#extended evolutionary synthesis

[principleofplenitude]

In 2014, eight scientists took up this challenge, publishing an article in the leading journal Nature that asked “Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?” Their answer was: “Yes, urgently.” Each of the authors came from cutting-edge scientific subfields, from the study of the way organisms alter their environment in order to reduce the normal pressure of natural selection – think of beavers building dams – to new research showing that chemical modifications added to DNA during our lifetimes can be passed on to our offspring. The authors called for a new understanding of evolution that could make room for such discoveries. The name they gave this new framework was rather bland – the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) – but their proposals were, to many fellow scientists, incendiary. [...]  In 1942, the English biologist Julian Huxley coined the name for this theory: the modern synthesis. Eighty years on, it still provides the basic framework for evolutionary biology as it is taught to millions of schoolchildren and undergraduates every year. Insofar as a biologist works in the tradition of the modern synthesis, they are considered “mainstream”; insofar as they reject it, they are considered marginal. Despite the name, it was not actually a synthesis of two fields, but a vindication of one in light of the other. By building statistical models of animal populations that accounted for the laws of genetics and mutation, the modern synthesists showed that, over long periods of time, natural selection still functioned much as Darwin had predicted. It was still the boss. In the fullness of time, mutations were too rare to matter, and the rules of heredity didn’t affect the overall power of natural selection. Through a gradual process, genes with advantages were preserved over time, while others that didn’t confer advantages disappeared. [...] While the modern synthesists looked at life as if through a telescope, studying the development of huge populations over immense chunks of time, the molecular biologists looked through a microscope, focusing on individual molecules. And when they looked, they found that natural selection was not the all-powerful force that many had assumed it to be. They found that the molecules in our cells – and thus the sequences of the genes behind them – were mutating at a very high rate. This was unexpected, but not necessarily a threat to mainstream evolutionary theory. According to the modern synthesis, even if mutations turned out to be common, natural selection would, over time, still be the primary cause of change, preserving the useful mutations and junking the useless ones. But that isn’t what was happening. The genes were changing – that is, evolving – but natural selection wasn’t playing a part. Some genetic changes were being preserved for no reason apart from pure chance. Natural selection seemed to be asleep at the wheel. [...] The case for EES rests on a simple claim: in the past few decades, we have learned many remarkable things about the natural world – and these things should be given space in biology’s core theory. One of the most fascinating recent areas of research is known as plasticity, which has shown that some organisms have the potential to adapt more rapidly and more radically than was once thought. Descriptions of plasticity are startling, bringing to mind the kinds of wild transformations you might expect to find in comic books and science fiction movies. Emily Standen is a scientist at the University of Ottawa, who studies Polypterus senegalus, AKA the Senegal bichir, a fish that not only has gills but also primitive lungs. Regular polypterus can breathe air at the surface, but they are “much more content” living underwater, she says. But when Standen took Polypterus that had spent their first few weeks of life in water, and subsequently raised them on land, their bodies began to change immediately. The bones in their fins elongated and became sharper, able to pull them along dry land with the help of wider joint sockets and larger muscles. Their necks softened. Their primordial lungs expanded and their other organs shifted to accommodate them. Their entire appearance transformed. “They resembled the transition species you see in the fossil record, partway between sea and land,” Standen told me. According to the traditional theory of evolution, this kind of change takes millions of years. But, says Armin Moczek, an extended synthesis proponent, the Senegal bichir “is adapting to land in a single generation”. He sounded almost proud of the fish. [...] The crucial thing about such observations, which challenge the traditional understanding of evolution, is that these sudden developments all come from the same underlying genes. The species’s genes aren’t being slowly honed, generation by generation. Rather, during its early development it has the potential to grow in a variety of ways, allowing it to survive in different situations. Plasticity doesn’t invalidate the idea of gradual change through selection of small changes, but it offers another evolutionary system with its own logic working in concert. To some researchers, it may even hold the answers to the vexed question of biological novelties: the first eye, the first wing. “Plasticity is perhaps what sparks the rudimentary form of a novel trait,” says Pfennig.

“Do we need a new theory of evolution?” from The Guardian

[drgnavlnt]

Grant Prospecting - Findings Section:

For this project, I collaborated with a team to craft a prospecting report of different grant possibilities for a faculty member. Specifically, I worked on the findings section, which focuses on presenting the details of the grants we selected in a clear and concise way.

Findings: Selected Opportunities

Through our research, we found four grants that fit Dr. -’s research. These are all NSF grants that focus on Arctic research, environmental biology and climate change. The deciding factors for us to highlight these opportunities from a selection of twelve were a combination of relevance to the project, funding amount, submission deadlines, and Dr. -’s previous NSF funding.

Option 1: NSF 23-572: Arctic Research Opportunities

Description: The goal of this solicitation is to attract research proposals that advance a fundamental, process, and/or systems level understanding of the Arctic's rapidly changing natural environment, social and cultural systems, and, where appropriate, to improve our capacity to project future change.

https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/arctic-research-opportunities/nsf23-572/solicitation

Funding Amount: $50,000,000 for an estimated 75 projects per fiscal year

Deadline: July 15, 2024

Why we think it’s a good fit: The RFP asks for researchers wanting to study Arctic rapid climate changes, which aligns perfectly with Dr. -’s project. It also places focus on helping researchers with interagency collaboration, meaning that the grant could be used to help Dr. - gain access to larger snow datasets that could help improve the spatial range of the project.

Notes: Deadline is approaching quickly

Option 2: NSF 24-543: Division of Environmental Biology

Description: The Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) Core supports research and training on evolutionary and ecological processes acting at the level of populations, species, communities, ecosystems, macrosystems, and biogeographic extents. DEB encourages research that elucidates fundamental principles that identify and explain the unity and diversity of life and its interactions with the environment over space and time. Research may incorporate field, laboratory, or collection-based approaches; observational or manipulative studies; synthesis activities; phylogenetic discovery projects; or theoretical approaches involving analytical, statistical, or computational modeling.

https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/division-environmental-biology-deb/nsf24-543/solicitation

Funding Amount: $100,000,000 for an estimated 120 projects per fiscal year

Deadline: Proposals accepted any time

Why we think it’s a good fit: This grant has the potential for a lot of funding, and it focuses on projects researching climate change and the environment. Specifically, the STAR Grants have very general requirements for postdoctoral researchers within the environmental biology department, which gives Dr. -’s project a larger chance to succeed. Finally, this grant is focused on projects that have already gone through initial data collection, and projects that are very targeted, so this feels like a perfect match.

Option 3: NSF 21-544: Long Term Research in environmental Biology

Description: Research areas include, but are not limited to, the effects of natural selection or other evolutionary processes on populations; the effects of interspecific interactions that vary over time and space; population and community dynamics for organisms that have extended life spans and long turnover times; feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes; pools of materials such as nutrients in soils that turn over at intermediate to longer time scales; and external forcing functions such as climatic factors that operate over long time periods.

https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/long-term-research-environmental-biology-ltreb/nsf21-544/solicitation

Funding Amount: $600,000 over 5 years

Deadline: Proposals accepted any time

Why we think it’s a good fit: This grant has a large award amount and can fund projects on a longer duration. The long term aspect of this grant could also be ideal for Dr. - since it can fund decade long projects, allowing for the research to observe the effects of climate change on snow over a very long period of time. This would also give the project time to gather data from all across Alaska. Finally, other - University professors have had projects funded through this grant recently.

Notes: The term for this project is 5 years - does Dr. - need long-term funding?

Option 4: NSF 23-622: Organismal Response to Climate Change (ORCC)

Description: This solicitation continues to accept full proposals that propose mechanistic studies of organismal response to climate change (ORCC) as a foundation that, when integrated with research at other levels of organization, will lead to a deeper understanding and better predictions of the integrity, the resilience, and the adaptation of biological systems to climate change.

https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/organismal-response-climate-change-orcc/nsf23-622/solicitation

Funding Amount: $10,000,000 for 10-14 projects

Deadline: November 19, 2024

Why we think it’s a good fit: This RFP focuses on organism-based responses to climate change, which aligns with Dr. -'s project. The RFP specifically mentions effects of climate change on plants and supports projects that provide insight into how human interactions affect the environment at an organismal level. It also offers a large amount of funding that could contribute to expanding the project.

