Science and/or Nature...

Post Reply New Topic

Humans come from nature, yes. But how are we not a mutation? Aren't Humans the only species who give birth to completely defenseless offspring? Isn't that because Humans have to be born "early" as it were, in order that their brains can keep developing outside the womb without their heads becoming so massive that their birth kills both mother and child? And to my knowledge, we are so far the only animal who has developed science, manufacturing, artificial materials, agriculture, engineering, writing, etc... Yes, we *came from* the natural world. But at this point we are so far removed from it, that the idea that we are "part of nature" is, well, you get the point.

What needs to take place in order to change beliefs and social dynamics in such a way that the incredible advantages nature gave us don't become the tool by which we blindly self-destruct?

I find Orwell quite correct in pointing out that nothing that occurs is unnatural. Natural is a basically useless term invented by humans to elevate themselves outside of nature. But actions have consequences. Orwell seems to have no appreciation of the wonders that each evolved creature has created to remain alive. These are tremendous treasures that have barely been investigated by humans, not to speak of exploitation. Orwell is a very bright guy but seems to have some unfortunate blind spots.

Have you ever seen what beavers do to the woods and streams? Have you ever seen what termites do to trees? Have you ever seen what army-ants to to square miles of jungle and forest? Have you ever seen what a swarm of locusts can do?

Apparently not.

ruveyn

These are all interactions of life forms and the web of life compensates for them. Humans have, to a large degree, made themselves immune to natural compensating forces and I would not characterize this as unnatural but simply extraordinary and they must expect extraordinary reactions to occur. They are not realistically preparing for these extraordinary reactions and, from a human point of view this is a burgeoning disaster of immense proportions. I would not say this is unnatural, it is merely catastrophic.

This question doesn't even make sense. All living things are the product of mutation.


No, we aren't. You ever seen a marsupial?


Tool use has been observed in several other animal species, as have activities that resemble agriculture. But in any case, our unique traits do not separate us from the biological world. You may as well say that bats are no longer a part of nature because they flew away from it.


Scroll up and read that comic I posted. The distinction between "natural" and "artificial" is quite artificial.

Not at all true. The idea of a "web of life" that maintains some optimal equilibrium is a myth, just an idolization of nature beyond what its capabilities actually are. Recall that evolution does not plan, it has no goals, and it seeks only to further the interest of an individual, not to benefit the whole ecosystem or even the species. Any organism will destroy its environment if given the chance. Cyanobacteria caused a massive change in the Earth's atmosphere, leading to mass extinction. Predators and pathogens too effective for their own good have annihilated their prey and host, thus guaranteeing their own extinction.

And after all, by your logic we needn't worry about the effect of burning fossil fuels on a massive scale, or about strip mining, or about deforestation by slash-and-burn agriculture. These are all interactions of life forms and the web of life compensates for them, right?

The web of life does compensate for them but that does not mean it is infinitely homeostatic nor that we should not be concerned about the type of compensation. It is a vague parallel to Newton's law of force and counterforce. There are limits beyond which any life form is unable to accommodate and humanity is mindlessly and actively moving to that point where major adjustments to the compensation forces will no longer permit humanity to exist in its present configuration. Whether humanity, which is exceedingly innovative, can reconfigure itself to maintain some semblance of its traditional self is looking more and more doubtful. Grandiose and idiotic projections of terraforming other planets when it cannot manage even the minimum of stabilizing this most comfortable location is ludicrous in the extreme for the present time and technological accomplishment whatever developments may be possible in future centuries are far from any sensible action in that direction at present. There have been predictions of this latest massive destruction of current homeostasis as paralleling the massive extinctions of the past and to say the least, they have been extremely uncomfortable times.

Not by a long shot.

First all of the primates give birth to helpless young.

Kittens and dogs, and their ancestors the wolves and wild cats are helpless and blind at birth. Same with foxes and the members of the weasel family, such as ferrets. Rodents too, are born fur-less and blind. Consider the facts of baby birds which cannot fly for months, are born with no feathers and require a parent to guard and warm them.

Baby pigs(and wild boars) are sequestered to the nest for some time before they can mingle with the older flock.

Turtles and other reptiles hidde their birth nests, and crocodilians guard their nests.

Deer and other ungulates must be hidden or guarded after birth. They generally walk after a few hours, but they are still helpless. Marsupials such as kangaroos give birth and the baby crawls into and remains in the pouch for months before they can survive.



The rudiments of science exist in the higher primates. They experiment with stuff, trying different techniques. Techniques are taught to the younger members through demonstration. One group in the wild learned to diversify their calls using leaves in the mouth to modify their voices. In this way they have a sort of oral tradition. Research subjects will teach other apes sign language and have been known to invent new phrases.

