V. Life's Corporeal Evolution Develops, Encodes and Organizes Itself: An EarthWinian Genesis Synthesis

Reiskind, Martha, et al. Nothing in Evolution Makes Sense Except in the Light of Biology. BioScience. 71/4, 2021. North Carolina State University, UT El Paso, University of Connecticut, Utah State University, and UT Austin biologists turn to Theodosius Dobzhansky’s 1974 statement as a guide for 2020s considerations about the mega-issue of whether life’s development is an independent, oriented, guided process, or just happenstance. By what method could a valid quantification be achieved? Recent findings of a repetitive convergence in kind from microbes to mammals is a good sign. See also What Prevents Mainstream Evolutionists from Teaching the Whole Truth about How Genomes Evolve? by James Shapiro and Denis Noble in Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology (May 2021) for another take. Both papers contain a long glossary of novel indications far beyond neoDarwinism, akin to our listing in Chapter V.

A key question in biology is the predictability of the evolutionary process. If we can correctly predict the outcome of evolution, we may be better equipped to anticipate and manage species’ adaptation to climate change, habitat loss, invasive species, or emerging infectious diseases, as well as improve our basic understanding of the history of life on Earth. In the present article, we ask the questions when, why, and if the outcome of future evolution is predictable. We first define predictable and then discuss two conflicting views: that evolution is inherently unpredictable and that evolution is predictable given the ability to collect the right data. (Abstract)

Relton, Caroline and George Davey Smith. Is Epidemology Ready for Epigenetics? International Journal of Epidemiology. 41/1, 2012. An editorial for a retrospective and review issue, seventy years after Conrad Waddington’s classic “The Epigenotype” article (Endeavor 1942). An array of papers by leading contributors such as Scott Gilbert, Eva Jablonka, and David Haig go on to cite a genetic and biological revolution to recognize how pervasive environmental and developmental influences are between genotype and phenotype. The expanded theory is extolled in other articles as a significant advance for medicine and public health. In regard, “epigenetics” broadly conceived could be seen, as noted by Jablonka and Ehud Lamm, to represent an admission of “network” interconnective, regulatory domains that join and link together all the discrete nucleotide genes.

Rensing, Stefan. (Why) Does Evolution Favor Embryogenesis? Trends in Plant Science. 21/7, 2016. By this title, a University of Marburg, Germany biologist infers that all manner of life’s animal organisms develop by this same embryo to fetus to birth process. With a nod to recapitulation, it is alluded that life’s whole evolutionary course is basically akin to this gestational course. We then came to wonder if a composite term like embryolution might be appropriate.

Complex multicellular organisms typically possess life cycles in which zygotes (formed by gamete fusion) and meiosis occur. Canonical animal embryogenesis describes development from zygote to birth. It involves polarisation of the egg/zygote, asymmetric cell divisions, establishment of axes, symmetry breaking, formation of organs, and parental nutrition (at least in early stages). Similar developmental patterns have independently evolved in other eukaryotic lineages, including land plants and brown algae. The question arises whether embryo-like structures and associated developmental processes recurrently emerge because they are local optima of the evolutionary landscape. To understand which evolutionary principles govern complex multicellularity, we need to analyse why and how similar processes evolve convergently – von Baer's and Haeckel's phylotypic stage revisited in other phyla. (Abstract) Embryogenesis of animals comprises all developmental steps from zygote (generated via gamete fusion) to larval or foetal stages until metamorphosis and birth. (562)

Retzlaff, Nancy and Peter Stadler. Phylogenetics Beyond Biology. Theory in Biosciences. Online June, 2018. MPI Mathematics in the Sciences bioinformaticians scope out technical ways that phylogenetic trees, distances, metrics, and transformations can be similarly be realistically applied to cultural and linguistic phases.

Rigato, Emanuele and Alessandro Minelli. The Great Chain of Being is Still Here. Evolution: Education and Outreach. 6/18, 2013. “Is Progressionist Language a Problem” ask University of Padova biologists in this Springer Open journal meant to foster biology curriculums, per the first quote. But as other articles noted below convey, the publication seems to have an ulterior motive to defend and tout an ultra-Darwinian view of random mutations and blind selection as the only causal factor. As a result, any sense of ordained constraints, oriented convergence, creative cooperation, transitional emergence, and so on, from proteins to people, a teleological genesis, are to be strongly rejected and prohibited. See also for example Leonardo Gonzalez-Galli and Elsa Meinardi “The Role of Teleological Thinking in Learning the Darwinian Model of Evolution” (4/145, 2011), Norman Johnson, et al “Combating the Assumption of Evolutionary Progress” (5/128, 2012), and Alexander Werth’s “Avoiding the Pitfall of Progress and Associated Perils of Evolutionary Education” (5/2, 2012). A typical heading for Werth is “Function vs. Purpose: The Pervasive Peril of Teleological Thinking.” More worrisome is that no one seems to see what is totally wrong with this situation. School textbooks and evolutionary frontiers are decades apart.

Evolution: Education and Outreach addresses the question of why we should care about evolution by exploring the practical applications of evolutionary principles in daily life and the impact of evolutionary theory on culture and society throughout history. Targeting K-16 students, teachers and scientists alike, the journal presents articles to aid members of these communities in the teaching of evolutionary theory. It connects teachers with scientists by adapting cutting-edge, peer reviewed articles for classroom use on varied instructional levels. The journal features multi-authored papers written by teachers and scientists and offers teaching tools such as unit and lesson plans and classroom activities, as well as additional online content such as podcasts and powerpoint presentations.

