philosophy Evolution, Yin, Yang, Teleology, Semantics

RALPH KENYON
EXTRAPOLATOR
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Michael Boismard, your comments are identified by (MB). I read and drafted a reply to your last two responses. When I came to the end of the final statement, your:

(MB): "The particular manner in which this is happening is not yet known. We know that thinking was not involved, nor any sort of heavenly hand. This is a wholly natural occurring which we simply ignore, so far. Totally scientific and observation-based…"

I decided to go back and revise my comments to presume your statement is sincere, that is, that you believe it. I can be called a Philosopher with a specialty in the philosophy of science, logic, mathematics, epistemology and general semantics. I also have steam propulsion engineering, nuclear power, and physics. When reading the ancient writing translations, one must guard against authors injecting modern paradigms into the interpretations of those writings.

(MB): Not at all ! My view is entirely a product of observation."

There must be hypothesis that are capable of predicting the observations in order to be science. A view based entirely on observation is totally subject to the semantic environment¹ of the observer. Such is not science. Observation alone was a stage in the development of science that was discarded long ago. The need for hypothesis and testing was lost for nearly a millennium between the ancient Greeks and the renaissance.

"[The ancient Greeks] were also quite conscious of the need for verification. This they expressed by saying that every hypothesis must 'save the appearances' (. . .); in other words, that it must do justice to all the observed facts. * That is the method of science, as we understand it still."²

In 1268, in Opus Maius, [Roger] Bacon wrote:
"There are two modes of knowledge, through argument and experience [observation]. 'Argument' brings conclusions and compels us to concede them, but it does not cause certainty nor remove doubt in order that the mind may remain at rest in truth, unless this is provided by experience [hypothesizing and testing]."³

The times between the fall of Rome and Roger Bacon were the "dark ages" dominated by "the Church". Everything had to be explained in terms of religion.

MB: Even that Yin/Yang concept which I see in here, I am not trying to paste anything [learned]. It so happens to fit perfectly.

Yin/Yang:

"... yin and yang is a concept of dualism in ancient Chinese philosophy, describing how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may {(RK): not "must"} actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may {again, not "must"} give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another." "Yin is the receptive and Yang the active principle." {(RK): effect and cause} "[Some] texts draw a strong link between yin as female and yang as male."

As shown in the classic entwined commas ☯ with the opposite beginning in the opposite dot in each, they may grow simultaneously until the opposite colors take over and the cycle begins again with a new dot of the opposite in each..

MB: But again,I have been through this many times and it appears to be impossible to convey my plain and clear deduction

A deduction is not an observation. Observations may be repeated. Deductions must be tested so as to reproduce the observation from whence the deduction was deduced. Deductions (in your view) falsify your claim that "[your] view is entirely a product of observation".

MB: to anyone without getting into endless and fruitless adjustments. Now again,I have someone wrongly projecting on me some identifiable mindset label ! Why is it so difficult to communicate such a simple and obvious notion to minds educated differently ? Let's drop this futile ping-pong game…

To answer your why question:

"When it really counts, meaning is almost never communicated according to the CONDUIT metaphor, that is, where one person transmits a fixed, clear proposition to another by means of expressions in a common language, where both parties have all the relevant knowledge, assumptions, values, etc. When the chips are down, meaning is negotiated: you slowly figure out what you have in common, what it is safe to talk about, how you can communicate unshared experience or create a shared vision. With enough flexibility in bending your world view and with luck and skill and charity, you may achieve some mutual understanding."⁴^,5,6

You have not presented anything clear, because there is no scientific connection to yin and yang, especially not as a force. The best abstract metaphor to the physical world makes yin and yang correspond to effect and cause respectively. It is that abstract. Everybody has a unique semantic environment, even when they can agree in their symbolic environment.

MB: Last attempt,briefly : all things in the living world are interdependent in a way or another and on different levels.

