10.04 An Agential Perspective – Beyond Networks: The Evolution of Living Systems скачать в хорошем качестве

10.04 An Agential Perspective – Beyond Networks: The Evolution of Living Systems

Module 10 of "Beyond Networks" returns from the true complexity of evolution to have a look at different simplified perspectives on the basic process of adaptation by natural selection. In this final lecture of the module, I integrate Griesemer's reproducer perspective into the organisational account of the organism. I show how self-maintenance is based on organisational continuity, not only through the life cycle, but also during the process of reproduction. In fact, it is the propagation of organisation from parent to offspring that leads to the ontogenetic closure of the life cycle. Basically, organisational closure not only gives us autonomy and agency, but also Darwinian evolution: development ensuring organisational closure and producing variation during the life cycle, reproduction leading organisational continuity across generations (inheritance), and fitness differences due to different rates of propagation of organisation. Based on this foundation for the evolution of agents, we explore how an agent theory of evolution would look like, and compare it to traditional theories that treat organisms as objects (or ignore them altogether). Such a theory would have to employ a type of teleological explanation that acknowledges the goal-oriented pursuit of affordances by living beings. I show how such explanations can be scientific, even though they are not mechanistic. The first part of the lecture relies heavily a paper by Saborido, Mossio, and Moreno, published in the British Journal of the Philosophy of Science (2011, Vol. 62: p. 583), which integrates reproduction into the organisational account of the organism. I also use a book chapter by James DiFrisco in Nicholson and Dupré's 2018 book Everything Flows. The second part of the lecture follows an argument in Denis Walsh absolutely fascinating book Organisms, Agency, and Evolution (2015), drawing on Lee Smolin's Time Reborn (2013). I strongly recommend both books if you are interested in transcending the Newtonian Paradigm.