Professional papers in evolutionary biology continue to host expressions in agreement with the pre-evolutionary metaphor of the scala naturae (the great chain of being), when contrasting ‘lower’ to ‘higher’ representatives of a given branch of the tree of life. How pervasive is the persistence of progressionist, pre-evolutionary language in contemporary papers? We document here the prevalence of this unexpected linguistic survival in papers published between 2005 and 2010 by 16 top scientific journals, including generalist magazines and specialist journals in evolutionary biology. A quantitative appreciation of the survival of progressionist language in scientific papers is the first step towards its eradication. (Rigato, Minelli)

Human beings are predisposed to think of evolution as teleological, i.e., having a purpose or directive principle, and the ways scientists talk about natural selection can feed this predisposition. This work examines the suggestion that students’ teleological thinking operates as an obstacle when the natural selection evolution model is taught. What we mean by obstacle is an established way of thinking that resists change due to its explanatory power. In light of this approach, the challenges of teaching evolution in biology education have been revised, and improved methodological strategies aimed at a better comprehension of the Darwinian evolution model are suggested. (Gonzalez-Galli, Meinardi)

Robert, Jason Scott. Embryology, Epigenesis, and Evolution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. A well thought out philosophical context for understanding these three main facets and their coming integration. A review by Gunter Wagner (Science. 305/1405, 2004) finds much value and notes in this regard that biology is most of all about “interaction.”

Robert, Jason Scott, et al. Bridging the Gap Between Developmental Systems Theory and Evolutionary Developmental Biology. BioEssays. 23/10, 2001. An effort to integrate the fields of EDB (evo-devo) and DST, as they are known. As embryology rejoins and informs evolution, an inference is formed that all life is ultimately ontogeny. No longer either/or, what seems more apparent is a ‘particle/wave complementarity’ as EDB prefers a genetic program which allows systemic process while DST emphasizes contingent or epigenetic “constructivist” influences.

Rominger, Andrew, et al. Nonequilibrium Evolution of Volatility in Origination and Extinct Explains Fat-tailed Fluctuations in Phanerozoic Biodiversity. Science Advances. Online June 26, 2019. Santa Fe Institute theorists AR, Miguel, and Pablo Marquet entertain a novel application of statistical physics to these active evolutionary phenomena so to propose and reach a deeper mathematical explanation and inherent occasion.

Fluctuations in biodiversity, large and small, pervade the fossil record, yet we do not understand the processes generating them. Here, we extend theory from nonequilibrium statistical physics to describe fluctuations in Phanerozoic marine invertebrate richness. Using this theory, known as superstatistics, we show that heterogeneous rates of origination and extinction between clades and conserved rates within clades account for this fat-tailed form. The separation of time scales between within-clade background rates and the origin of major innovations producing new orders and families allows within-clade dynamics to reach equilibrium, while between-clade dynamics do not. (Abstract excerpt)

Superstatistics is a branch of statistical mechanics or statistical physics devoted to the study of non-linear and non-equilibrium systems. It is characterized by using the superposition of multiple differing statistical models to achieve the desired non-linearity. In terms of ordinary statistical ideas, this is equivalent to compounding the distributions of random variables and it may be considered a simple case of a doubly stochastic model.

Rossi, Claudio, et al, eds. Tempos in Science and Nature: Structures, Relations and Complexity. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Volume 879, 1999. Many reports from a conference on thermodynamic, fractal, and self-organizing systems as they manifest themselves in evolution, physiology, ecosystems, cognition, epistemology, and planetary society.

Rosslenbroich, Bernd. Properties of Life: Toward a Theory of Organismc Biology. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023. The Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Morphology, Witten/Herdecke University, Germany biotheorist (search) contributes another prescient vista as a current 2023 genesis evolutionary synthesis becomes clearly evident. Due September 19, it joins current works by Philip Ball, Peter Corning, Tom Froese and a growing host who seek to gather, articulate and at last convey its robust, credible occasion. A long book Abstract is posted on pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27485949/, along with a synopsis on the publisher’s site.

Sanchez, Jose and Jose Loredo. In Circles We Go: Baldwin’s Theory of Organic Selection and Its Current Uses: A Constructivist View. Theory & Psychology. 17/1, 2007. A total reconception of what evolution is about and how it proceeds is ‘in the air’ to which this paper from Oviedo, Spain makes a contribution. Rather than aimless, passive determination, organisms can make viable adaptations which feed back and enhance the survival of their offspring. This view moves beyond ‘hard-line neo-Darwinism’ to a non-mechanistic epigenesis which involves complex system dynamics and biosemiotics to an extent that evolution can be appreciated as a grand self-learning process.

Sansom, Roger and Robert Brandon, eds. Integrating Evolution and Development. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007. As this website tries to chronicle, an epochal revision is taking place in our understanding of the nested gestation of life, mind, and person. Two main aspects are a reunion, broadly known as evo-devo, of the early 1900s parting of embryology, inheritance and phylogeny, and a new, expanded ‘evolutionary synthesis’ beyond the 1950s version which set aside individual ontogeny. Until this fracture, organic nature was long seen to unfold as ‘one grand historical process’ of generation, which much informed Charles Darwin. Leading players such as Manfred Laubichler, Jane Maienschein, Werner Callebaut, Gerd Muller, Stuart Muller, and Paul Griffiths, (ten men and one woman) write perceptive essays to advocate features such as an ‘organismic systems approach,’ inherency, modularity, a homology between biological and neural maturation, sequential entrenchment, self-organizing forces, and the like. But work remains to achieve a holistic vista that can recover, now much embellished by a necessary century of quantification, the original genesis vision. A critical facet would seem be an ability to root in an organically conducive, not mechanically sterile, cosmos.

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