Notes: Deadline is reasonably far away; this grant is more competitive than the others.

[jhavelikes]

Scientific activities take place within the structured sets of ideas and assumptions that define a field and its practices. The conceptual framework of evolutionary biology emerged with the Modern Synthesis in the early twentieth century and has since expanded into a highly successful research program to explore the processes of diversification and adaptation. Nonetheless, the ability of that framework satisfactorily to accommodate the rapid advances in developmental biology, genomics and ecology has been questioned. We review some of these arguments, focusing on literatures (evo-devo, developmental plasticity, inclusive inheritance and niche construction) whose implications for evolution can be interpreted in two ways—one that preserves the internal structure of contemporary evolutionary theory and one that points towards an alternative conceptual framework. The latter, which we label the 'extended evolutionary synthesis' (EES), retains the fundaments of evolutionary theory, but differs in its emphasis on the role of constructive processes in development and evolution, and reciprocal portrayals of causation. In the EES, developmental processes, operating through developmental bias, inclusive inheritance and niche construction, share responsibility for the direction and rate of evolution, the origin of character variation and organism-environment complementarity.

The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions - PubMed

[truefreethinker-blog]

Dr. Garte just added evidence--to the level of proof, actually--to what has been critiqued for a long time: he just arbitrarily slaps the label "evolution" on any and every phenomena and can only then claim that there's overwhelming evidence for "evolution" and only then can he even claim that creationists believe in "evolution"--and, of course, Amy can only then cry "consensus...consensus...consensus...consensus" which was the only thing Amy contributed to this debate.

Hurry, hurry, step right up: Darwinism, the extended evolutionary Neo-Darwinian synthesis, Evo-Devo, adaptation, speciation, mutation, natural selection, neutral theory, punctuated equilibrium, convergence, niche selection, epigenetics, stress-directed mutations, teleology, agency cognition, etc., etc., etc.: it’s all under the big top!!!

#evolution #darwin #creation #creationscience

[simran0803]

How Hands-Free Shopping is Reshaping E-Commerce?

In the dynamic and ever-evolving realm of e-commerce, a revolutionary trend is causing ripples of transformation – the phenomenon of hands-free shopping. This innovative approach is not only reshaping the contours of consumer interaction with online retail platforms but also it is catalysed by the remarkable power of voice commerce. The emergence of voice assistants and smart devices has instigated a paradigm shift, elevating the convenience and efficacy of the shopping experience to unprecedented levels.

Firstly, at the heart of this progressive movement lies the seamless amalgamation of hands-free shopping with cutting-edge voice recognition technology. This fusion empowers users to explore, select, and finalise their purchases solely through the art of verbal commands. The seamless interplay of technology and commerce has forged an avenue for an organic and intuitive modus operandi in online transactions. In this landscape, consumers can articulate their desires, and their virtual shopping assistants adeptly execute their wishes.

Secondly, the allure of hands-free shopping rests on its array of remarkable advantages. Foremost among these is the unparalleled convenience it affords. Whether one is engaged in culinary endeavours, navigating through traffic, or juggling multiple tasks, the ability to effortlessly fill one’s cart and complete purchases sans physical engagement resonates deeply with the swift pace of modern existence. Such flexibility intertwines seamlessly with the cadence of contemporary lifestyles, seamlessly integrating shopping into the rhythm of daily routines.

Thirdly, beyond convenience, hands-free shopping extends its embrace of accessibility to encompass a broader audience. Individuals with disabilities find empowerment in this inclusive platform, while those who prioritise intuitive experiences revel in a realm that transcends conventional barriers. The democratisation of shopping through voice commerce establishes a sanctuary where diverse user profiles converge, fostering an environment of unison within a digital marketplace.

Furthermore, for enterprises, the infusion of voice commerce into e-commerce amplifies possibilities manifold. By embracing this evolutionary trend, businesses not only cater to the evolving preferences of consumers but also carve a unique niche for themselves within a competitive arena. Pioneering the implementation of a hands-free shopping option positions a brand as a vanguard of innovation, simultaneously enhancing customer satisfaction and reinforcing a reputation that echoes customer-centric principles.

Nonetheless, the path to a utopian hands-free shopping landscape is not without its challenges. Accuracy in voice recognition technology is a paramount concern, as precision is the bedrock of seamless interactions. Ensuring the sanctity of transactions through robust security measures is essential to cultivating trust among users. Additionally, constructing an immersive user experience that encapsulates the entirety of the shopping journey warrants meticulous attention.

In summation, the convergence of voice recognition technology and e-commerce ushers in an era defined by the synthesis of convenience and efficiency, epitomized by hands-free shopping. With each passing day, as more consumers wholeheartedly embrace this paradigm, businesses are beckoned to reimagine their customer engagement strategies. The voice commerce revolution not only redefines the contours of the retail landscape but also underscores the imperative for enterprises to stay attuned to the pulse of digital evolution. In essence, the journey from casual browsing to fulfilling retail desires is adorned with the symphony of voice commands, marking an indelible chapter in the annals of consumer experience.

[evoldir]

Fwd: Conference: Istanbul.EvoDevo.Jul17-19

Begin forwarded message: > From: evoldir@evol.biology.mcmaster.ca > Subject: Conference: Istanbul.EvoDevo.Jul17-19 > Date: 24 March 2023 at 04:44:01 GMT > To: rdmpage@gmail.com > > > > Emerging themes in eco-evo-devo, Istanbul > > We are pleased to announce that we will be hosting a special session > titled, "emerging themes in eco-evo-devo" at the upcoming Ecology and > Evolutionary Biology Symposium, to be held at the Istanbul University > campus between 17 and 19 July 2023. > > Within this theme, we invite abstracts for talks and posters revolving > around comparative organismal development and morphology, phenotypic > variation in varying ecological contexts: developmental plasticity, > robustness, and canalization, genotype-environment interaction during > development and evolution: e.g., epigenetic factors, the evolution of > cell types, evolution of developmental life cycle traits, the evolution > of highly conserved gene families, impact of endosymbiosis on development > and evolution, and extended evolutionary synthesis.  We look forward > to welcoming researchers with focus or overlapping interests in one of > these topics to submit an abstract for this theme. > > Abstract submission is between March 10th and April 20th, 2023. > Announcement of acceptances: June 10th, 2023 > Announcement of symposium program:  June 20th, 2023 > > For more information, please visit our website: https://ift.tt/7k3TGWU > > See you in Istanbul, > > Matteen > > > Matteen Rafiqi

[kamanori]

1. contextualizing parts in development, especially genes

2. focusing on reciprocal organism-environment relations

3. understandig the role of agency in evolution

[deepyanti]

Top Technology and AI blogs to read before 2025

Fulfillment Center

A fulfillment center/house or 3PLs are service hubs that take care of all logistics processes needed to get a product from the seller to the customer.

Private cloud

The private cloud model offers extended, virtualized computing resources through physical components that are stored on-premise or at provider’s data

Gradient Clipping

Gradient Clipping handles one of the most difficult challenges in backpropagation in neural networks during the gradient training process in AI.

Content-based filtering

Content-based filtering uses item features to recommend other items similar to what user likes, based on their previous actions or explicit feedback.

Speech synthesis

Speech synthesis is the artificial, computer-generated production of human speech. It is pretty much the counterpart of speech or voice recognition.

Evolutionary computation

Evolutionary computation techniques are used to handle problems that have far more variables than what traditional algorithms can handle.

On-Time Resolution

When a question is resolved within the required time frame given in the Service Level Agreement, it is considered as an on-time resolution.

Ebert Test

The Ebert Test is a test for synthesized voice, proposed by film critic, Roger Ebert. In his 2011 TED talk, Roger put forth the Ebert Test.

Cognitive computing

It is the technique of simulating human thought processes in complicated scenarios,the answers might be vague. It does so by using computerized models

Dropshipping

Dropshipping is an online retail model that involves shipping products directly from your manufacturers or suppliers to your customers on demand.

Similarity measure

A similarity measure in data science is a metric that is used for the purpose of measuring how data samples are related or close to each other.

Biometric Recognition

Biometric recognition refers to the automated recognition of people by their behavioral and biological traits. For example — face, retina, voice, etc.

Tiered support

Tiered support involves organizing your support center into levels to deal with incoming support queries in the most efficient and effective manner.

