Monthly Archives: May 2005

The Fish That Could Walk

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Ok, I am finally getting around to writing the follow-up to my previous post. I don’t recall exactly what got me thinking about evolution, but something sparked my thinking on the subject. I spent the majority of my drive home from Muncie one evening about two weeks ago mulling it over and came up with a few things to seemed to be very contradictory to me. So, I drafted a very brief story to demonstrate some of the thoughts I had, and what you got was my previous post.

For me, everytime I think about a creature evolving, I picture in my mind the famous “Darwin fish” — a prehistoric sea bass with four legs, gills, and lungs creeping up out of the water onto dry land for the first time. Now, I realize that my little story had some theoretical problems with it, even from an evolutionary perspective. But it was fun to write and I knew I would never be
able to briefly encompass all my thoughts, so that was what you got. Let me try to elaborate the logical order with which my thoughts progressed.

So, you have this fish, four legs, lungs, gills, able to live both in water and dry land, the first of his species (one would suppose) to have evolved and adapted to a harsh environment. Questions come to mind: How was he able to grow legs and lungs? Did his parents have such organs first, perhaps underveloped ones? Was his aquatic environment too harsh to survive in, thus forcing his evolution to a new species? And if so, why didn’t the rest of his species die off completely? Were they also able to adapt? How long did this adapatation take? One generation? Multiple generations? If multiple, then how were they able to adapt quickly enough to avoid being annihilated? See, the problem for me is that evolutionary scientists assert that physical evolution takes millions, billions of years. That would suggest that for one species to take the next evolutionary step would require at the minimum a couple of thousand years, hardly what I would consider ‘fast’ adaptability to harsh conditions. If I’m not mistaken, evolutionary change is only stimulated as a result of a need to adapt, a need to survive or be destroyed utterly as a species. If that is the case, the evolutionary changes required of a species would take far too long to be beneficial.

In the case of my story example, we have a fish that has evolved at least some of the necessary physiology to survive on land, the first of the lizards. As FKIProfessor has pointed out, the fish’s changes would have had to have developed prior to his emergence from the water onto land, thereby indicating that its ancestors would have had to have encountered the land first and have failed to survive on it. Would every successive generation have then tried for the land, only to fail but at least cause their own genetics to ‘adapt’ a little more by developing new organs adapted to land? (And by the way, how would the genetics have known what to change in order to be suited to life on land?) Also, the mating drive (which was something I was definitely trying to point out in this story) poses an additional problem. There would have had to have been a ‘first’, a creature who emerged from the water ahead of the others. Would it have been alone, the only one of its generation to do so? Or would there have been others who had
evolved at the same time? Where would these new creatures have mated? Would they have been suited for mating on land? And LeiraHoward pointed out a number of good questions, as well.

Ultimately, I found the idea presposterous at least because of its contradictions — evolution that takes far longer than it should in order for a species to survive; the source of food for a new species and its ability (or lack thereof) to catch it; the idea that the genetics of the species would ‘know’ how best to adapt to a completely foreign environment; etc. In essence, I discovered that there would still have had to have been intelligent design behind the whole
thing because there is no way that genetics alone could have known either what adaptations to make in the species or could have randomly figured it out in time for the species to survive the hostile conditions from which it was trying to escape. I know that some of the questions I posed above could be answered from an evolutionary theoretical perspective (I could answer them myself), but I don’t know that it could answer all of them satisfactorily or resolve the seeming contradictions in theory. Again, I find that it takes far more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in creation of the universe and all things in it by an intelligent, living, creative being.

Thanks for indulging this up-and-coming author in a bit of creative, speculative license, and thanks for the comments that came back. It’s always fun to get feedback from real, thinking people.

Steppin’ Out

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The sun was high in the sky as it drew toward midday, the heat turning the air into a veritable sauna. Giant ferns and palm trees dotted the landscape, plants best suited to the harsh environment and conditions. A nearby volcano issued forth a continuous breath of steam as it lay momentarily dormant. Waves from the ocean lapped gently onto the sand before receding back to the body from which they came. The landscape was silent but for the occasional buzz of a small insect population.

