07-11-2004, 04:59 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-Sridatta+Jul 11 2004, 08:54 AM-->QUOTE(Sridatta @ Jul 11 2004, 08:54 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->
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Sridatta, good post. Due to my own contemplations and education I am in agreement with some of what you say...
>>When we look at the various life-forms so well adapted to their environs and so well engineered in form, it gives an impression that natural selection is progressive.<<
I guess if you have studied the evolutionary theory you must have come across what is known as the fundamental theorem of natural selection. It is a mathematical consequence of basic theory of biology and states that fitness always increases. I believe that in that sense there is a certain directionality of increasing fitness- that is you cannot go through a decreased fitness in the fitness landscape even if there it were to reach of peak of fitness elsewhere. Hence, what we perceive as progress is not the course taken by evolution, but merely ever-increasing fitness.
>>I think in the context of phylogenies, the word "tree" is a bit of a misnomer.
"Evolution is a bush, not a tree. "
~ Stephen Jay Gould <<
This is what I hate about SJG- I think he did more harm than good in his attempts to popularize evolution- he is such a glib semanticist. In the mind of students of evolution there really no difference between the "tree" and the "bush". At the heart of it is the topology of the evolutionary relationships matter not whether you call it a tree or a bush. This statement of Gould really makes little or no sense (are there not trees with a bush like branching?) .
>>They believed that the soul would actually be reborn as something else -- a human birth being the result of accreted "merits" and suffering in life being the result of accreted "sins".<<
I wonder in this context how the Buddha's numerous animal births have to be interpretted. Is for example the birth as the noble ruler of the monkeys worse than the birth as Angulimala the man?
I suspect the Hindus did not uniformly consider animal births worse than human births. By the ordinance of Hindu law in the Vasistha Dharmasutra (IIRC) the penance for killing vertebrates is similar to killing of humans. Though I think killing invertebrates results in lesser penance.
So I suspect some Hindus may have seen a hierarchical chain, while others may have seen a more flat existence. In think the old Indo-European lifestyle was so animal dependent that it accord great respect for (at least some) animals.
I remember our forum mod HHji telling me some years ago that he would like to be born as an ameba or some bacterium <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> Anyways I fear we are rambling far away from itihasa-purana <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> ?
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Sridatta, good post. Due to my own contemplations and education I am in agreement with some of what you say...
>>When we look at the various life-forms so well adapted to their environs and so well engineered in form, it gives an impression that natural selection is progressive.<<
I guess if you have studied the evolutionary theory you must have come across what is known as the fundamental theorem of natural selection. It is a mathematical consequence of basic theory of biology and states that fitness always increases. I believe that in that sense there is a certain directionality of increasing fitness- that is you cannot go through a decreased fitness in the fitness landscape even if there it were to reach of peak of fitness elsewhere. Hence, what we perceive as progress is not the course taken by evolution, but merely ever-increasing fitness.
>>I think in the context of phylogenies, the word "tree" is a bit of a misnomer.
"Evolution is a bush, not a tree. "
~ Stephen Jay Gould <<
This is what I hate about SJG- I think he did more harm than good in his attempts to popularize evolution- he is such a glib semanticist. In the mind of students of evolution there really no difference between the "tree" and the "bush". At the heart of it is the topology of the evolutionary relationships matter not whether you call it a tree or a bush. This statement of Gould really makes little or no sense (are there not trees with a bush like branching?) .
>>They believed that the soul would actually be reborn as something else -- a human birth being the result of accreted "merits" and suffering in life being the result of accreted "sins".<<
I wonder in this context how the Buddha's numerous animal births have to be interpretted. Is for example the birth as the noble ruler of the monkeys worse than the birth as Angulimala the man?
I suspect the Hindus did not uniformly consider animal births worse than human births. By the ordinance of Hindu law in the Vasistha Dharmasutra (IIRC) the penance for killing vertebrates is similar to killing of humans. Though I think killing invertebrates results in lesser penance.
So I suspect some Hindus may have seen a hierarchical chain, while others may have seen a more flat existence. In think the old Indo-European lifestyle was so animal dependent that it accord great respect for (at least some) animals.
I remember our forum mod HHji telling me some years ago that he would like to be born as an ameba or some bacterium <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> Anyways I fear we are rambling far away from itihasa-purana <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> ?