Saturday, 18 April 2009

Choice

Again using dialectics to look at "choice" shows this up as a fake also.

The famous story (and I can't be bothered to source who it was) is of the American businessman who insisted on kippers each morning on the train to work. They were never on the menu, but eventually they came onto the menu and the waitress presupposed that he wanted the kippers. Yet instead he took the usual American breakfast. When questioned why he replied that he was never interested in the kippers he only wanted the choice.

Normally myths are remembered because they contain an element of wisdom worth remembering. It seems to be a feature of American myths that they remember only what we should forget. Not sure why this is - maybe to give us the choice between good myths and bad myths.

What our businessman forgets is that he may have a choice between breakfast items on the menu, but this is only because he has no choice about using a menu and eating breakfast, and even taking the train to work, even work, and even being a powerful businessman, speaking English and being an American.

A wiser quote from an American film is "Does a man chose what he desires?". A king lamenting the nature of destiny and our powerlessness even while he is king.

All these things are essentially presupposed to put him in the position where a choice can be made available. When we speak of choice we automatically speak of the infinite elements of our situation which were not chosen. We realise dialectically in choice that really nothing is chosen... except this businessman didn't... or is that the point of the myth?

On an aside the famous American quote is equally baffling - "When I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver." Is this ironic? Because isn't this the essence of American culture - when there is a problem take a shooter at it. If it is ironic then it recognises that while most nations can list something worthwhile and civilised in their "culture" like music, dance, festivals, beliefs, customs etc which help a community thrive, the Americans can offer us only guns, bar fights and social disintegration... which have been exported around the world with such success that it is hard to find a culture anymore that does not glorify violence and social delingency. Hmmm harsh but essentially fair.

Returning to choice isn't this the essence of Evolution also. Natural variation offers natural selection a "choice", and differential mortality eliminates those choices not taken. Likewise and sadly for the businessman (even with all his business prowess) in a Capitalist world kippers won't stay on the menu for long if no one orders them.

Yet that "choice" is only a choice when the possibilities are paired in a dialectic. It is only when we have apples and oranges in the same green grocers do we have a choice. Apples and Oranges on trees around the world are not considered a "choice". Short or Long tail feathers are only considered for selection when they compete, when the birds occupy the same niche or "grocery store". Sexual selection for these feathers for example only occurs when birds with different lengths of tail feather "compete" for the same mate.

So the question for Evolution is not what happens within a niche or a context or a grocery store - this is simple and understood: it is evolution by natural selection. The bigger question however is how does variation get dialectically paired in the first place.

As with almost everything in this blog there are two levels and the SRH suggests that they must be different - you can't explain one level with the other level and vice-versa. It is not enough at first glance then to suggest that competition and differential mortality are the mechanisms that create the Niches within which competition and natural selection operate!

So what does shape the environment - or arena - within which organisms compete? Well it is not entirely planetary abiotic features because Life is the larger part of the environment - consider even the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere - this the excreted by-product of ancient bacterial photosynthesis.

This is like Indra's Jeweled Net where each crystal hanging at each knot reflects all the other crystals in the infinite net. Each organism has all other organisms as its environment - some construct the niche and some compete within the niche. Natural selection only works within the niche however! What about the interactions of the rest?

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