Intrusion detection

An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is a network security technology built and intended to detect vulnerability exploits against a target application

Deep Learning

Deep Learning is an Artificial Intelligence function that imitates workings of human brain in processing data & creating patterns for decision making

Virtual Reality

VR refers to an artificial, immersive environment created with the help of computer technology through sensory stimuli (such as sight and audio).

Enterprise resource planning

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a type of enterprise software that organizations use to manage day-to-day tasks and business activities.

Swarm intelligence

Swarm Intelligence systems consist typically of a population of simple agents interacting locally with one another and with their environment.

Inbound Call Centre

An inbound call center deals with service functions whose primary responsibility is to handle customer queries & providing a good experience.

Customer Experience Transformation

Customer experience transformation is the process and design that businesses take to enhance customer experience for optimal customer satisfaction.

Concept drift

In machine learning, predictive modeling, and data mining, concept drift is the gradual change in the relationships between input data and output data

Average Handling Time

AHT is a metric usually used in BPO’s as a performance measuring KPI. It shows us the average time a representative spends on call with a customer.

[revelatorytruths]

Evolutionary Will Creatures There are great differences between the mortals of the different worlds, even among those belonging to the same intellectual and physical types, but all mortals of will-dignity are erect animals, bipeds.

[softrobotcritics]

Mantis Shrimp Robot: the references

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/33/e2026833118

Many small organisms produce ultrafast movements by storing elastic energy and mediating its storage and rapid release through a latching mechanism. The mantis shrimp in particular imparts extreme accelerations on rotating appendages to strike their prey. Biologists have hypothesized, but not tested, that there exists a geometric latching mechanism which mediates the actuation of the appendage. Inspired by the anatomy of the mantis shrimp striking appendage, we develop a centimeter-scale robot which emulates the linkage dynamics in the mantis shrimp and study how the underlying geometric latch is able to control rapid striking motions. Our physical and analytical models could also be extended to other behaviors such as throwing or jumping in which high power over short duration is required.

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We likewise ask that you complete our set of questions so our drug store group can examine that this product appropriates for you to get. There can be greater than one 'Peptide' subsection per protein entrance. The processing events that may contribute to the formation of a mature peptide are described in the 'Initiator methionine', 'Propeptide', 'Signal' as well as 'Transportation peptide' subsections.

Apart from prolonging the chemical as well as architectural variety presented by peptides, such modifications also raise the proteolytic security of the particles, improving their utility for biological applications. This post reviews recent advances by this as well as various other laboratories in using artificial healthy protein imitates to regulate protein function, along with to offer building blocks for artificial biology. Particles that provide the binding sites of proteins, which are involved in a disease-associated healthy protein-- healthy protein interaction, are encouraging prospects for restorative intervention. Such binding website mimetic molecules can be generated either with recombinant protein synthesis or by means of chemical peptide synthesis.

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We have developed our molecules to be extremely constrained by connecting a chemical port compound, also called a scaffold, to specific amino acids in the peptide chain. The resulting cyclized molecule, which we describe as a Bike, is secured the preferred state to bind to the target healthy proteins. Their tiny dimension and elegant lump targeting are developed to deliver fast lump penetration and also retention, while clearance prices and courses can be tuned to minimize direct exposure of healthy and balanced cells and spectator toxicities. In general, the chemical synthesis of peptides with solid-phase synthesis is rather uncomplicated as well as has actually been enhanced over the past decades, to ensure that basically all peptide series are accessible synthetically today. These considerations might come to be pertinent for the massive synthesis of peptide medicines, as well as peptide biomaterials.

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Hindering the task of these little GTPases might result in brand-new chemotherapeutic medications for cancer therapy. Making use of the hydrocarbon-peptide stapling strategy, α-helical peptides were maintained at placements i as well as i + 4, causing as much as 200-fold enhanced affinity of the peptide to Rab healthy proteins. Furthermore, one of the peptides, being a leader repressive substance for Rab GTPase-- protein communications, was located to prevent the Rab8a-- effector communication. Some of the most old proteins are found in the core of the ribosome, and also may derive from the RNA globe. Utilizing these peptides the RPR replicase required a lot lower levels of magnesium ions, a formerly essential cofactor which is likewise damaging to RNA. Furthermore, the peptides increased RPR evolution and allowed the RPR to function within an easy filmy 'protocell', a crucial step for the emergence of cellular life billions of years back.

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Photo-switchable peptides can be used to temporally and/or spatially control procedures in microorganisms, such as medicine launch at particular organs or tissues. These applications illustrate the energy and also versatility of synthetic peptides as molecular devices in biomedical research, in addition to in synthetic biology.

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For healthy individuals, peptide supplements are unlikely to cause serious side effects because they are similar to the peptides present in everyday foods. https://provensarms.com/2020/08/02/sarms-what-can-you-expect/ may not enter the bloodstream as the body may break them down into individual amino acids.

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Each of these applications calls for gels with different materials properties. The network that catches the water is usually polymeric, yet recent studies have revealed that short peptides can be used, supplying benefits when it come to biocompatibility and adaptability of layout. Because of this, generating hydrogels for specific applications is a hit-and-miss affair, needing repetitive synthesis and screening.

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The largest obstacle plainly is the limited metabolic stability of peptides, since they are rapidly broken down by proteolytic enzymes, preventing dental administration of peptide drugs. First, unlike recombinant healthy protein synthesis, chemical peptide synthesis is not restricted to the proteinogenic amino acids as foundation. A huge selection of extra amino acids are currently available for chemical peptide synthesis. In addition, conformational stabilization via cyclization, or through introduction of defined additional structures, has actually been shown to secure peptides from proteolytic enzymes. Particular protein-- protein interactions are associated with the pathogenesis of numerous conditions. The design as well as generation of peptides that mimic the corresponding protein-binding site, as possible inhibitors of the communications, is for that reason an encouraging therapeutic approach. This basic approach will be illustrated right here using instances of the different protein-- protein interactions, which are involved in the entry of the human immunodeficiency virus kind 1 (HIV-1) right into cells.

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Aside from expanding the chemical and architectural diversity presented by peptides, such adjustments also increase the proteolytic stability of the molecules, improving their prospective as medication prospects. To achieve a restorative result while minimizing unwanted impacts on other healthy proteins and also physical functions, drugs should bind to target proteins with high fondness and selectivity.

Moreover, a variety of protein-mimicking peptides made use of in the treatment of cancer cells and also as antibiotics or anti-inflammatory compounds, will be evaluated. The design of peptides as protein mimics has developed as a promising method for the expedition of, along with the controlled interference with, healthy protein-- healthy protein communications. Due to their chemical nature, peptides are an appropriate type of particles for the mimicry of protein-binding sites, consisting of those entailing big protein-- protein user interfaces. The possibility to make use of non-proteinogenic amino acids, along with different methods of chemical adjustment, substantially enhances the extent of chemical as well as structural adaptability, in addition to stability, of synthetic peptides.

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This was specifically crucial for the study and development of new molecular entities to regulate protein-protein communications, in which the interfaces are usually big as well as as a result difficult to target by small-molecules. In this brief note I discuss a few current rep instances of cyclic peptides valuable in biological/medicinal chemistry. Summary on Grant Application Hydrogels are of vast technical and also scientific rate of interest since they consist mainly of water, usually comparable to that of bodily tissue. award-winning proven sarms honored as top-rated and best Sarm sarms.com are utilized for applications including contact lenses, tissue design, drug launch, and also biosensing.

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Thoughts on Powers of X #6

It’s Not A Dream If It’s Real:

We start with an extended return to Powers of X #1, which might come off as somewhat self-indulgent if so much of the issue didn’t come down to an exploration of how this encounter between Charles Xavier and Moira X radically transformed Xavier’s life. We need a full page of Xavier walking happily through the forest, in other words, because we are seeing the last truly innocent moment in his life. 

One thing that I find more than a little frustrating is that, given their prominence in the circular framing device that Hickman uses, we’ve seen remarkably little of Rasputin, the Tower, and Cardinal. I’m really hoping they show up again in Dawn of X, although I recognize that it’s early days yet, because I feel like there’s a lot of unexplored potential there. 