A flurry of splashing marked the emergence of a creature from the water. It stood there on the sand, lidless eyes bulging from its head in a continual look of mock surprise, sunlight glinting off its scales, legs trembling as it struggled to support its own weight. Its mouth gaped open and shut repeatedly, for the first time inhaling the foreign air for its primary supply of oxygen. It stood poised momentarily, as though unsure of what to do. It had simply leaped from the water to snag an insect flying just above the water’s surface and found itself propped on the harsh, course sand. Now the insect was gone, forgotten, as the creature oriented itself to its new
surroundings. The sun ultimately settled the creature’s indecisiveness for it, the harsh rays stinging its eyes and nearly blinding it. A blur of motion, a splash of water, and the creature was gone, back to its native habitat.

Shortly after nightfall the creature re-emerged from the water. This time it took a few uncertain steps before awkwardly shambling further away from the waterline, his tailfin leaving erratic trails in the sand. It took some time for him to familiarize himself with using his limbs in such a fashion. He had always had them, but in the water he had never really had reason to use them. Chasing down his food required little more than exercising the strength of his tail and navigation of his forward fins. Occasionally, he had used his legs to flip himself around a submerged rock, but far and away his legs had only served as impediments to movement by creating drag
and slowing him down. He had often surrendered his prey to another of his species simply because the other had no such inhibiting limbs, making him sleeker and faster. Now, though, he was alone in his environment, and he found that he could move much more quickly as he became familiar with the mechanics of using his limbs on dry ground.

He chased insects for a time, filling his belly and sating his hunger, never straying too far from the waterline, keeping it always within view. He was not yet quite ready to abandon his native habitat, and the lightening of the sky indicated that dawn was not far away and with it the sun against which his eyes had no defenses. He also felt his body becoming dehydrated and stiff the longer away from the water he remained, so he gently slipped back into the breaking waves
and swam into the depths. He would return to the land again at nightfall, but for now the cycle had run its course and mating season was upon him. Instinct drove him into the deeper water.

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There is at least one fundamental, theoretical, and logical flaw in this story. What is it (or what are they)?

Say What?!

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Communication seems to be something of a lost art these days. I find that when communication breaks down, the cause is either that someone simply failed to communicate or that someone didn’t quite know how to communicate. The solution to the first cause is relatively simple — just do it. The solution to the second poses a bit more of a challenge. Breakdown in written communication is typically due to a lack of knowledge and/or skill at the mechanics of writing
(something I will not go into here since, for most of us, grammar, punctuation, and spelling was beaten into us in high school English classes). Breakdown in verbal communication is a horse of another color, however. Here’s an example:

I briefly interacted with a gentleman this afternoon (about a 5-minute conversation). We started out on common ground (and common understanding), but when I walked away a few moments later, I felt a bit chagrined to realize I had no idea about what it was he ended up
talking. Somehow, in those few, brief moments of conversation, he had managed to completely lose me so that I wasn’t quite sure what point he had made (and he had made a point, as was apparent by the look of satisfaction on his face at the end of the conversation).

Looking back on that conversation, I realized, at least in part, what contributed to the breakdown in communication — he had completely skipped over the explanation of certain assumptions and background information in his haste to make his point before we parted ways. This left me thinking that he was talking about one thing when, in reality, he was talking about a related, but different, thing.

American culture moves with increasing rapidity these days. We find better and more effective shortcuts for just about everything. What’s interesting to me is that we have as yet to find a more effective shortcut for good communication. The pace of culture does seem to have an effect on communication (though I would definitely love to see some stats on this). We have less time to do everything and more activities crammed into the same 24 hours. As a result, communication tends to suffer and misunderstandings occur (and we’ve all experienced the effects of that). Good communication requires conscientiousness on behalf of the communicator (not to mention good listening skills on the part of the listener) and requires the communicator to take the time necessary to 1) make sure the effort is actually made to communicate, 2) make sure the appropriate groundwork was laid upon which to build conversation, and 3) make sure the subsequent message was communicated adequately and clearly. In effect, good communication requires slowing down a little and paying attention to the little nuances of effective dialogue, something that few of us have yet to master.

