanaticism.
Kant's Critique of Judgment text on-line

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This enabled Kant to get around the geometrization of Newton's use of the Earth as center of force and yet keeping gravity “extending” between two galatic systems under the same influence. And thus unless one is DETERMINATIVE about his last section (such as showing that the mites use fossils to selective advantage where at “other” forces might also be exemplared) a phase diagram between solids and liquids IS NOT LIKE biological change of traits, despite my feeling that Gladyshev is correct to think about “multiple chromatographic columns” in this regard.
http://www.endeav.org/persons/gladysh.htm
You may feel I am being over dramatic or statistical here but this is precisely what Will Provine thinks, however he would never consider trying to read the forces in Kant that might not be selection as I implied here and you have distrusted (perhaps rightly as the thermodyanmics of educt-product differences are not currently a part of discussion in biology as far as I am aware). He also would not try to think that these "internal forces" might be different than "vital forces." Kant's use of the term translated as "vital" is however also quite interesting (in his “Conflict of the Faculties” with respect to the difference of growth and development I have tried to indicate.I will discuss the notion of "common parent" later .Yes, I guess Kant would be surprised that butterfly beauty was on account of not being eaten. Kant does refer to tulips etc and Derrida has referred to American Creationism with respect to Kant's ideas therethrough.

It will be very difficult for me to follow discussion while my knowledge of Kants philosophy is superficial. Anyway you inspire me to resume reading Kritik reinen Vernunft. Its my aim to underestand it eventually. Thank you.I do not insist that Earth is living organism - btw. as far as I know, to define life is difficult - I mentioned it because also Giordano Bruno supposed that Earth lives. As modern renaissance anti-Ptolemaios scientist he sure had seen what see we, but he wrote, that
Earth breathe and physically described complicated motion of Earth in many directions. For instance daily circulation around axis cause not only changing day and night but also Coriolis force, that should cause some developmental processes (influence of Coriolis forces on the growth of living organisms) as is written in your Gladyshev link:http://www.endeav.org/persons/gladysh.htmIt would be interesting to know in more details what does he mean.As to the "saltus" development of crystals - it is interesting, because this example serves to marxists as example par excellence to corroborate their "scientific" law of change of quantity into quality.I recollect, that Gould somewhere in Panda thumb wrote, that he found some support in thinging of soviet scientists (here in East Europe we were indoctrinated with this marxists theory of "saltationism", "revolutions" - social revolutions etc...) and I suppose that it is somehow reflected in the theory of "punctuated equilibrum" too.If I may ask you - do you think, that reading Kants legacy can - except to learn what the brillant thinking really is - somehow elucidate process of evolution or forces behind it?For instance Kant writes (in mentioned 58): We know examples, where mimicry concerns not only surface, but also change shapes - for instance spiders that mimic ants. Maybe mimicry is not good example for beauty, but some mimics of Papilio Dardanus are as beautiful as their models. Kant was - I dare say - finalist who supposed teleological meaning as valid, so maybe knowing some mimics he would suppose, that Nature would like something say us with this phenomenon?

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If I may ask you - do you think, that reading Kants legacy can - except to learn what the brillant thinking really is - somehow elucidate process of evolution or forces behind it?

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Thanks to your earlier reply I sat down "with Kant" again today and I can confidently reply, that I do think indeed that reading Kant and his legacy can do more for the reader of "evolutionary theory" than simply to show one's "self' what "really" brillant thinking is.The reference to "sex"

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and yet serves in the external relation of a means to a purpose, without the question necessarily arising, as to what end this being so organised must have existed for. This is the organisation of both sexes in their mutual relation for the propagation of their kind; since here we can always ask, as in the case of an individual, why must such a pair exist? The answer is: This pair first constitutes an organising whole, though not an organised whole in a single body.Kant's Critique of Judgment

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involves Kant in a notion of a "pair" but this is in a thought process that involved phrases that have "on the other hand...Linnaeus..."(

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We might also with the chevalier Linnaeus1 go the apparently opposite way and say(@ 82 Kant's Critique of Judgment

