On atomism: the atomic theory of the pre-Socratics was just another in a series of essentially navel-gazing theories. Today we privilege and single out that theory for the obvious reasons, but it doesn’t deserve much more praise than the alternatives. The philosophers involved had absolutely no way to test it and in fact weren’t interested in doing so. And the alternatives were as convincing or more convincing, given the available evidence, as their speculation.
Suppose some SF writer in 1940s wrote a hack piece about an alien invasion where we turn out to live in “ten dimensions” and the aliens are coming out of the extra ones. And suppose string theory actually comes through and proves itself in another 20-30 years. Giving credit to the pre-Socratic atomists for figuring out atoms would be as silly as giving credit to that SF author for figuring out before everyone else that we really live in 10 dimensions.
On natural selection: the hard part with natural selection is not figuring out that it happens. It’s figuring out that it happens and it’s responsible for a large portion of evolutionary diversity. That’s not obvious at all, to put it very mildly. In retrospect or not. And to even formulate that hypothesis—which, given only everyday knowledge, seems way too bizarre to even consider—requires a huge body of biological knowledge, taxonomy, anatomy, the Galapagos islands, etc. Darwin’s achievement was not to say “hey, natural selection happens”. It was to say “hey, I know that natural selection on the face of it looks like it could drive at most some small change within a species, but actually, THIS is the mechanism mostly responsible for EVERYTHING”.
But more than that, you can’t even talk about natural selection before you’re convinced there’s evolution. Biologists were by and large convinced there was evolution by the time Darwin showed up. How the hell would ancient Greeks be able to get there just by sitting down and thinking “from first principles”? You need to dissect hundreds of species and see how similar they are inside. You need fossil records and something to compare them to. You need geology to tell you that Earth is really old. You need Lamarck.
On intelligence explosion: not sure where to begin, maybe with “they could have realized that scientists would eventually come to understand these systems so long as scientific progress continued”. They didn’t have any conception of scientific progress. They didn’t know anything about “scientists”, either. And they had absolutely no basis for thinking that just because people are trying to understand e.g. intelligence, that they’re actually going to succeed.
I don’t agree, but let’s talk about something else.
On atomism: the atomic theory of the pre-Socratics was just another in a series of essentially navel-gazing theories. Today we privilege and single out that theory for the obvious reasons, but it doesn’t deserve much more praise than the alternatives. The philosophers involved had absolutely no way to test it and in fact weren’t interested in doing so. And the alternatives were as convincing or more convincing, given the available evidence, as their speculation.
Agreed. There were good reasons from the “physics” of the day to reject atomism. If I remember correctly, Aristotle’s argument went something like this:
The existence of atoms requires the existence of a void.
How could atoms move around if there wasn’t any space for them to move to?
The speed of an object is determined by the “thickness” (density) of the medium it is travelling through.
If you drop a ball through the air (a very thin medium), it will move much faster than a ball dropped through water (a thicker medium) and faster still than a ball dropped through a jar of honey (a very thick medium).
A void doesn’t have any “thickness”.
If you dropped a ball through a void it would move infinitely fast.
Actual infinites are impossible.
Therefore, the void (and atoms which require a void) does not exist.
I think so. And there were other reasons, too, for Aristotle’s theory of the four elements to look more appealing than the atomism he was rejecting. For example, it attempted to explain hot and cold by incorporating them as basic qualities of the elements and giving some rules about how one can turn into the other. Taking hot vs cold and dry vs wet as the basic qualities, we have four possibilities:
hot and dry → fire
hot and wet → air
cold and dry → earth
cold and wet → water
Transitions between these four that change only one quality are easy and more common (like water->air by evaporation, or air->water by rain), while those that change both qualities (air<-->earth, fire<-->water) are harder, next to impossible. This actually corresponds to observed phenomena to some degree. The atomic theory had nothing of the kind and didn’t even attempt to account for things like temperature.
But more than that, you can’t even talk about natural selection before you’re convinced there’s evolution.
Why not? After all, you had said “the hard part with natural selection is not figuring out that it happens. It’s figuring out that it happens and it’s responsible for a large portion of evolutionary diversity.”
How the hell would ancient Greeks be able to get there just by sitting down and thinking “from first principles”?
It’s a fair actual question, even if the answer is “they couldn’t have,” so “the hell” doesn’t belong.
You need geology to tell you that Earth is really old.
You don’t. You could assume it was infinitely old, and get other things right.
the Galapagos islands
The question is how something would have been possible, if it was possible. Your dismissal is too quick and seems based on showing how the Ancient Greeks couldn’t have readily used the same evidence and thought that actually worked in recent history.
Why not? After all, you had said “the hard part with natural selection is not figuring out that it happens. It’s figuring out that it happens and it’s responsible for a large portion of evolutionary diversity.”