This is a reasonable high level abstraction, but it is overly general. Dependency and interaction depend upon communication and transfer of energy, which is limited to the speed of light, the speed of sound, and the speed of the wind, without which there would not be interaction. Also, distance in both space and time limit interaction and dependency. Moreover, the range and behavior of mobile life, and the "reach" of non-mobile life prevent interdependence and interaction between all species. In addition there are physical barriers.

MB: "I have come to see the living in two complementary dynamic states,which may be thought in terms of the Yin/Yang concept :"

See yin/yang above.

MB: The basic field (Yin) acts as the mold,

A field is a set of values distributed over a metric space, such that each point in the space has a value. A topographical map with elevation lines shows points where the value of the elevation field is the same (for each line) . The classic picture of a bar magnet with the field lines depict the direction of the field while the closeness of the lines show the strength of the field. The picture of curved lines (a dent) around the sun and another, smaller, dent under each planet depict the gravitational field. The force between any two bodies varies as the inverse square of the distance between them. The field is in space, but only in response to the mass from which the gravitons fly (at the speed of light). The strength and direction (a vector value) depends on the sum of all gravitons reaching the body as well as the mass of the body itself. Without the body, the field can have a value associated only with all the bodies around it, but it will change the moment another body moves into the point in question.

Applying this to an ecosystem of living organisms is both complex and chaotic. Look for example at the path of "strange attractors". Every path is uniquely different from each other, even though the paths may all be constrained in a wide fuzzy path. If a biological "path" through time and generations is measured in terms of alteration of morphology, for example, comparing fossils over thousands and millions of years, or even observing the changes in the Yellowstone National Park ecosystem after the Wolf Reintroduction, the paths through the appropriate metric space will be unique for not only each species, but each individual as well, as no two snowflakes are identical.

In evolution the field is not the motivating force. It is sum of the influences of all the other actors in the ecosystem including the ones we don't think to or can not measure as well as all the long-term very slowly changing "environment" variables, it is the vector value of the field at each point that determines the location of any element at the next instant, and that changes with sensitive dependence on initial conditions. There is no preconceived "mold" to be filled in order to create new species. That perspective is putting the carriage before the (wildly erratic and uncontrollable) horse, but is is the religious perspective that presumes there is always a maker with ideas prior to that which the interacting influences ultimately does produce. Parallel evolution does not "produces mimicry". That similar initials conditions diverge, has a corollary, in that dissimilar initials may converge to similar result. parallel evolution happens like a strange attractor parallel path. As we have discovered in science, similar conditions produce similar results, but only for a short time, and dissimilar conditions occasionally produce similar results. The longer the time difference the more the metric space difference in the path may diverge and or converge depending upon the rate of change of the measured characteristics.

MB: [The basic field (Yin) acts as the mold] the matrix for individual entities (Yang) to emerge and evolve.

A "mold" exists before the substance is poured into it. No such structure exists in the chaos of evolution. The field (values) in a matrix (metric space coordinates) are only created by the presence of other bodies (entities), and no entities spontaneously manifest save as the result of mutations and generations of survival-enhancing variable morphological characteristics. It is after the fact that the characteristics are adjudged to have enabled survival, whereas a "mold" "forces" the matter into the shape of itself - and that's teleological in that the shape is preordained. In the sequence of events that end in a new subspecies, diverging from that are other lines of evolution that do not change from the parent species or change in different ways, some of which terminate, and/or some of which do not.

MB: We may apply this fundamental concept to explain the process of evolution of species and the particular process of mimetism.The case of the Atlas Attacus Moth should be a clear proof that something of the sort is occurring,and cannot be the result of many minute random alterations (which would have overtime been fixed by natural selection).

Nothing is "fixed by natural selection". The influences that caused change do not arbitrarily come to an end. The influences are themselves changing at variable rates, sometimes catastrophically. Evolution does not stop until death. You have introduced a false premise, that a characteristic gets "fixed" (entailing evolution stops for said characteristic). None of these conditions are "fixed". In general semantics we refer to "relative stability" as "change thinging". This goes back to Heraclitus who lived from about 525 bce until after 475 bce, and wrote in fragment 21: "You cannot bathe in the same river twice, for new waters are ever flowing in upon you." All things are continually changing.