Close-Mindedness, Open-Mindedness, and Meta-Systemic Thinking

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Seen on a bumper sticker on the way home this evening:

bq. “The mind is like a parachute-It only works when it is open.”

I find it interesting that the general assumption is that a person is either open-minded or close-minded. It’s like you have to pick which one you want to be, and it had better not be close-minded (according to the edicts of the culture-at-large). For those who consider themselves open-minded, it’s the only way to view to the world. Open-mindedness is a breath of fresh air, allowing all men to be at peace with another because they can now accept one another without prejudice because all beliefs, all values, and all worldviews are equally correct, because there is no such thing as being right (or at least not 100% right) about anything, because it is the height of arrogance to ever propose to your fellow man that his beliefs might be in error or flawed in the slightest. The only blight upon this system are those they consider to be close-minded (a condition considered almost on a level with pedophilia, it seems), those who believe that their way is the only way, those who feel that they have no need for further analysis of their beliefs and worldviews.

Strangely enough, neither position recognizes, let alone acknowledges, the inconsistencies of their own stances. The ‘open-minded’ individual is tolerant of everything but the close-minded individual, making the open-minded individual close-minded in his very open-mindedness. The ‘close-minded’ individual is so self-assured of his correctness, of his ‘rightness’, that he is completely unwilling to acknowledge the idea that he may be mistaken in his logic or in his
conclusions and is thus unable to admit that the open-minded individual with whom he has been conversing may have a valid point. Both extremes are so confident and comfortable in their self-chosen philosophical stances that they rotely discard the entirety of the other’s arguments out of hand because it is seen as deriving from a philosophy which is completely counter to their own. Sadly, as a result, many great trues and compromises are lost to this practice, and
many great and wise men are reduced to foolishness and idiocy.

What both the open-minded individual and the close-minded individual seem to not understand is that their philosophical approaches are not simply an either/or choice but rather are two ends of a continuum. The continuum looks something like this:

Close-minded ————————– Open-minded

Every man, woman, and child alive fits somewhere along this line, and few populate the furthest extremes. Few people (if any) are so open-minded that they are willing to embrace any and every philosophy arbitrarily. And few (if any) are so close-minded that they reject every single philosophy that is not their own. Instead, everyone is open-minded about some things and close-minded about others.

I would propose that a specific mid-point be assigned to the above continuum.

Close-minded ————- Meta-System ————- Open-minded

This is my conceptualization of meta-systemic thinking. The prefix meta in this case means “beyond; transcending; more comprehensive; at a higher state of development.” When applied to thinking systems, meta opens up a whole new world of possibilities. It combines the best of close-minded and open-minded thinking while discarding the worst of both. Meta-systemic thinking would be known, in more familiar terms, as critical thinking, but in calling it meta-systemic thinking, certain implications and techniques are found that the definition of ‘critical thinking’ has lost (or never had).

Meta-systemic thinking approaches every philosophy and every worldview with a fresh eye, critiquing, anyalzing, breaking down, identifying assumptions, naming presuppositions, ferreting out flaws, and praising strengths. Meta-systemic thinking collates all that which is worth keeping and discards all that which is not. Meta-systemic thinking is continually reshaping the individual, being just open-minded enough to accept the possibility that a personal conclusion
or bit of logic may be flawed and in being willing to correct that flaw, even in accepting a bit of truth from a philosophy traditionally viewed as being wholly incorrect. It is also just close-minded enough to be willing to settle down to a firm stance once the individual believes that all available information has been gathered and processed and the chaff discarded. It is something of a tight-rope to walk, constantly struggling to balance on the edge of correctness while admitting the flaw of human error. Meta-systemic thinking acknowledges the existence of absolute truth and that that truth can be known by men. Meta-systemic thinking is an ongoing process, lifelong and continual, but overall it is a healthier and more robust approach to critical thought.

What I find so amazing is how few individuals are unwilling or unable to engage in meta-systemic thought, allowing instead personal hubris to interfere. Many a productive discussion has been derailed by the refusal to critically listen and think about the opposing argument and adjust accordingly. If only more people were willing to use their minds, rather than their feelings, to engage the world, we might find ourselves in a better place.