One thing that really changes on this read is how we read Moira’s expressions in light of what the current and previous issue/s reveal about her motivations. You can really see that Moira feels way more ambivalent and regretful about what she’s about to do. 

What Happens When Humanity Stops Being Beholden To Its Environment?

But before we get to any of that, it’s time to close the books on our X^3 timeline. And while I’ve been rather critical of the pacing and characterization of this timeline in previous PoX issues, this is a significant improvement.

It begins with the Librarian going off to “feed the animals at the zoo,” confident that he’ll be unharmed because “my augmented brain is far more advenced than yours.” The Librarian’s intellectual arrogance and superiority complex - which (spoilers) will be his ultimate undoing, and quite possibly that of the Phalanx as well - is a running theme throughout this section.

Speaking of which, we get something of a debate where the Libratrian conintues to think of mutants as essentially mindless animals acting in “their nature,” whereas Logan insists on a language of resistance against slavery. Not surprisingly, the Librarian doesn’t have much have time for that kind of debate and instead wants to talk to Moira.

As befits both of their scientific natures, the two of them discuss the tension between “preservation” and “observation” in “controlled habitats” - and I’ll freely admit that I don’t know enough about zoology to have much of an opinion here. 

However, the Librarian really changes tack from the scientific to the reliigous when he lets them know that “the Phalanx will descend and absorb the entirety of our post-human society...what was once our post-human society will exist forever as part of that godhead.” Again, I think it’s majorly counting your chickens to assume you’ll be part of the godhead rather than food for the godhead, but that’s what happens when you really go in for Pascal’s wager in a serious way.

In a surprise no doubt built on eavesdropping on Moira to understand her mutant powers, the Librarian doesn’t want Moira to die before the translation, because he needs to make sure that “if you live past my becoming god, then -- existing beyond space and time -- we will know you, forever. And I think it very likely we would not tolerate something like you having any power over something like us.” Here is the first real threat to Moira since Destiny in Life 3, that for the second time there would be a hostile force that would know about Moira’s past lives who could act against her before she has a chance to prevent it. And the Phalanx/Dominion are way more powerful than just Destiny, which suggests that Moira’s motivations may be driven now by her perception of the ultimate threats to herself and mutantkind.

In a fitting end that pays more than a little homage to the philosophy of identity, the Librarian is undone by his doubts over whether "the universal machine state” is “a fake existence,” because his post-human abilities allow him to perceive material reality on a deeeeeper level, maaaan, so would he be as happy as just an uploaded consciousness, even one that he sees as godlike?

And here we get the link between the transhumanism/singularity stuff and Moira/Krakoa’s mission of preserving mutantkind: can mutants prevent post-humanity from arising, and escape the cage into which science has placed them? I think a lot of Krakoan policy, from the offer of Krakoan pharmaceuticals on down, is aimed at keeping humanity happy in its cage.

At the same time, we shouldn’t feel too bad about the Librarian’s burgeoning existential crisis, because he is still a pseudo-intellectual racial supremacist who’s just as convinced that technology makes him superior to the racial minority he’s holding subordinate as an Victorian or Enlightenment-era phrenologist. 

Let’s start with his argument that “mutants are an evolutionary response to an environment. You are...naturally occurring.” This is only kind of true, depending on which version of mutantcy’s origins one subscribes to. Even still, a reverse naturalistic fallacy is still a fallacy.

The more interesting idea, and it’s one I didn’t quite see coming is that post-humanity won when it used genetic engineering to make themselves superhuman, and used merely mechanical transhumanism - the Sentinels and Nimrods - to give themselves enough of a lead in the race against mutants that they could never catch up. Notably, this is not the scenario that took place in Life 9 - Nimrod the Lesser clearly didn’t have human afvancement in mind - so perhaps this is why humans need to be so careful about the Heller/Faust line.

Another important question that makes me question the rationality of post-humanity - if you have access to widespread genetic engineering, why not end the human/mutant conflict by switching everyone’s X-gene to positive? I feel like with the spread of CRISPR and similar technologies, this is a question that is going to have to be answered. (The answer is that bigotry is irrational by its very nature, but still.)

Proving once again that Monologuing Kills, Logan nails the Librarian to a tree with his claws - which prevents the Librarian’s knowledge from being incorporated into the Phalanx, and then kills Moira, which insures that the timeline reboots then and there, with the Phalanx getting none of post-humanity’s secrets.

Thus ends Moira’s Life 6...and I have to say I’m not really keen on the misdirect. Yes, it was likely that X^3 would be Life 6, since it was the one timeline we haven’t seen yet, but the misdirect requires you to believe that two Nimrods would capture Cylobel in the same way across the two timelines. The only thing that makes it feel less of a cheat is that apparently all the Cylobels look the same (which is something we saw more of in Life 9, so I guess), but that’s still a bit too close to feel satisfying.

Branching Humanity Infographic:

Speaking of infographics definitely written from a mutant perspective, this document really makes its perspective clear when it refers to humanity as an evolutionary dead end. (Which I’m not so sure about from a genetics perspective - we’ve seen before that humans can be carriers without expressing the x-gene, that the X-gene can spontaneously activate without parents who are carriers, that mutants and children can have children without difficulty, and that sometimes mutant-mutant pairings can result in non-mutant offspring, that doesn’t read like speciation to me. 

Homo novissima -is described as a “manufactured branch of humanity not restricted by normal evolutionary constraints,” which really plays into the naturalistic fallacy something hard. Arguably anyone who’s not lactose intolerant can be described as homo novissima under those standards.

The idea that really blew my mind is the idea that there is a “paradigm loop between organic and technological constructs,” such that advances in the one give rise to the other in a leap-frogging way. This is really different from Hickman’s Transhuman and how HoxPoX has depicted the stark divides between Krakoan and ORCHIS technologies. I wonder where Hickman’s new synthesis will lead us?

It’s Not a Complement:

At long last, we actually get to see what it was like for Charles Xavier to “read” not just a thousand plus years of memories, but a thousand years plus years of memories that are devastating to his entire worldview. Given how much this issue talks about Xavier being “broken,” I would count this as the first time.

Moira, who has thrown her “pragmatic” switch all the way into the red to have this conversation,” barely bats an eye at Charles’ existential crisis and instead pivots to her larger message that “hard truths are what’s called for when dealing with radical realignments to old ways of thinking.” 

The exchange that follows is extremely characteristic on both their parts: Moira is deeply pessimistic, stating that it’s not just that “we lose” but that “we always lose” (much more on this later); Charles, despite his initial shock is still a relentless optimist, thinking through scenarios that would allow him to continue his technocratic assimilationist vision of mutant rights.

In a very bittersweet move, Moira lays one on Xavier and lets him know that amidst all the complicated emotions she’s had towards him, “not once in all my lives have you changed...its not a compliment.” It is one of his most frustrating characteristics that Charles Xavier believes that, because he believes himself to be in the right even when he’s not, he’s incredibly resistant to change his mind. 

Hence why Moira believes “I have to break that part of you,” the part that believes “in the goodness of others.” This is a really significant point - Moira identifies Charles’ compassion, not his pride and intellectual arrogance, as his weak point that she will have to go all Ivan Drago on. This is kind of a problem, because Charles’ compassion has always been fighting a pitched battle with his utilitarianism, so stripping that away produces a man who will do anything for the greater good. 

The chief irony - and it’s one I’ve been surprised more people haven’t commented on - is that Moira’s decision here will directly result in what happens at the end of this book, because once you train someone like Charles to be paranoid and suspicious and even more of a utilitarian, he’s absolutely going to apply his new worldview on you. More on this in a bit.

A couple important things that are really worth keeping in the forefront of your mind when we get to the final confrontation: 

First, Moira is dead-on when she describes Erik Lensherr as “your shade,” because the two of them are mirror images and have been for a long, long time.

Second, Moira’s plan includes Xavier and Erik fighting her. 

Moira’s Journal Infographic:

Here we get an fascinating and frustrating infographic, as we get several pages from “Moira’s journal,” although to be honest it’s much more a Jane Goodall-style field notes on her attempts to influence the future by influencing the development of three men. (Which itself is a whole gendered thing, but also very much tied in to her observation and experimentation methodology in her earlier lives.)

Entry 5: “unlike myself, observation has not granted himself perfect recall of my past lives, and as I wil not permit him to read me a second time, he is now dependent on my interpretation of past-life events.” 