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. This part of the Critique comes after where Mayr or Gould would have bowed out of the reading by sticking ONLY with the ORGANIZATION in the forms, referred as you did to KANT SECTION 58

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Flowers, blossoms, even the shapes of entire plants; the elegance of animal formations of all kinds, unneeded for their proper use, but, as it were, selected for our taste;

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If one WAS NOT a organacist as Mayr
Organicism - Wikipedia
then if one can say what 'compositionally' is being reflected on throughout the thought process of a "pair" (algebra rather than bimodal morphospace, through matricies for instance, might instantiate this) then there is indeed determinative content in Kant for THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY. I know this to be a reading as simple as reading any sentence in this post or thread. This would also have denotation for what KANT rather than LINNAEUS(more narrowly) would mean or be read to mean by "common parent."My understanding of Kant is not from being taught by learned people but simply by reading it on my own. There is nothing extraordinary about my comments on him.

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Flowers, blossoms, even the shapes of entire plants; the elegance of animal formations of all kinds, unneeded for their proper use, but, as it were, selected for our taste; especially the charming variety so satisfying to the eye and the harmonious arrangement of colours (in the pheasant, in shell-fish, in insects, even in the commonest flowers), which, as it only concerns the surface and not the figure of these creations (though perhaps requisite in regard of their
internal purposes), seems to be entirely designed for external inspection; these things give great weight to that mode of explanation which assumes actual purposes of nature for our
aesthetical Judgement.

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The "external" perspective is retained by the reader who reads through the entire critique but during the section on taste and its continuation into the teleological section there results a difference in thought that Mayr and Gould would reject as valid biologically. Mayr in particular would never grant the end finalist point of view even if he would allow some discussion of "purpose" in 'vernacular biological discourse.'This edgy viewscape at the end however IS NOT what is found if one reads from page one to the end by the time one has got to section 58 or thereabouts ,which is why Kant said "unneeded" and how it ends up with him saying "selected for." Mayr and Gould sticking with NATURAL SELECTION can still, nonthereadingless, wend a way BETWEEN Kant's "surface" and "figure" (via biomodal feedbacks etc) BUT IF ONE INSISTS ON THE VISION PRESETED reflexively before THE LAST PART OF THE BOOK, then "artifical selection" as used by Darwin and defended by Gould and Mayr with organization(divided by)composition rather than composition dividing organization, IS A PART OF THE "asthetic." Will Provine at Cornell had long course on if "hypotheses" in science were asthetic or not.No one else I know of has suggested it, but I can find no mental reservation, psychology, or reason itself, to argue against pursuing an extended evolutionary theory, perhaps getting quantitative with Gladsyhev's so far then qualitative presentation, by Kantian artifical selections, a la Darwin, into the common parent of the same surface but with different figures. It seems only a prejudice TOWARDS chaos, non-linearity, and nonequilibrium, and synergetics, is stopping this advance and I find that reading Kant in the context of the entire Creation/Evolution issue to be by far far beyond the current aspect and horizon to reality taught in schools.Gladyshev's work actually puts restaints on the notion of contraint used by Gould. It implies that the organization theme emergent with current Harvardian biology is not consonant with the surpurb Yale Man that Gibss' work is phenomenologically when not macrothermodyanmically. I make this observation by comparison with the avergae Cornell grad student. It is taking me a lot longer than I thought to develop the physical notions implied by the temporal circuits in macrothermodyanmics but there is no doubt in my mind that insofar as Georgi's work is correct, not only does it sound sense, within Kant's work as a whole, it provides alternatives that outside the limits of anything I was taught at an IVY LEAGUE school. The common parent pair will have different monohierarchical representations that cut out a subset of compositional differences per grade when not clade-wise and thus specify quantitative "wholes" without need of invoking organacism even though the "whole" would be more (via the continuum thermodyanamically restrained)than a sum of atoms (this is due to the nature of the differential equations of macrothermodynamics).Now given that this was not possible at Cornell when I was there in the 80s and communism still was and your local regions discussion of "saltus" or "revolution" undoubtely was extant for you and that I still find it "impossible" today, it seems that reading Kant this way may find place in the same social plexus a matrix of the thought would retain. I do not know. It is just a guess on my part having been romatically involved with someone from Gadansk so perhaps I have mistransfered the emotion relevant to beauty etc. This would be resolved if the "organization" which might be disjunct or discontinuous were divided per natural selections between otherwise possibly artifically selected differences of external and internal purposiveness. This is where the ORGANIZATION of macrothermodynamics FROM hierarchical thermodynamics would come from and Harvard would be wrong to discount the Yale tradition that Cornell can NEVER acclaim etc. This however must not be confused with some "hyperpysic" of vital forces without explication of the artifical selections lest physics and biology need never longer be taught as two subjects in schools. The sun will set before this happens. Regardless, the conscription of feedback from within cybernetics need not necessarily apply to the post-fact statistical test results. THAT would change biology in ways that creationists can "live" with in my opinion. But I speak not for creationism in general but only for the time I have myslef inducted or abducted with it in mind.