MB: The whole environment around this moth has been at work to craft, by a sort of "aspirating mechanism"

Teleological perspective. "Crafting" is something people do in order to serve a need. Only animate subjects "work". There was no preconceived target structure. As the morphological variation, possible with a genetic variability, expressed differences, those that looked more similar to the bark survived more often resulting in an increase in the variable gene in the gene pool. That permits the norm of the population to move over time toward similarity. Each species that fills a niche actually fills a unique but similar niche.

MB: ,this particular pattern on its wings,over millennia,in order to perpetuate its genes more effectively.

"in order to perpetuate its genes" again connotes teleology, perhaps unconsciously, but 'Perpetuate' is a verb that requires an animate subject, presumably for a purpose, in this case "[preserving and expanding] genes in a gene pool. Genes express properties, and when it comes to morphological features, genes that express those features are effective when the percentage of individuals in the population that carry those genes is at a higher percentage.

MB: The particular manner in which this is happening is not yet known.

With the mathematics of chaos, statistics, identifying characteristics and behaviors that have resulted in a sub-population, a higher proportion of the population the subspecies is said to have experienced a survival advantage over the remaining population. When different, unrelated species, show similar characteristics and behaviors, it is called parallel evolution. It happens when many aspects of the species and the environments can be adjudged as similar or as corresponding, but there are always differences. Darwin's observations listed species that exploited similar niches but evolved from just a few parent species. The niches were similar to the mainland, and the species who moved into those niches experienced parallel evolution to fill the niches with morphology and behavior similar to the mainland simply because the changes had survival value.

MB: "We know that thinking was not involved, nor any sort of heavenly hand. This is a wholly natural [occurring] which we simply ignore, so far. Totally scientific and observation-based..."

We do not ignore it. We, as a culture, are constantly observing, analyzing, comparing, testing, and revising our explanation of the material world. Every generation can learn what the previous generation learned, and then add and alter the state of our knowledge, which advances exponentially.

You see yin and yang, but your relating that to field theory is flawed. Our current model of physics had 4 primary fields until just recently. They are electromagnetism - makes chemistry and EM radiation possible, the strong force - holds the nuclei of atoms together, the weak force - mediates radioactive decay, and gravity - makes stars and planets possible. In 2012 the Higgs boson was detected, corroborating the Higgs field, a field that gives mass to particles. These five fields comprise the standard model of physics.

There are no more fields discovered or theorized in the physical world (yet).

In conclusion:

Science is much more than Observation. Science requires that raw observations be analyzed for patterns, which are used to hypothesize rules that predict the same observations from observed initial conditions and condition that can not result from those initial conditions, and these rules must be tested by looking for not only the predicted outcome, but the absence of the forbidden predictions. As such, the "rules" remain tentative, until a new set of rules is developed to replace the former. Example, Newton's laws of motion and gravity gave way to Einstein's relativity where very energy, mass, and velocity are involved. Newton's laws still work for low energy, mass, and velocity, and Newton's laws can be derived from relativity as a first approximation, but they are no longer the general case.
Yin and Yang come down to us from Ancient Chinese Religion without any concrete measurable properties. Without a well defined measurable characteristic, the concept remains outside of scope of science. It can not be used as a metaphor of scientifically measured processes. A metaphor expresses an analogy of perceived similarities between two distinct domains, normally to use a known structure to inform an unknown structure, for example, using water in pipes to explain direct current electricity to someone who does not know about electricity but does know of water in pipes - with water pressure informing voltage, and water flow informing current, and pipe or hose size informing resistance.
The interaction and dependency relations in an ecosystem do not reverse, as predator-prey relationships do not exchange roles. All entities in an ecosystem have limited ranges, and all interactions involve limited propagation rates. Moreover, no species interacts with all other species in the proximal range.

Evolution, Yin, Yang, Teleology , Semantics