As with his mind-reading of Krakoa, despite Xavier being an Alpha-level telepath, he doesn’t quite get the whole of the picture when he reads (unusual?) minds. This is crucial in understanding the power dynamic between them - the only thing that allows Moira to keep the upper hand is that Xavier is temporarily “dependent” on her, and that he hasn’t yet decided to violate her personal boundaries. 

Also, the fact that Moira describes these psychic impressions - so key to Xavier and Magneto’s conversion to the cause - as “my interpretation” really raises the question of whether Moira is an unreliable narrator of her past lives...which is really quite scary given how much the whole enterprise rests on her being right about how things will go. More on that later.

But as I was saying above, one of the downsides of making Xavier even more of a morally grey actor is that it makes it way more likely that “he will even act against type” (and boy is Moira’s understanding of Xavier shown to be flawed by her belief that this would be against type as opposed to absolutely his M.O) by reading her mind without her permission.

All that Moira can hope for is that because she knows that “all he will be looking for is confirmation of suspicions he might already harbor,” she will be able to steer his inquiry away from things she doesn’t want him to know, although she does have a Plan B of coming totally clean.

Finally, as with the redactions, there is very much a running theme here (and throughout HoxPoX) of struggling over control of (imperfect) information at the heart of all conflicts. 

Entry 14: “while we have become romantic, it is becoming clear to me that I am breaking Charles Xavier. And if I do break him, how will he become the man I need him to be in the coming days.” 

Here Moira gets a little bit self-reflective, realizing that one of the downsides of her master plan is that you can’t “manipulate these men into doing what I needed them to do without any repercussions to myself.” Breaking Charles of his hope and idealism doesn’t, it turns out, make him any more controllable, because he’s going to act on his new nature, and Moira can’t guarantee that she won’t be the object of that action.

One interesting question that I’ve seen raised is whether Moira is referring to Onslaught here. How much of his (to be honest, really quite banal and skippable) turn to the dark side was due to repression and how much due to cultivating his worser nature?

Entry 17: “he had the most marvellous idea regarding the potential tandem of several mutants and what they could accomplish if they worked in harmony.”

I find this one particularly fascinating, because it gets at how the collaborative process of creating Krakoa came together. Charles is able to build on “the potential windfall of knowledge I represent regarding mutandom” to get the idea for the Resurrection system and the broader mutant power synergy approach to Krakoan technology; Moira then “used my experience in genetic modification” to figure out how to make the mutants the system required.

At the same time, my god does this entry make Moira and Xavier seem even more cold-blooded and unethical with regards to Proteus and Legion, because rather than those relationships coming as a “moment of weakness” (in Xavier’s case) they were pre-meditated. The only thing that makes this even slightly better is that, according to the timeline docs, Moira didn’t have a relationship with Joseph MacTaggart in her previous lives, so that she didn’t knowingly walk into an abusive relationship to birth a super-mutant. 

Entry 22: “Magneto...with him, loyalty is something that must be constantly earned. He allows for no deviation of intent -- no wavering of belief. The idea that there will not be setbacks, and that his constant anger will remained tamped down, is a fool’s dream.”

Speaking of unethical actions...Moira trying to mess with Magneto’s mind, given what she undertands as his character, strikes me as pretty damn “casual[ly] arrogan[t].”

Likewise, Moira sees it as a “positive thing of note” that she’s managed to “imprin[t] the idea of stronghold in his mind.” While she notes that “it has always been there” - and she’s not wrong that Magneto has a thing for island, asteroid, and other separated bases. At the same time, it does help to explain why Magneto is so particularly gung-ho on the idea of Krakoa, which makes him their biological last line of defense.

Entry 29: “Apocalypse has made himself known to the world. Knowing him the way I do, and having aligned myself already with Xavier and Magneto, recruitment will not be an option until a much later date.”

Moira’s attitude to her ex suggests that the big blue-lipped boy’s Social Darwinist rage is basically the result of him being “in his raw, primal state,” and that he’ll mellow out once he has “f[ou]nd something to build on.” 

We also get confirmation that the conflicts between various X-teams and [A] were quite real - although intended more at “the avoidance of an apocalypse event” than his destruction. More of a managed conflict, if you will.

Given [A]’s interest in recreating his Four Horsemen, I wonder who the Omega-level mutants he might have been looking for instead of the ones he ended up with.

Entry 48: “I have underestimated Xavier’s infatuation with the possibilities of what can be accomplished with mutant genetic material. Without my knowledge -- and against my advice -- both Charles and Magneto have traveled to Bar Sinister and recruited Sinister to our cause.”

This is the crux of the matter when it comes to the double-edged nature of breaking Xavier of his better nature; the more you do this, the more he’s likely to do underhanded stuff like this.

The central irony is that Moira’s complaint (as much as it resonates with women in the fandom as representing their own life experiences) that “what is this thing that men do, where they think they can shape the world to their liking - and bend others to whatever they will” absolutely describes Moira herself as well as Xavier and Magneto. 

One ominous note, re the ongoing theme about timetables and schedules, is that Sinister is already producing chimerae, so merely leaving him alone might not change the outcome.

Entry 52: “We have lost Magneto.”

Speaking of consequences to manipulation, we see Moira’s attempts to reshape Magneto to “help make him a better man” (perhaps someone who would play nicely wrt to the Krakoan project?) backfire horribly during the events of Mutant Genesis.

For a short entry, this actually gives a really good window into Moira’s psyche, in that she’s more than a little bit prone to depression, when we combine her previous comment that “we always lose,” the trauma she experienced in her previous lives, with her immediate reaction that “I am just as bad as they are. If not worse.”

Entry 57: “I have decided to remove myself from the world.”

See what I mean?

This entry ought to remind us about one of the key aspects of Moira’s powerset: Moira’s ability to predict the future is contrained way more than, say, Destiny. The more Moira acts to change variables and try to produce her good ending, the less of a guide her memories of her past lives becomes. More on this in a bit.

it’s also a good reminder that Charles and Moira have been testing out their “husk...backup” system much, much earlier than poor Pyro thinks.

Tea for Three:

There is something wonderfully theatrical about this three-hander scene in that it all revolves around power dynamics and reversals: Moira starts out quite confident, hands-on-hips, reminding Charles and Erik that she doesn’t need them (I wonder which “of mankind’s greatest culinary cities” she has a backdoor to?), which Magneto responds to with a jab at her cynicism towards “the common kindness of others” and “assuming there’s always another shoe to drop.”

This next exchange gives me a real sense that, at least as far as the secret plan to secure Krakoa’s future goes, the Quiet Council are only really there to ensure that they “won’t be a deterrent to our broader plans.” 

At the same timethe surface of collegial conviviality, everyone knows that “we’re all up to something” - note how quickly Moira goes from her confident posture to a more defensive crossing of her arms, even as Magneto shows off his dexterity with his powers, which is a nice visual detail in an otherwise very talky page.

One area of disagreement becomes quite clear: Xavier and Magneto really disagree with Moira about whether “we can do this without” Sinister. Once again I’m frustrated in not knowing what the Plan A was wrt to the genetic database.

But here Xavier really brings down the boom: “We promised to bring Destiny back.” This freezes Moira right up, and shows one of the main tensions in their (joint?) project, the conflict between radical unity and political necessity.

However, there’s a significant question mark about why Moira believes that “there can be no precogs on Krakoa.” On the face of it, Moira’s objection is due to her fear that Destiny might “tell everyone the truth” that “we always lose,” I don’t believe her for a second. I think Moira’s objection stems from their traumatic meeting in Life 3, and because Destiny “has ways of seeing me.” I think Moira is up to something that she doesn’t want Xavier and Magneto, let alone anyone on Genosha to know about, and doesn’t want Destiny letting the cat out of the bag.

Here’s where I think people slightly get things wrong about the state of play wrt to Destiny and the other precogs. While Xavier repeatedly says “we know,” I don’t think they’re actually agreeing with Moira so much as trying to patronizingly soothe her. After all, their final offer is that, while Xavier and Magneto will “put them all off” with “tomorrow, tomorrow, not today,” (paraphrasing a German rhyme from Erik’s childhood) eventually Charles and Erik will ensure that everyone will "know the truth.” This seems quite different from what Moira wants.

