okay the stelliferous age is settling into to analogise my anthropology readings by Henrich, Whitehouse, et al (they all seem to be my age, we're the consensus?) this is better than the pseudomorphosis, and taphonomical methodologies are best place to read the atoms of lost stars in the current population/s.
③ I've been thinking similar things in relation to emergence, (which is sometimes used as a hand-waving exercise), and the relationship to phase-changes as an analogy, which I guess you call nodes, fuzzy nodes? Without phase changes it's always going to be turtles all the way down, or up. Does your work look at how to "predict" phase-change or nodes, or at least outline a science of them which is not just a history of the ladders we have thrown away since the last node/phase change?
④Is it possible to image a lifeform or intelligence which can handle the phase change science the way we percieve social realities as a self in the world? Without the mediation of a science or a history (given that many science are histories of non-written records).
This is the type of thing that Slimak is hinting at, not sure that he know this though,
I don't recognize the idea of evolution as a ladder as a biological idea. This seems like a strawman argument. The idea of human evolution as a chain from H. erectus to modern humans (H. sapiens) was always a simplified, social idea. I would also point out that there have been many ideas of alternative life, whether terrestrial or alien, but physics and chemistry tend to constrain them. For example, the idea of silicon-based life, or arsenic rather than phosphorus, is not viable, even with different environments.
Complexity will continue to bloom wherever the possibility of alternative arrangements of things (and ideas) can occur. Natural evolution is Darwinian and will prune that complexity. Richard Hazen has recently argued something like evolution occurs in minerals, where new complex arrangements of atoms that are more likely to "reproduce" become established mineral types.
What I am not clear from the 2 articles you have published, is how your concept differs from other concepts of increasing complexity, nor whether the idea of very different forms of life is possible outside of ungrounded speculation. I have no doubt that ET life will be different, but just how different can they be at their core? As Dawkins states, all life in the universe will be Darwinian, But as Niles Eldridge suggests, life on Earth is constrained by the environment, and some solutions of form are very common, whilst others are absent. Is this purely due to evolution being contingent and path-dependent, or are these successful forms shaped and constrained by their environments which include competitor species. If we found "whales" in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-like exoplanet, would we not also find it was still made of carbon polymers, with some sort of hereditary mechanism for Darwinian selection to grind upon, and a form that worked well in its environment?
okay the stelliferous age is settling into to analogise my anthropology readings by Henrich, Whitehouse, et al (they all seem to be my age, we're the consensus?) this is better than the pseudomorphosis, and taphonomical methodologies are best place to read the atoms of lost stars in the current population/s.
I'l get onto reading those papers.
① Query: Peers and not siblings? Too much cross-contamination from non-kin? (I'm not trying to boost familial metaphors per se).
② Like Tolley's comment https://geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/emergent-complexity-pluralism/comment/91621331 about the ladder, I mean you do mention this as hindsight, but when do we toss it away, to paraphrase Wittgenstein.
③ I've been thinking similar things in relation to emergence, (which is sometimes used as a hand-waving exercise), and the relationship to phase-changes as an analogy, which I guess you call nodes, fuzzy nodes? Without phase changes it's always going to be turtles all the way down, or up. Does your work look at how to "predict" phase-change or nodes, or at least outline a science of them which is not just a history of the ladders we have thrown away since the last node/phase change?
④Is it possible to image a lifeform or intelligence which can handle the phase change science the way we percieve social realities as a self in the world? Without the mediation of a science or a history (given that many science are histories of non-written records).
This is the type of thing that Slimak is hinting at, not sure that he know this though,
see https://whyweshould.substack.com/p/unmuddied-ludovic-slimak-essays-the
and postscript on its implications on my own project of the (self:world | world:self) as vectors of our survival in evolution... I hate my words:
Also how would I write up my bad words for that Journal of Big History
https://whyweshould.substack.com/p/peering-into-our-complexities
I don't recognize the idea of evolution as a ladder as a biological idea. This seems like a strawman argument. The idea of human evolution as a chain from H. erectus to modern humans (H. sapiens) was always a simplified, social idea. I would also point out that there have been many ideas of alternative life, whether terrestrial or alien, but physics and chemistry tend to constrain them. For example, the idea of silicon-based life, or arsenic rather than phosphorus, is not viable, even with different environments.
Complexity will continue to bloom wherever the possibility of alternative arrangements of things (and ideas) can occur. Natural evolution is Darwinian and will prune that complexity. Richard Hazen has recently argued something like evolution occurs in minerals, where new complex arrangements of atoms that are more likely to "reproduce" become established mineral types.
What I am not clear from the 2 articles you have published, is how your concept differs from other concepts of increasing complexity, nor whether the idea of very different forms of life is possible outside of ungrounded speculation. I have no doubt that ET life will be different, but just how different can they be at their core? As Dawkins states, all life in the universe will be Darwinian, But as Niles Eldridge suggests, life on Earth is constrained by the environment, and some solutions of form are very common, whilst others are absent. Is this purely due to evolution being contingent and path-dependent, or are these successful forms shaped and constrained by their environments which include competitor species. If we found "whales" in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-like exoplanet, would we not also find it was still made of carbon polymers, with some sort of hereditary mechanism for Darwinian selection to grind upon, and a form that worked well in its environment?
How convergent are the emergencies? That is the question.
How odd are we, how normie?