What I meant to say (and thought it was clear from the context, but was possibly wrong) was that you can’t talk about the important thing about natural selection—the “hard part” I’d mentioned earlier—without knowing about evolution. When people talk about natural selection as Darwin’s great achievement that could or could not have been achieved earlier, it is this hard part they are referring to (unless they’re confused and don’t understand this, in which case it this hard part they ought to be referring to).
It’s a fair actual question, even if the answer is “they couldn’t have,” so “the hell” doesn’t belong.
I think the question is rather on the rhetorical side (and I proceeded to give a sample of reasons for thinking so), so “the hell” is there to hint at the exasperation at a post that seems blithely naive.
You don’t. You could assume it was infinitely old, and get other things right.
Let me augment that: really old and slowly changing. By the end of the 18th century, geologists knew that shark teeth found on mountain tops are likely explained by the fact that a long time ago, these rocks were under water. The idea that geological processes happen very slowly, in “deep time”, and accumulate to produce huge changes was a direct inspiration to biologists in coming up with evolution.
The question is how something would have been possible, if it was possible. Your dismissal is too quick
Lukeprog’s post didn’t ask “how could they have discovered this through means other than with what modern science discovered it”. Instead, it said “these discoveries follow from a few basic first principles and they could have just thought about them, but didn’t”. And my dismissal works by pointing out that this view is incredibly naive and ignorant of the massive amount of evidence that modern science needed to accumulate before these discoveries could be made.
Lukeprog’s post didn’t ask “how could they have discovered this through means other than with what modern science discovered it”. Instead, it said “these discoveries follow from a few basic first principles and they could have just thought about them, but didn’t”
We were both wrong; here’s the relevant part:
The ancient atomists reasoned their way from first principles to materialism and atomic theory before Socrates began his life’s work of making people look stupid in the marketplace of Athens. Why didn’t they discover natural selection, too? After all, natural selection follows necessarily from heritability, variation, and selection, and the Greeks had plenty of evidence for all three pieces. Natural selection is obvious once you understand it, but it took us a long time to discover it.
So, the Greeks had evidence for some intermediary conclusions, and it is asserted that they could have worked their way from there to a good understanding of natural selection. Not necessarily using first principles to help discover natural selection.
You haven’t said why natural selection wouldn’t follow from those things listed (although saying why it would is the OP’s responsibility), or that the Greeks didn’t have enough evidence for those things. Instead, you addressed the possibility of going from those to a good understanding of natural selection, arguing that ”...to even formulate that hypothesis...requires...” and you listed things that the historical human discoverers actually required to get it, when the issue is the minimum it should have required.
But your response is an appeal to incredulity that puts far too much weight on what led people to discover evolution to convincingly address whether or not a different way was possible. Showing that a set of things was sufficient doesn’t show they were necessary.
As the OP thought the argument from “heritability, variation, and selection” to natural selection strong enough to be implicit, you should argue for a reason to believe he would have falsely believe that before dismissing the idea. Without that, all we have is a clash of intuitions, and on your part it doesn’t look like you’ve updated much on lukeprog’s apparent extreme confidence that it could have been so derived (which I infer from his unfortunate failure to argue for the point).
This is a disappointing post.
On atomism: the atomic theory of the pre-Socratics was just another in a series of essentially navel-gazing theories. Today we privilege and single out that theory for the obvious reasons, but it doesn’t deserve much more praise than the alternatives. The philosophers involved had absolutely no way to test it and in fact weren’t interested in doing so. And the alternatives were as convincing or more convincing, given the available evidence, as their speculation.
Suppose some SF writer in 1940s wrote a hack piece about an alien invasion where we turn out to live in “ten dimensions” and the aliens are coming out of the extra ones. And suppose string theory actually comes through and proves itself in another 20-30 years. Giving credit to the pre-Socratic atomists for figuring out atoms would be as silly as giving credit to that SF author for figuring out before everyone else that we really live in 10 dimensions.
On natural selection: the hard part with natural selection is not figuring out that it happens. It’s figuring out that it happens and it’s responsible for a large portion of evolutionary diversity. That’s not obvious at all, to put it very mildly. In retrospect or not. And to even formulate that hypothesis—which, given only everyday knowledge, seems way too bizarre to even consider—requires a huge body of biological knowledge, taxonomy, anatomy, the Galapagos islands, etc. Darwin’s achievement was not to say “hey, natural selection happens”. It was to say “hey, I know that natural selection on the face of it looks like it could drive at most some small change within a species, but actually, THIS is the mechanism mostly responsible for EVERYTHING”.
But more than that, you can’t even talk about natural selection before you’re convinced there’s evolution. Biologists were by and large convinced there was evolution by the time Darwin showed up. How the hell would ancient Greeks be able to get there just by sitting down and thinking “from first principles”? You need to dissect hundreds of species and see how similar they are inside. You need fossil records and something to compare them to. You need geology to tell you that Earth is really old. You need Lamarck.
