Darwin's theories would not have been accepted so quickly and so widely without the writings of Hegel, who basically stretched philosophy into a form (or pathway) of historical evolution. Once Kant put metaphysics into the grave, it was only a matter of time before new paradigms came along to fill the void.

Given the state of the church and Christianity in general after the Reformation withered into pettiness, it is easy to understand why Hegel and Darwin would inspire more optimism. But Nietzsche took care of that foolishness. Since then, no one on the 'secular' side has an excuse for believing that any "evolution" is ever going to make things better.

Mr. Judd;

You still don't seem to quite get the essence of evolutionary theory. This is that complex, self sustaining systems can arise without a central authority, i.e. through the local actions of elements in the system. You don't need a directing deity to explain the biosphere anymore than you need a Central Economic Planning Comittee to explain the US economy. This is very similar to the problem that many of the Soviet leaders have - they simply could not comprehend that the US economy could function without a central, explicitly directing authority.

The fact that the invotations in the economy are the result of intelligent decisions by individual people is just an implementation detail and not an essential feature of the system.

Now, you could back up a bit and talk about the legal infrastructure the permits capitalism, which is far less evolutionary. But then you have a Spinozan God, not an interventionist one.

Brilliant Jim. I've always wondered why the term "evolution" hasn't been abandoned for just "differentiation" in secular circles.

AOG:

I agree--there need not be one intelligence--but intelligence is obviously a key element of the system to which Darwin hoped to analogize. The failure of his theory seems to precisely relate to the incompleteness of his analogy--the deletion of that intelligence.

Potts does not understand either economics or darwinism, though he's weaker on darwinism.

To say that each is "evolutionary" is meaningless, though it is trivially correct that each evolves.

Market capitalism is unable to account for all inputs. There are many desirable things that can be attained only by forgoing short-term profits -- the blackout this year in the eastern states is an obvious example.

In economics, eventually these mistakes are caught up with and paid for, and to some extent corrected.

It is not merely that market capitalism devalues things that have an actual value, but it is incapable even of identifying all inputs.

Darwinian evolution automatically identifies all inputs, so that problem does not occur. However, unlike an economy, biological failures cannot be fixed up afterwards. Once you're extinct, you're extinct.

J.R. Simplot would have been extinct under a Darwinian evolutionary system. Under market capitalism, he's thriving.

The philosophical underpinning of Darwinian evolution has been expressed best (and almost alone) by Ernst Mayr, whose key insight is that life operates according to population dynamics (what he calls "population thinking") and that nothing else does. (He does not actually say nothing else does; he merely says that life does, but I cannot identify anything else that does.)

Potts makes the most obvious kind of category error.

Mr. Eager;

You're making a category error as well. Market capitalism doesn't value anything because that's not what it's for. It's a system to allow individuals to act on their own values. It's a tool, like science, that works very well in the real world. But it doesn't create or determine "value" in the sense you use it here. The humans who use the tools do that.

Or Mayr does, we don't know yet.

OJ:

In the biosphere, DNA serves as the repository for inheritance, and a major, though not exclusive, source of variation.

In the economy, intelligence fills the same role as DNA does in the biosphere. Unfortunately, you get distracted by the word at the expense of acknowledging the role the word performs.

AOG could not possibly have put the case better.

I acknowledge that DNA is words or intelligence--a written language even. What was your point?

"Intelligence" is not the same as "Designer."

And whether Intelligence or DNA, the change process, which is what Evolutionary Theory explains, remains the same.

Which means no clock-maker is required to make one heck of a clock.

BTW--that includes large scale changes, as well.

Jeff:

No one said anyrthing about a Designer--that's the classic Darwinian problem, presenting it as a choice between Darwin or Creationism. In fact, the point is the weaknesses in the theory itself, not the absence of a better alternative. The main weakness appears to flow from the attempt to analogize to intelligence driven evolutions, like animal breediong, but to dispose of the key element of intelligence.

OJ:

You make claims for analogy the analogies themselves don't make.

The analogies only wish to make the case that any system sharing a specific set of characteristics will behave in similar ways over time. Additionally, the extent the system behavior is similar, then one may hypothesize that types of outcomes in one system are not prohibited to another, similar system. This is important where cycle times of one system are so long as to prohibit detailed understanding of all the intermediate states.

Possibly the most important thing to keep in mind, though, is that none of the characteristics of an evolutionary system have anything to do with intelligence, or lack thereof. In this respect, intelligence is far from key, it is irrelevant.

You keep saying that and it never gets any truer. Economics and language don't require a Designer, but they do require intelligent beings.

Do the terms evolutionary psychology, evolutionary politics, and evolutionary computation have any real meaning?

jim:

Obviously any system in which intelligent beings are involved evolves. By including evolutionary in the name you get to pretend that Nature drove the development rather than intelligence.

How about evolutionary music? Britney Spears is the evolution of say, Nina Simone or Dusty Springfield.

But I hear the rejoinder already - intelligence, dammit, intelligence.....

OJ:

What they require for existence, and how they change over time are no more alike than chalk and cheese.

(Accidentally hit the post button)

Intelligence is an ingredient. Evolution is a process.

A process that requires intelligence, like making chalk and cheese.

Only if it has a goal.

Classical economists assume, mostly wrongly, that economic action is driven by self-interest.

Evolution isn't driven by anything. It just goes.

And then stops once Man arrives.

Evolution is also driven by self-interest. Just not the conscious kind.

oj:

Evolution doesn't stop with the arrival of humans, not even for humans.
We merely get to tinker with it a bit more than any other species.

Right, this is an entirely coincidental period of complete stasis that's lasted for all of the history of the one species capable of coming up with the theory and observing it in action.

You don't seem to have an appreciation for the immensity of time.

You could have said the same for virtually any 3,000 year period of earth's history.

Just big change happens rarely, and smaller changes happen more slowly than your arbitrarily small time frame can readily detect, doesn't mean they don't happen.

For intellectual consistency, you reject plate tectonics, of course.

Don't you?

If there were no seismographs and earthquakes I'd be dubious.

Well, all those things just show there are meaningless, small changes. Certainly nothing amounting to the moving of continents, since none of that has been observed throughout human history.

That's precisely what it is--movement of the continental plates.