A remaining question: when did Charlex and Erik learn the whole truth, as Entry 5 suggested? Did they?

And here we get the core disagreement between Moira and Xavier/Magneto: she sees “the truth” as meaning “we always lose,” they see it as “until now we have always lost.” I have to admit I’m a little curious as to whether Moira really believes her own nihilistic message, because in that case, why go to all this effort, but I do think it’s importatnt that people remember that Moira’s powers at this point only let herself see backwards. The world has changed too much to predict the future.

Speaking of gender and condescension, though, the resolution of this argument is really pointed. On the one hand, Moira given credit for her contributions to Krakoa: “you shaped us into this, you made us into this, we are the perfect tools for an imperfect age.” On the other hand, she is very firmly ushered to the bench, because “now it is time for you step aside and let us do the good work for which we were created.” It does come across a bit like Adam talking to Herr Frankstenstein, as Moira’s manipulations come to bite her in the ass one last time.

And as mutant fireworks thunder overhead, Magneto and Xavier have one last confab, worrying about the future. Krakoa might not be enough to ward off mutantkind’s Ragnarok, but Xavier and Magneto are ready to do “whatever it takes” to see it through. 

AND WE”RE DONE!

[spiritualdirections]

We were talking about a different version of this theory after Mass on Sunday. The basic idea is that there needed to be a mutation between Neanderthals and humans that allowed for language acquisition. Noam Chomsky points out that such significant mutations would be rare, in only one or two people (e.g., Adam and Eve). This new theory suggests just what the mutation affected: prefontal synthesis.

"Numerous archeological and genetic evidence have already convinced most paleoanthropologists that the speech apparatus has reached essentially modern configurations before the human line split from the Neanderthal line 600,000 years ago. Considering that the chimpanzee communication system already has 20 to 100 different vocalizations, it is likely that the modern-like remodeling of the vocal apparatus extended our ancestors' range of vocalizations by orders of magnitude. In other words, by 600,000 years ago, the number of distinct verbalizations used for communication must have been on par with the number of words in modern languages.

"On the other hand, artifacts signifying modern imagination, such as composite figurative arts, elaborate burials, bone needles with an eye, and construction of dwellings arose not earlier than 70,000 years ago. The half million-year-gap between the acquisition of the modern speech apparatus and modern imagination has baffled scientists for decades.

"While studying acquisition of imagination in children, Dr. Vyshedskiy and his colleagues discovered a temporal limit for the development of a particular component of imagination. It became apparent that modern children who have not been exposed to full language in early childhood never acquire the type of active constructive imagination essential for juxtaposition of mental objects, known as Prefrontal Synthesis (PFS)..."

"The second predicted evolutionary barrier was a faster PFC maturation rate and, consequently, a shorter critical period. In modern children the critical period for PFS acquisition closes around the age of five. If the critical period in pre-modern children was over by the age of two, they would have no chance of acquiring PFS. A longer critical period was imperative to provide enough time to train PFS via recursive conversations.

"An evolutionary mathematical model, developed by Dr. Vyshedskiy, predicts that humans had to jump both evolutionary barriers within several generations."

[epigen-papers]

The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis Facilitates Evolutionary Models of Culture Change

Arxiv: http://dlvr.it/R8YFy5

[heatpeen03-blog]

The Value of W, or, Interdisciplinary Engagements on Culture

OCTOBER 31, 2018

LAST SPRING, I attended a conference in New Mexico featuring evolutionary biologists working on a new research program they have been calling the “extended evolutionary synthesis” (EES). The program aims to go beyond the so-called “modern synthesis” of the mid-20th century, which joined Darwinism to Mendelian genetics, whose mathematical formulations could be simply and straightforwardly expressed. Biologists involved in the EES have been calling for a broader and less reductive view of evolution, unrestricted to Mendelian genes. In particular, they have been addressing the modern synthesis’s paucity of information about developmental biology. These EES revisionists are interested in feedbacks: in how developmental processes, along with ecological and even cultural ones, feed back into one another, into genetic and other forms of inheritance, and therefore into evolution. While the modern synthesis proposes that epigenetic, developmental, ecological, and cultural processes are all products of evolution, the EES claims they are causes as well as products.

The roots of this movement extend back to the early 1970s, to the work of Richard Lewontin at Harvard, and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman at Stanford, among others. But the reigning, reductive neo-Darwinist paradigm — in other words, the modern synthesis — remains well entrenched, and its defenders staunch in its support. Only in the last 25 years or so has the more expansive vision of the EES slowly begun — against much resistance — to establish itself in mainstream biology.

As part of this development, EES biologists have been increasingly interested in culture, among other forms of transformation and transmission, and so have welcomed the input of humanists, including philosophers and historians of science like me, whose job it is to study and understand culture. Taking part in their conversations has in turn informed my own work in the history of evolutionary theory.

Still, I experienced a moment of comical culture shock at the recent meeting I attended. A biologist wrote an equation on the whiteboard in which one of the variables was a “w.” He then circled the w, explaining that it represented “culture,” and pointed out that under certain conditions, the value of “w” would tend toward zero, while under other conditions it would tend toward 100. “Perhaps,” I thought, “we don’t mean quite the same thing by ‘culture.’” To a humanist, or anyway to this one, “culture” is an abstract noun encompassing many things of many kinds: processes, objects, habits, beliefs both explicit and implicit. It seems a category mistake to think that we can represent such a welter by a single variable, or that the whole jumble could act as a discrete thing having a single quantifiable effect on some other discrete thing. Could we say, for example, that in a given society, “culture” influences “politics” by some quantifiable amount x? Could we say that “the arts” has a y-percent effect on birth rate or life expectancy?

As it turned out, I had somewhat misunderstood the situation. When I expressed a certain dubiousness about representing “culture” with a single variable, an EES biologist explained to me that the variables standing for “culture” in biologists’ mathematical models are not meant to denote the entire Gestalt, but rather quantifiable bits of culture: a single behavior, for example, that might be taught, learned, transmitted, or counted, and whose effects on survival and reproduction can be measured and modeled. Perhaps these individual culture variables might in principle add up to a single, overarching W, but for the moment, no one claims to be able to make that summation. For now, we can simply use the little w’s to build discrete cultural bits or forms into an evolutionary model. This seems to me more credible, but it still assumes that we can meaningfully represent cultural forms as quantifiable bits, and that this will add more to our understanding of the role of cultural forms in evolutionary processes than simply trying to describe this role in qualitative terms. I can’t help wondering if that’s a sound assumption.

Of course I’m by no means the first to raise the question, nor indeed have such objections been confined to humanists. Lewontin himself, together with the historian Joseph Fracchia, argued in a 1999 paper against the idea of cultural evolution. They wondered whether conceptualizing entities like “the idea of monotheism” as “cultural units” begged crucial questions — for example, how can we count up these units in a population, and what are their laws of inheritance and variation? Fracchia and Lewontin maintained that there could be no such general laws because cultural phenomena, unlike atoms and molecules, differ from one another in their properties and dynamics of transmission and change. “There is no one transhistorical law or generality,” they contended, “that can explain the dynamics of all historical change.” [1] Marcus Feldman disagreed, albeit not specifically with regard to the existence of general laws explaining the dynamics of all historical change; rather, he defended the notion of “observable units of culture,” which he did not associate with grand organizing ideas such as monotheism. An example of an observable cultural unit for Feldman is a behavior or custom that follows statistical rules of transmission, and that can therefore be a legitimate object of mathematical study. [2]

The biologist with the “w” variable and I were thus reenacting an intellectual confrontation that has been going on for decades. As is often the case in longstanding debates, we actually agree on the essentials: that nature and culture are at bottom made of the same stuff — in fact, of one another — which no humanistic or scientific inquiry can legitimately disregard. Evolutionary theory must encompass cultural processes just as human history must encompass biological ones. But, despite our deep accord, this biologist and I are thinking incommensurately about methods, about how to put our two fields into communication. His method is mathematical modeling, and mine is thick description. These are diametrically opposite in trajectory, one abstractive and reductive, the other concretizing and expansive. While I understand and admire these biologists’ conclusions, I keep wondering: Why these methods? Why mathematical modeling? By which I mean, what function do biologists intend their mathematical models to serve? Are they meant to prove claims about evolution? Or rather to express, represent, or advocate certain interpretive views of evolutionary processes? If the latter, why choose this particular means of expression, representation, advocacy? These will surely seem naïve questions to any biologist reading this. But I have learned from teaching college freshman and sophomores that naïve questions from untrained newcomers can be the hardest and most useful, which emboldens me to ask mine.

