So: direct experimentation by animals is part of Skinnerian learning—which is hundreds of millions of years old. The results of the experiments go on to influence the germ line of organisms via selection. Would you claim that that is not part of “evolution”?
Pinning it down a little, the part I object to is:
The results of the experiments go on to influence the germ line of organisms via selection.
It is trivially true that any change will have an influence, chaos theory and all. It seems unlikely that this influence will in any way relate to the results of the experimentation, in terms of production of variance or difference in heritability. Yet this seems to be what you are hand-wavily suggesting, without backing it up with math.
It seems unlikely that this influence will in any way relate to the results of the experimentation, in terms of production of variance or difference in heritability. Yet this seems to be what you are hand-wavily suggesting, without backing it up with math.
We do know a fair bit about that. The idea is that it influences the germ line via selection.
If you perform experiments and the result is that you die—or fail to mate—the selective mechanism of information-transfer into the germ line is obvious. Milder outcomes have less dramatic effects—but still result in information transfer. The phenomenon has been studied under these names:
That learned information and genetic information were aspects of a more general underlying phenomenon was observed by Semon (1904) and later there were pioneering contributions by B.F.Skinner—for example in Selection by Consequences. Skinner explicitly based his theory of learning on Darwin’s theory of evolution. The idea was refined further in Dennet’s Tower of Generate-and-Test.
This smells funny.
Sure: it conflicts with the popular misunderstanding of evolution being “blind”—and without foresight.
Pinning it down a little, the part I object to is:
It is trivially true that any change will have an influence, chaos theory and all. It seems unlikely that this influence will in any way relate to the results of the experimentation, in terms of production of variance or difference in heritability. Yet this seems to be what you are hand-wavily suggesting, without backing it up with math.
We do know a fair bit about that. The idea is that it influences the germ line via selection.
If you perform experiments and the result is that you die—or fail to mate—the selective mechanism of information-transfer into the germ line is obvious. Milder outcomes have less dramatic effects—but still result in information transfer. The phenomenon has been studied under these names:
Genetic_assimilation
The Baldwin effect
The assimilate-stretch principle
If we go as far as humans there are also things like: Biocultural evolution.
That learned information and genetic information were aspects of a more general underlying phenomenon was observed by Semon (1904) and later there were pioneering contributions by B.F.Skinner—for example in Selection by Consequences. Skinner explicitly based his theory of learning on Darwin’s theory of evolution. The idea was refined further in Dennet’s Tower of Generate-and-Test.