On intelligence explosion: not sure where to begin, maybe with “they could have realized that scientists would eventually come to understand these systems so long as scientific progress continued”. They didn’t have any conception of scientific progress. They didn’t know anything about “scientists”, either. And they had absolutely no basis for thinking that just because people are trying to understand e.g. intelligence, that they’re actually going to succeed.
I don’t agree, but let’s talk about something else.
Agreed. There were good reasons from the “physics” of the day to reject atomism. If I remember correctly, Aristotle’s argument went something like this:
The existence of atoms requires the existence of a void.
How could atoms move around if there wasn’t any space for them to move to?
The speed of an object is determined by the “thickness” (density) of the medium it is travelling through.
If you drop a ball through the air (a very thin medium), it will move much faster than a ball dropped through water (a thicker medium) and faster still than a ball dropped through a jar of honey (a very thick medium).
A void doesn’t have any “thickness”.
If you dropped a ball through a void it would move infinitely fast.
Actual infinites are impossible.
Therefore, the void (and atoms which require a void) does not exist.
Sounds pretty reasonable, doesn’t it?
I think so. And there were other reasons, too, for Aristotle’s theory of the four elements to look more appealing than the atomism he was rejecting. For example, it attempted to explain hot and cold by incorporating them as basic qualities of the elements and giving some rules about how one can turn into the other. Taking hot vs cold and dry vs wet as the basic qualities, we have four possibilities:
hot and dry → fire
hot and wet → air
cold and dry → earth
cold and wet → water
Transitions between these four that change only one quality are easy and more common (like water->air by evaporation, or air->water by rain), while those that change both qualities (air<-->earth, fire<-->water) are harder, next to impossible. This actually corresponds to observed phenomena to some degree. The atomic theory had nothing of the kind and didn’t even attempt to account for things like temperature.
Why not? After all, you had said “the hard part with natural selection is not figuring out that it happens. It’s figuring out that it happens and it’s responsible for a large portion of evolutionary diversity.”
It’s a fair actual question, even if the answer is “they couldn’t have,” so “the hell” doesn’t belong.
You don’t. You could assume it was infinitely old, and get other things right.
The question is how something would have been possible, if it was possible. Your dismissal is too quick and seems based on showing how the Ancient Greeks couldn’t have readily used the same evidence and thought that actually worked in recent history.
What I meant to say (and thought it was clear from the context, but was possibly wrong) was that you can’t talk about the important thing about natural selection—the “hard part” I’d mentioned earlier—without knowing about evolution. When people talk about natural selection as Darwin’s great achievement that could or could not have been achieved earlier, it is this hard part they are referring to (unless they’re confused and don’t understand this, in which case it this hard part they ought to be referring to).
I think the question is rather on the rhetorical side (and I proceeded to give a sample of reasons for thinking so), so “the hell” is there to hint at the exasperation at a post that seems blithely naive.
Let me augment that: really old and slowly changing. By the end of the 18th century, geologists knew that shark teeth found on mountain tops are likely explained by the fact that a long time ago, these rocks were under water. The idea that geological processes happen very slowly, in “deep time”, and accumulate to produce huge changes was a direct inspiration to biologists in coming up with evolution.
Lukeprog’s post didn’t ask “how could they have discovered this through means other than with what modern science discovered it”. Instead, it said “these discoveries follow from a few basic first principles and they could have just thought about them, but didn’t”. And my dismissal works by pointing out that this view is incredibly naive and ignorant of the massive amount of evidence that modern science needed to accumulate before these discoveries could be made.
We were both wrong; here’s the relevant part:
So, the Greeks had evidence for some intermediary conclusions, and it is asserted that they could have worked their way from there to a good understanding of natural selection. Not necessarily using first principles to help discover natural selection.
You haven’t said why natural selection wouldn’t follow from those things listed (although saying why it would is the OP’s responsibility), or that the Greeks didn’t have enough evidence for those things. Instead, you addressed the possibility of going from those to a good understanding of natural selection, arguing that ”...to even formulate that hypothesis...requires...” and you listed things that the historical human discoverers actually required to get it, when the issue is the minimum it should have required.
But your response is an appeal to incredulity that puts far too much weight on what led people to discover evolution to convincingly address whether or not a different way was possible. Showing that a set of things was sufficient doesn’t show they were necessary.
As the OP thought the argument from “heritability, variation, and selection” to natural selection strong enough to be implicit, you should argue for a reason to believe he would have falsely believe that before dismissing the idea. Without that, all we have is a clash of intuitions, and on your part it doesn’t look like you’ve updated much on lukeprog’s apparent extreme confidence that it could have been so derived (which I infer from his unfortunate failure to argue for the point).