I am sorry, but I am unable to follow you. It would be necessary for me to read Kant "Kritik" books completely as you and not only as a "google researcher" pick up some sentences and do inane sophistic conclusions from them.Anyway I have some thougts. I read now works of Giordano Bruno, who (like Paracelsius or in modern time C.G.Jung ) draw some ideas no doubt from compilated yet influental Corpus Hermeticum, Poemandres.I am not advocate or follower of New Age at all but some thoughts may be incentive:
1)
Are we sure, that forces that had once driven evolution are still valid and can be observed?
In Poemandres there is on my opinion very no-traditional notice, that materia once possesed spirit,but it is not reality any more: 2)
Plato in Symposion mentioned that mankind was once beside men and women androgynous.
Davison writes, that sexes were established to stabilize result of evolution and to block any successive evolutionary process.According Poemandres there were no sexes on beginning too: 3)
You wrote, that earth is not living organism - I agree - but are we sure that it was same in past? We cited Kant, but Poemandres sounds alike: Kant wrote - you have your own explanation - that Earth womb became torpid and ossified. But let me cite Giordano Bruno (On infinity, universum and worlds), my translation from Czech: "...one of which (celestial body) is Earth, our divine mother, which gave us birth and nurtures us, but she will never try it again."This "she will never try it again" seems to me in accordance as with Poemandres as with Kant.Cloudflare Captcha Page | Web.comMy intention is no way to propagate Gaias idea but only to ponder if forces which we see and measure now and from which we make conclusions are the same ones as in the past and that had driven once evolution (and if evolution is not therefore finished, even though it is a different topic. But it is due to my ignorance of Kant - only how to postpone reading him).

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Are we sure, that forces that had once driven evolution are still valid and can be observed?

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Unless we say how the Newtonian notion or Einsteinian notion or force within a chemical bond is not merely "approximately" forming creatures, but manifestly and potentially deterministically is I think it is hard to say that the "forces" if that is what they really are that are assumed to have formed forms once are not not forming forms now. In other words unless one has an overarching philosophy of physcial events as opposed to distinctions of ultimate and proximate causation, which goes for elite phrasing in most current discussions, the notion that there is some "force" that changes overtime can only, it seems to me denote, changes due to the 2nd law of thermodynamics WITHIN a given plexus of 1st law materiality. I do not see how the reasoning must first proceed from the spirit to some "loss" as the physics of it all would work fine. The reason this directum is not more prevelant seems only to be due to arguements about distinctive natures of biological formality on levels of confidence in data and hence "statistical" truth per fact instead. You and I seem not to need the current accoutrement of biological praxis.Whether the Earth will ever try again etc does depend somewhat on if you are really trying to agree with Davison or my sligthly different version for instance. Davison insisted that evolution stopped. I can see from Gladsyhev's work how it might "slow down" and hence the forces"" would be sligtly differnt now than in a past, but the commonality I may have with your readings to the divide, whether termed "Saltus" etc of your own liking, required, at least for me that some alterations due to positions of the environment not the being that is ascendent say in Kant. This does not mean that reading Kant is not relevant.Just what the limits of evolutionary theory of its current pedagogy are in this view is hard for me to say. Other readers on EVC understand or know or await futher efforts on my part. I have just signed up a new domain name aexion.org to pursue these developments off EVC line.
THETRAINEREdited by Brad McFall, : Brad's new url

