From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Thu Jan 09 1997 - 18:48:58 MST
mbutler@ocv1.ocv.com (Michael Butler) writes:
>Curt,
>I'm not sure of the existence of souls or demons, either. :) It seems to me
>that positing some obscure "other complexification" drive is easy;
>the more obscure you make it, the more unfalsifiable the idea is...
True. My point is that one well-documented feature (brains) shows a clear
trend to greater complexity, in the face of tough selection pressures. The
assumption apparently made by Gould (I've not read the book either) is that
since *some* features simply drift towards complexity, that complexity is
*never* a benefit. This is clearly false WRT brains. I would also suspect
it's false WRT immune systems (once evolved, they don't get lost) and plant
chemical warfare systems (just a guess there). Those two issues are indeed
harder to falsify. I've read that ecosystems also demonstrate greater
resiliency with greater complexity, although I haven't got a citation for
that.
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