PHL357H5 Lecture 11: chapter 11
Document Summary
11- the evolutionary contingency thesis by john h. beatty: introduction. Evolution is like a video tape with different endings (pg 217 in pdf file: mostly with unlikely outcomes. Laws of nature only loosely effect the outcomes of evolution. He argues in his essay that there are only contingent states of nature but no evolutionary laws that describe biology or natural selection. Blue10: the evolutionary contingency thesis and laws of biology. Evolutionary contingency thesis says this: all generalizations of the living world are: mathematical, physical or chemical generalizations (or deductive consequences of mathematical, physical or chemical generalizations plus initial conditions) There is nothing that stems from biology that will not be subject to the principles of physics, chemistry or math: are distinctively biological, in which case they describe contingent outcomes of evolution. Has some rule making capabilities where the rules always assist the outcome that evolution wants to see. Humans being relatively hairless eliminates the other values (page219)