And there have been no further replies on the topic since this.This is a typical creationist ploy -- when the evidence gets too dangerous to confront change the topic.Enjoy.

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I can suggest "where" this actual topic went.Did it not "trace" one of my lines below, that for Davison or perhaps MartinV were organic beings of some sort themselves?
I rejected the notion of the ascendent being of Davison in this thread but instead read Gould "history" (MartinV's past and present) WITHOUT nationAl boundaries of historical (aka Gould)seperation of "formalism and functionalism" (there is one page missing that I will edit back in, sorry) I try to move in the direction of the trichotomies as represented by MY, not Gould's "traingles" but even remaining with a "dichtomous" state of mind (and thus excluding the triangles I drew for current national boundaries, actually) Gould's notion of historicized dimensions in biology caused this thread to derail pending futher posts as he refused to accept that Agassiz's FOUR (from Cuvier of , radiata, mollusca, articulata, vertebrata )can be "functionally" conceived except within each clade's shape. But if the phenotype can still be Cartesiastically divided in four within each shape of the given division of animal life in Agassiz's dichtomy geographically per physical force of animals AND plants, as he writes in his , "Classification", and ALSO within each less polyvocal clade group (less in Agassiz's time, recall) then what Gould calls a "formalism" is simply the failure to use 1-D symmetry to divide "orthogonally" in the flesh any fanable variation extent or extant. I can find no evidence anytime I read Gould, that he cognized this possiblity. This is why I have suggested a different divide for MartinV's use of the term "saltus" that can also be read within Gould's corpus. This seems to be the reason Gould tries to think that Paley vs. Aggasiz can have some issue with respect to disorganized forms(post nuclear rays irradiating genetic material etc)but he suggets creationism where I, personally, would still remand strictly biological information. He did not accept or recognize the difference of external and internal purposiveness that Aggassiz seems to have planned his Essay on out of Kant from Linnaeus to. That seemed clear to me. Instead he destructs toward a different "taxonomy" of hierarchy and includes "spandrels." I do not see how biogeography as hypothetically tooled with differences of raster and vector GPS informed objects can get Gould's spandrel OUT of the computer instantiation of the datum he attempts with a triangle to historicize for Darwin. Gould was proud he used a typewriter perhaps the next Gould will come with all the tools we have on EvC but I have not read of such a person.

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The pages, except the first, was from SJ GOULD "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" Harvard Univ Press

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I do have in my mind not only forces of these "unanimate" types. I would like compare these forces also to complexes of hormones, morphogenes, activation of homeobox genes etc during embryonal and subsequent development. If evolution is finished as Broom/Davison stated and we are observing so to say only decrepit old man, we cannot deduce from his declining status to forces, that once had driven his development, while many of them exist not any more - as soft parts of bones during growth that are now in him - as Kants womb of earth - ossified.But of course this consideration is valid only if there is also some relation between ontogenesis and phylogenesis.Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.

