Re: Is all self-organisation evolutionary?

Alexei Sharov (sharov@VT.EDU)
Sun, 14 Mar 1999 10:21:20 -0500


Francis, you wrote:

>Choice is an anthropomorphic notion, which I would not apply to describe
>either Darwinian evolution of self-organization.

But "selection" is also an anthropomorphic notion! Why "selection" is
better than "choice"? Scienitsts always take anthropomorphic terms and
modify their meanings (e.g., force).

>As usual, I consider determinism to be a red herring. Determinism is a
>purely metaphysical concept, with no operational value. We can never prove
>that something is either determined or not. At best, we can ascertain its
>degree of predictability. But nothing can ever be predicted with 100%
>certainty, so predictability is at best a relative notion, depending on how
>much information you have about the process.

Francis, you miss the target! First, the concept of determinism has an
enormous operational value in the past 2 centuries. Without this concept
there would be no science today. It is not that determinism was all
wrong but that now we have a better concept: an organization. Ptolemean
model of the solar system was not wrong, it gave accurate predictions, But
it was just awkward compared with the Copernikean model. No model can be
proven by facts with 100% certainty. And no fact can falsify a theory
because any fact is interpreted, i.e., expressed in some language, and
you are free to reject the interpretation. Acceptance of facts is a
social phenomenon like fashion. We accept facts when everybody accepts
them and it becomes indecent to deny.

I hope you understand that I am not defending determinism, I just
want clarity in arguments.

>Pure determinists (like, I suspect, Mario Vaneechoutte) would argue that
>Darwinian evolution too is a deterministic process: it is simpy too complex
>for us to gather enough information so that we could predict that one
>variation will appear or be selected rather than another, and therefore it
>SEEMS indeterministic. On the other hand, most real self-organizing
>processes (in contrast to formal models such as cellular automata or
>Boolean networks) are clearly unpredictable.

You contradict to yourself! Above you wrote "We can never prove
that something is either determined or not" and now you say "...most
real self-organizing processes ... are clearly unpredictable". I
agree with your first statement and disagree with the second. Everybody
has a right to develop his own model of the world, and deterministic
models are legitimate. The only way to show that one model is better
than the other is to show that it can solve practical
problems more effectively.

>If we forget about the red herring of determinism, it becomes clear that
>the processes which Luis defines to be self-organizing can be
>conceptualized equally well as selection processes. I cannot formulate this
>better than Ashby did in the paper Principles of the Self-Organizing System
>(1962) that I mentioned earlier (just replace his term "equilibrium" by
>"attractor"):
>
>"The argument is simple enough in principle. We start with the fact that
>systems in general go to equilibrium. Now most of a system's states are
>non-equilibrial. So in going from any state to one of the equilibria, the
>system is going from a larger number of states to a smaller. In this way,
>it is performing a selection, in the purely objective sense that it rejects
>some states, by leaving them, and retains some other state, by sticking to
>it. Thus, as every determinate system goes to equilibrium, so does it
>select. We have heard ad nauseam the dictum that a machine cannot select;
>the truth is just the opposite; every machine, as it goes to equilibrium,
>performs the corresponding act of selection."

I disagree with this statement even if we replace "equilibrium" by
"attractor". We can talk about selection only if the state chosen
is beneficial for the existence of the system. But systems that travel
in the phase space are assumed immortal. Thus, the state at the
attractor does not increase chances of survival compared with states
that are far away from the attractor. To model selection we have
to consider systems that determine their own boundaries; when these
boundaries dissolve, the system dies.

>Note, by the way, that Ashby speaks here about state-determined systems,
>although that is not necessary. I prefer to think in terms of Markov
>processes, where the next state is not fully determined by the present
>state. The result is the same, though: both types of systems have in
>general attractors, and the states inside these attractors are selected,
>while the states in their basins are eliminated.

The system does not select states, it selects attractors! Because
states are not remembered.

>>Of course out of families of selforganizing systems one can discuss the
>>existance of possible trajectories, or better, attractor landscapes, and
>>envision a process of selection of those, which happens in evolutionary
>>systems. But this is not a process of self-organization alone, more what
>>can be referred to as selected self-organization.
>
>I like your concept of selected self-organization, and I believe it is
>important. However, I would just make a slight change in the terminology
>and call it "externally selected self-organization". Then it would be a
>nice way to conceptualize the interaction between internal and external
>selection on a system.

Do you mean that an ecosystem selects organisms? If this is what you
mean, then I disagree. Ecosystems have a very weak individuality, in
most cases they don't determine their own boundaries. Thus, they don't
have any self-interest, and hence, they are unable to select. They
can affect survival of organisms, but this does not mean selection.

As for Luis Rocha's term "selected self-organization", I like it.
First, it assumes that self-organization can not be viewed as an
independent evolutionary engine complimentary to selection. Second,
it does not imply such a nonsense as "order for free" of Kauffman.
This idea is very similar to Shmalgauzen's theory of stabilizing
selection (1941) and to Michael Conrad's "adaptability" (they just
did not use the term "self-organization").

-Alexei
-------------------------------------------------
Alexei Sharov Research Scientist
Dept. of Entomology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061
Tel. (540) 231-7316; FAX (540) 231-9131; e-mail sharov@vt.edu
Home page: http://www.gypsymoth.ento.vt.edu/~sharov/alexei.html