¤

Kevin Laland, author of Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, was an organizer of the conference I attended and is a leader of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis research program. Reading his important and heartfelt book, the to-date summary of a groundbreaking career, I had similar feelings as I did at the conference. Uppermost among these is heated agreement: Laland’s essential tenets seem to me profoundly right, some indeed incontrovertible. These include the precept that cultural practices — in particular teaching, imitating, and copying — are causes as well as results of evolution; that in mammals and especially humans, such cultural practices have accelerated evolutionary development by constantly creating “new selection regimes” in a process that Laland, citing evolutionary biologist Allan Wilson, calls “cultural drive”; and that, accordingly, in humans especially, there has been a “gene-culture coevolutionary dynamic.” The first of these — that cultural practices are causes as well as results of evolution — seems to me incontrovertible, but more like a first principle than like an empirical result. Cultural practices must be causes as well as results of evolution because any result of the evolutionary process becomes a feature of the world of causes shaping the continuation of that process.

The other principal tenets — such as “cultural drive” and “gene-culture co-evolution” — are not quite first principles, but they seem to me ways of understanding how the feedback-loop of evolution encompasses cultural forms. To express these ways of understanding in the language of mathematical modeling seems fine, if one likes to do that, but no more definitive than expressing them in words. This is because a mathematical model, like a verbal description, contains many layers of interpretation. This is not a criticism: interpretation is essential to (and ineradicable from) any attempt to understand the world. But insofar as a mathematical model is taken to prove rather than to argue or represent, that’s where I think it can mislead.

Laland has devoted his career to pioneering work against reductive, simplistic, and dogmatic accounts of evolution, building brick by brick a sound case for the richer and more complex vision of the EES. Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony is a record of his resounding success. But while he has been constructing this revisionist scientific theory, he has often supported it by traditional methods. An example is his game-theoretic tournament to study social learning. After offering several examples of social learning in animals — such as Japanese macaques who learn from one innovative macaque to wash their sweet potatoes before eating them, and fish who learn from one another where the rich feeding patches are located — Laland asks what might be the best “social learning strategy.” He explains that the “traditional means to address such questions is to build mathematical models using, for instance, the methods of evolutionary game theory.”

Game theory became a standard model in evolutionary biology in the early 1970s with the work, notably, of the British theoretical evolutionary biologists W. D. Hamilton and John Maynard Smith, along with the population geneticist George R. Price. Hamilton, Price, and Maynard Smith developed a game-theoretic approach to modeling the behaviors of organisms in the struggle for survival. Their work was foundational to the neo-Darwinist, gene-centric program that Laland has devoted his career to challenging. In this gene-centric view, all higher-order entities — individual organisms, their behaviors and interactions — are epiphenomenal, controlled by and reducible to genes, so that any apparent agency or intention on the part of an organism is illusory. Organisms survive if they happen to achieve an optimal state of genetic affairs, one that maximizes some function for greater reproductive success. They die out when they fail to do so. Maynard Smith accordingly emphasized that his technical definition of “strategy” was strictly behaviorist. “Nothing,” he maintained, “is implied about intention.” A strategy was merely “a behavioural phenotype,” in other words, “a specification of what an individual will do [in a given situation].” [3] These “strategies,” therefore, involved no ascription of internal agency, but merely outward observations of behavior. Neither observed behaviors nor any other macrolevel phenomenon could play a causal role in evolution according to this school of thought.

Maynard Smith’s approach has inspired the most reductive of neo-Darwinists. For example, Richard Dawkins has adapted it to his own theory of gene functioning, emphasizing that the “strategies” in question are behaviorally defined and do not require the ascription of consciousness, let alone agency, to the strategic agent. Dawkins indeed refers to “unconscious strategists,” the deliberate oxymoron encouraging the reader to accept these apparent ascriptions of agency to genes as radical denials of any such agency. [4] Neither behaviors, nor agency, nor consciousness, nor culture operates causally at any level of Dawkins’s picture; all reduces to just gene functioning.

Game-theoretic modeling has been a hallmark of neo-Darwinist reductionism and, specifically, of the denial of any kind of evolutionary agency to the evolving organism. But in Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, Laland describes how he and his collaborators used game theory in an innovative way, to design a virtual world in which they hosted a tournament. The game involved virtual “organisms” or “agents” engaging in a hundred “behavior patterns,” with varying rates of success resulting in greater or lesser “fitness” (i.e., survival and reproduction). The game also included three different “moves” — “innovate,” “observe,” and “exploit” — representing different phases of asocial or social learning. More than a hundred people of various ages and backgrounds took part in the game. Unlike in Maynard Smith’s applications of game theory to evolution, Laland and his collaborators were not looking for an optimum in the form of a single function or property to be maximized. They did not pre-judge what had to happen in order for an organism to win the competition. Rather, they set the competitors loose and waited to see who would triumph. The winning strategy was an unpredictable, complex mix of behaviors, although it did represent an overall optimum solution composed of behavioral bits.

Analyzing the winning strategy, Laland concludes that observing and copying are tremendously valuable, much more so than innovating on one’s own except “in extreme environments that change at extraordinarily high rates,” which must be rare in nature. The conclusion is persuasive, but the tournament seems to me more a way of expressing than of proving this point: the virtual agents and their behaviors and strategies of course constitute an interpretive representation of natural processes. They are not drawn in pastels or composed in prose, but the fact that they are programmed on a computer makes them no less a representation.

¤

To elaborate further, consider an experiment Laland describes, performed with his postdoctoral student Hannah Lewis. Laland explains that to model the effects of high-fidelity transmission of information on the longevity of cultural forms or “traits” in a population, he and Lewis “assumed that there are a fixed number of traits that could appear within a group through novel inventions and that are independent of any other traits within a culture. We called these novel inventions ‘cultural seed traits.’ Then, one of four possible events could occur”: a new seed trait could be acquired by novel invention; two traits could be combined to produce a new one; one trait could be modified; or a trait could be lost.

This model, in its relation to real cultural forms, seems to me the equivalent of a Cubist painting. Cultural “traits” that are independent of one another occur no more often in nature than young ladies with perfectly geometrical features distributed all on one side of their two-dimensional heads. Likewise for the separate and distinct occurrence of novel invention, combination, modification, or loss of cultural forms. These processes travel in the real world as aspects of a single organic entity and not as separate blocks. Of course, I’m not opposed to representing cultural forms in these Cubist terms any more than I’m opposed to Picasso’s portraits of Dora Maar. Representations should, though, declare themselves as such.

Mathematical models are interpretative from the get-go. Again, let me be clear that I think that’s fine — indeed, inevitable — because interpretation is ineradicable from any attempt to understand the world. Indeed, some scientists describe their use of mathematical models in these very terms. The theoretical physicist Murray Gell-Mann warned that we must be careful, regarding models, “not to take them too seriously but rather to use them as prostheses for the imagination, as sources of inspiration, as acknowledged metaphors. In that way I think they can be valuable.” [5] Feldman, who pointed me to Gell-Mann’s characterization of models as “prostheses of the imagination,” added that “insofar as the model assists in the interpretation, then it has value.” [6] On another occasion, Feldman told an interviewer, “[p]eople who make models for a living like I do don’t actually believe they’re describing reality. We aren’t saying that our model is more probable than another model; we’re saying it exposes what is possible.” [7]

I have no trouble believing in mathematical modeling as a powerful form of metaphor, representation of the possible, or prosthesis for the imagination. But mathematical modeling does have a distinctive feature that sets it apart from other interpretive modes: notwithstanding Gell-Mann and Feldman, it tends to disguise itself as proof rather than representation. Would it be possible for it to come right out of the positivist closet? To put my point another way, culture plays as crucial a role in evolutionary theory as it does in evolution. Culture plays as crucial a role in science as it does in nature. Wouldn’t a scientific method that unapologetically declared itself as interpretive and representational be in keeping with Laland’s revolutionary program to write cultural forms into evolutionary theory?

