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RE: Philosophy of Science Part 1: The Bugbear of Teleology

in #science6 years ago

Yeah, your upvotes are definitely getting pretty huge. Definitely not complaining, though. :D

The fact that we're still evolving was the whole reason for my rant about the paleo diet the other day- while it's not actually a bad diet, it's entirely based upon the idea that we've stopped evolving.

In fact, I actually think that speaking of evolution as progress at all is quite harmful- take living fossils like the coelacanth, the opossum, or any number of other species that have maintained fairly stable forms for eons, with little adaptation necessary to survive in their niches. They are, in this sense, "less evolved", but that makes them by no means less well adapted to survival. Evolution isn't the goal for a species (for that to be true brings in yet more teleology)- it's just a means to survive.

And wheat definitely isn't- especially considering that we've bred it into functionally whole new species. And, since while culture, language, technology, and society can act upon evolution, they themselves aren't a subservient category to evolution itself, so wheat's nearly as far as you can get from an inevitable result of evolution.

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