To be honest with you, I feel that Davison's tragic case is part of the same symptom that causes you to find me writing on EVC, only we are a generation apart. I think that elitism in the US sold out biology to extripate its ugly Eugenic sentiments. Davison had the fortune to survive what Gould insists was a "hardening" by remaining a teaching biologist. I was not able to become one for the same "reasons." I can not intuit this as to Broom.There can be no formalist objection to thinking about the soft parts of bones in a sense say, that D'Arcy Thompson imagined and your ideas of force seem to be of some extent plus they seem to be extant in Edleman's topobiology. There is not a problem with the concept of them.The hard part is figuring out the experimental physics of these biophysically theoretical forces even should you not find that one could remand them back to "unanimate" types. I was cutting the conversation back perhaps too quickly in part to forestall a simple creationist reading that Davison say, was want to encourge on EvC. I was going to try to slowly discuss all this with Davison but he did not want to talk specifically with me on it.Yes there would be "animate" "forces" ( I know that I, myself, was impressed with Sober's presentation of "evolution as theory of forces" tangentially in this regard) and I think that Gladshev's work if put in some kind of "sync" with Gould's attempts at hierarhicalization would suggest what ""Channel"" this is beyond simple analogy. I was not trying to exclude a relation between ontogenesis and phylogenesis strictly but rather I tend to think that area effects can not be seperated as ontogeny and phylogeny were before cladistics. Davison seems to be able to think that way. I do not know how. That is why I needed to talk with him without being forced to follow the twists and turns of EVC virtual time.

Davison metioned in Manifesto also Phyllium. These insects mimics leaves, but what is most interesting - I can these corroborate only partly from internet sources - that young individual is green, but getting older (or ill) same individual become more and more yellow and brown as so old one fades like leave and at the end fall off from twig (Komárek: Mimicry, apesematism... (2001))In these german link
http://www.phyllium.de/html/ph__pu__bioculatum.htmlis written, that "Die Farbe kann durch Temperatur, Nahrung und Licht (Bronn 1957) beeinflusst werden." : Colour can be changed through temperature, light and nurture. Komárek wrote, that green colour is present due chlorophyl from plants.Some of non-darwinian explanation of these excessive crypsis may be of interest. I do not know how a darwinist perceive these crypsis going far far beyond necessity. They are not so common as "normal" crypsis, so we can doubt, that selection is driving mechanism. Individuals and species in same areas thrive very well with far "softer" crypsis.Heikertinger and Piepers saw crypsis as photographing, taking picture of surroundings through optic nerves. Komarek wondered why nobody tried to explain crypsis on ground of C.G.Jungs synchronicity.
I think that it would be of some worth.

I have not given insects and especially those mimeing the forms of leaves much thought even though I indicated I had had a thought about leaves. Let us even ASSUME that the form IS PERFECTLY the same for the insect and the leaf. There is still probably a difference between Davison's view and my own.In reading Wright's Volume Two "The Theory of Gene Frequencies"
to purchase
review
contrary to Provine and Gould (this would require some explaining if necessary) readings' of the same, I noticed that Wright DENOTES the word "form" with respect to DIFFERENCES from work done by CROW who was Davison's advisor or professor or mentor.I think that Davison's refusal to examine the environment OUTSIDE this "form" as connoted by Wright, mind you, indicates that Wright had a larger notion of indiviudality in biology than Davison as to how Provine and Gould MIS-read Wright and Fisher just turned his back on him(granting the underdog evolutionist the brighest advantage). I am trying to sustain *this* form but to do so in the full context of mimicry is not somehthing simple as it required "leaving" the word ('form')myopically to involve issues of chromosome placement of genes FROM WRIGHT (note that Davison refused to discuss this on EVC) when not issues of nonequilibrium in general.Thus I suspect that THE WORD 'form' is not likely to be in its most plurivocal sense as it was being used by Davision and as he used it on EVC, EVEN THOUGH he explains towards a creationist stance quickly of a "being." I think he has hamstrung his own future chain link fence, there-where he insists on the organism rather than the analysis of the population CROW had made the form form for Wright.

Brad Mc Fall,do you believe in "spirit" or no? Do you think that "spirit" (der Geist, duch, dusa - in slavonic languages) has anything to do with evolution? Is it possible in your opinion that evolution was directed to the point when God give "spirit" (der Geist) to human in some point of development, when predecessor of mankind was "fit" to obtain it, or no? Sergey Bulgakoff opinion was that evolution was direrected to the point when supranatural power has partner to "breath in" the spirit into it.Sergei Bulgakov - Wikipedia Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.