Mathematical modeling, like any mode of interpretive analysis, also has its limitations and pitfalls. For example, it brings a tendency I’ll call “either/or-ism”: a tendency to represent as separate and discrete, the better to count them, things that are in fact mixed and blended. Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony lists as discrete alternatives, for example, animals learning innovations socially from one another versus inventing them independently; the cultural drive hypothesis operating through natural selection on social learning proficiency versus social learning incidence; humans being more accomplished than other primates due to “chance factors” or because of a “trait or combination of traits that were uniquely possessed by our ancestors”; that high-fidelity transmission of information might have been achieved by our ancestors through language or alternatively through teaching; learning a skill such as stone-knapping to make a cutting tool by reverse-engineering from a finished sharpened flake, or else by imitation, or else by various forms of non-verbal teaching; or else by verbal teaching; and young individuals acquiring skills either asocially by trial and error, or else socially by copying, or else socially by being taught by a tutor “at some cost to the tutor.” In each of these cases, “both, and” seems more plausible to me than “either, or.” (Additionally, in the last case, must teaching involve a cost to the tutor? In my experience, teaching is often a win-win process, a non-zero-sum game, in which the teacher learns at least as much as the pupil, rather than a donation by the teacher to the pupil. Perhaps the sort of teaching that humans do is qualitatively different from the sorts that other animals do: a teacher macaque might not derive the same intellectual benefits from teaching to compensate for the loss of time that could be spent eating or reproducing. But I wonder if that’s necessarily true in all cases of nonhuman teachers.)

Yet Laland’s conclusions are extremely persuasive. Their persuasiveness overwhelms my failure to believe in a proof-value for the mathematical models. He concludes that natural selection favors those who copy others efficiently, strategically, and accurately; that nonhuman species lack cumulative cultures because of their “low-fidelity copying mechanisms”; that teaching evolves where the benefits outweigh the costs; and that language first evolved to teach close kin. I can believe in these conclusions, not as proven by the tournament-experiment, or the cultural-trait-transmission model, or the other mathematical models, but as interpretively, argumentatively presented by these models. I think this is because Laland’s conclusions are based on the kind of profound knowledge that comes only from a wealth of direct experience and — yes — keen, richly informed interpretation. Alongside the mathematical models are descriptions drawn from experiments and observations, some extending over decades.

For example, Laland describes several series of experiments designed to show that fish can learn from one another, and to investigate how and under what conditions they do so. In one set of experiments, Laland and his students and collaborators trained guppies to take certain routes to find rich food supplies, then observed other untrained guppies, in various conditions, learn from their trained fellows. In one variation, the experimenters trained the demonstrator fish to swim directly up narrow vertical tubes to reach their meal; this was a highly esoteric skill that no fish figured out on its own, without training, but the guppies did readily learn it from one another. In another series of experiments, the experimenters offered certain stickleback fish rich feeding patches and others poor ones, while observer fish watched from a distance; the humans then observed the observer fish to see whether and what they learned.

Such experiments, Laland reports, have established certain social tendencies in fish. These include “a tendency to adopt the majority behavior,” “copying the behavior of others when uncertain,” and “disproportionately attending to the behavior of groups.” Such social tendencies, once established, must surely enter into any legitimate evolutionary picture of fish. More generally, the principle that many animals are social, and that their sociality necessarily plays a role in the evolutionary process, has the retrospective obviousness of all grand, organizing ideas once stated, a most notable example being the idea of natural selection itself, whose retrospective obviousness led T. H. Huxley, upon reading the On the Origin of Species, to figuratively smack his forehead, exclaiming: “How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that!” [8] Such grand, organizing ideas, which create conceptual sea-changes that render them retrospectively (but only retrospectively) obvious, can emerge only from richly informed interpretative analysis.

Darwin’s own method was explicitly so. He described natural history as a form of deeply interpretive historical scholarship. The geological record, he said, was a collection of fragments of the most recent volume of “a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect.” He urged people to join him in considering natural history in these terms: to “regard every production of nature as one which has had a history” to be pieced together by interpretation of scant evidence. Darwin promised that this approach would be its own reward: “[W]hen we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become!” [9] Laland’s evolutionary science, as portrayed in Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, might as well come right out and declare itself as such: it is precisely that “far more interesting” study.

¤

Jessica Riskin is a history professor at Stanford University, where she teaches courses in European intellectual and cultural history and the history of science. She is the author, most recently, of The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument Over What Makes Living Things Tick (2016).

¤

[1] Joseph Fracchia and R. C. Lewontin, “Does Culture Evolve,” in History and Theory Vol. 38, No. 4, Theme Issue 38: The Return of Science: Evolutionary Ideas and History (Dec., 1999), pp. 52–78, on pp. 60, 72.

[2] Marcus W. Feldman, “Dissent with Modification: Cultural Evolution and Social Niche Construction,” in Melissa J. Brown, ed., Explaining Culture Scientifically (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), Ch. 3, on p. 58.

[3] John Maynard Smith, Evolution and the Theory of Games (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 5, 10.

[4] Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976), 30th anniversary ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 229.

[5] Murray Gell-Mann, “Plectics,” in John Brockman, ed., Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (New York: Touchstone, 1995), Ch. 19, on p. 324. 

[6] Marcus Feldman, in conversation, August 2018.

[7] Feldman, quoted in Elizabeth Svoboda, “Finding the Actions that Alter Evolution,” in Quanta Magazine, Jaunary 5, 2017, https://www.quantamagazine.org/culture-meets-evolution-the-marcus-feldman-qa-20170105/.

[8] Thomas Henry Huxley, “On the Reception of The Origin of Species” (1887), in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by Francis Darwin (New York: D. Appleton, 1896), 1:533–58, on p. 551.

[9] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (London: John Murray, 1859 [1st ed.]), 310–311, 485–486.

Source: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-value-of-w-or-interdisciplinary-engagements-on-culture/

[evoldir]

Fwd: Conference: Prague.RepeatedEvolution.Aug

Begin forwarded message: > From: evoldir@web.rhpcs.mcmaster.ca > Subject: Conference: Prague.RepeatedEvolution.Aug > Date: 7 April 2022 at 07:48:55 BST > To: rdmpage@gmail.com > > > Olá jovens amigos, > > please consider submitting an abstract to the *ESEB 2022 symposium: S09. > Parallel and repeated evolution in adaptive radiation*; organized by me, > Rosemary Gillespie and Michael D. Martin. > > *Invited talks* > Jae Young Choi - "Ancestral polymorphisms shape the adaptive radiation of > Metrosideros across the Hawaiian Islands" > Joana I. Meier - “The genomics of parallel adaptive radiations in cichlid > fishes and Neotropical butterflies” > Gabriel Jamie - "The persistence of polymorphisms across species radiations" > > *Symposium description* > The interplay between abiotic and biotic factors in shaping evolution is > best understood when species evolve repeatedly under similar selective > regimes, providing evolutionary ‘replicates’ to understand the processes of > adaptation and diversification. Adaptive radiation, in particular, can > often provide a link between lineage diversification, ecology and the > phenotype. Recent advances in sequencing technologies have allowed the > understanding of the genetic basis underlying some adaptive radiations > (e.g. a beak diversification locus in Darwin Finches) and have confirmed > the role of hybridization and reshuffling of alleles into novel and > favourable combinations that facilitate the repeated exploration of > ecological space (e.g. extended evolutionary synthesis). In parallel, > progress in ecological analysis, such as the determination of > niche-occupation (e.g. hypervolumes) has the potential to clarify the role > of ecology in driving repeated evolution and the evolvability of > phenotypes. These advances, currently underway, still lack integration. To > fill this gap, we propose a symposium focusing on integrating genomics, > ecology, and phenotype, and specifically benefiting from repeated evolution > in adaptive radiations. We will welcome contributions from diverse study > systems, as well as multidisciplinary approaches including various sources > of data (genetics, morphology, ecology, physiology). > > *To those submitting* > We encourage submissions from earlycareer researchers and > underrepresented groups in science. > > *Direct link* > https://ift.tt/fTyKU19 > > *Deadline April 15th, 2022* > > My best to you, > José > -- > > jcerca.github.io > > Twitter (@IslandGenomics) > > Postdoctoral researcher in Evolutionary Genomics & Bioinformatics > > Norwegian University of Science and Technology > > José Cerca > via IFTTT