Certain species of birds such as the corvid family also experiment with make shift tools, even shaping wire to improve and personalize hooks. I personally have observed them developing and using team work. Magpies for instance would bait my dog while another snuck up and pinched his tail. Bullying for the sake of fun. Pig in the middle with my dog. Ever play that game as a kid?

I've seen ravens unlatch containers to look for food. For instance some snowmobiles have hatches on the back. People would put their lunch in there. Once the ravens figured this out. they work out how to open the twist latches and pull everything out looking for food.

Where I lived as a teen winters were very cold. Street lights there had light sensors on the bottom side of the light, which is atypical for street lights. They were custom made that way because otherwise the ravens would sit on the sensors until they turned on. Street lights are fairly warm, so they would sit up there, one bird to each light. This didnt help though, as the ravens figured out that they could fly under them, hovering just long enough to activate the lights. Street lights do not snap on and off instantly; they require time to warm up before shedding light.



This part I can agree with.

Our cat has fathomed the working of the kitchen tap and can open doors. She's also adept at getting out of her collar. The idea of putting our telephone number on the tag is to return the cat, not the collar!!

Homeostasis in nature is the manifestation of the physical laws, particularly conservation laws. There is no "moral" compensation or retribution in nature. Nature is blind and as dumb as a bag full of bricks.

ruveyn

I claimed no morality, merely the nature of a fragile stable system that can be thrown out of whack with disastrous results.

Nature does not appear to be a stable system.

To claim there are no interactions of natural forces which enforce a certain stability means you are unfamiliar with predator-prey stabilizations, with the interactions of CO2 and oxygen, etc. Since you seem well educated that seems unlikely. Naturally there are tipping points where compensation can be overwhelmed but within certain limits homeostasis exists without question. Otherwise, even within the limited ecology of any individual living system (which is undeniably natural) things would quickly go awry to destroy natural balances.

Sand, you have no idea what I've spent the last several months working on, do you? I have solved the differential equations in the Lotka-Volterra model by hand and in several different software packages; I understand how predator-prey dynamics work. It is not, in general, a stable system. Adjust the parameters a tiny bit—get a predator that's just a bit faster, say—and the whole system approaches the trivial solution (extinction). Other natural systems are similar. Models for epidemic disease can quite easily lead to the extinction of the host, and then of the pathogen who is now deprived of a host.

Evolution acts only in the present. It doesn't give a damn if something is sustainable or not. The "natural balance" is a myth. The natural world is ever-changing. There are constraints that limit how much a particular species can adapt, and when the environment reaches a critical point, that species is doomed to extinction (to be more precise, that species is doomed to earlier extinction than otherwise; all species will of course go extinct in due time).

How you spend your time is none of my business. All you have done is confirm that balanced natural systems have their tipping point.I made no statements indicating that nature contained intention. That's for religious people. I merely indicated that over limited time periods there are stabilities. Newtons indication of action and reaction shows this at a fundamental level. The orbits of planets are relatively stable for a reasonable time period. Organisms function homeostatically in order to exist. Yes, they are temporary over a long time period but within that period they maintain stability. That's undeniable.

I have just the book for you. -Newton's Clock: Chaos in the Solar System- by Ivars Peterson. He discusses the question of the dynamic stability of the solar system under Newton's Law of Gravitation. It turns out the deterministic nature of Newton's Laws do not preclude chaotic dynamics.

In fact one does not need an expensive telescope and a zillion dollars to see this. Get a hold of a compound pendulum with two or three rigid sections fastened end to end with a low friction pivots. Now move the pieces far enough from a straight down equilibrium position and you will see the god-damnedest gyrations and acrobatics you could imagine. The compound pendulum works strictly according to classical dynamic laws and the behavior is palpably chaotic once angular displacements of theta where sin (theta) is no longer approximately theta are given as the initial positions.

It has not, and probably cannot be shown that the solar system is long term stable (i.e. periodic). Peterson also devotes a chapter to the motions of our very own Moon. It turns out the the motions of the moon is well modeled as part of a three body problem (sun, earth, moon) and there is not good closed form solution to the motions of the moon. The moon's motions are very quirky modulo a set of boundary conditions. One of the greatest mathematicians of all time, Euler finally threw up his hands in trying to get a good closed form approximation of the Moon's motion. Fortunately we have powerful computers now and we can generate numerical approximations with resolution well within observation error so we get rather good short term predictions of the moon's motion (say of the order of ten thousand years). But this is still not proof that the earth, sun, moon is a dynamically stable system where the phase space can be finitely bounded.

ruveyn