Abstract
In this chapter, I consider the shifts in species status from success to threat, in terms of the development of a hierarchy of species roles commencing with Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, the relationship between the two key ‘macroscopic’ processes of heritable variation and environmental change, and later developments in the study of the relationship between these macroscopic (genetic-evolutionary) and ‘microscopic’ (atomic-level) processes. I consider the latter relation with reference to the interventions made by theorists in biology and physics interested in the possibilities of a ‘quantum biology’ or, at the very least, some potential applications of quantum dynamic models to our understanding of biological processes, including the ecological concern with the dynamics of populations.
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- 1.
See Kennedy et al. (2009) for an example of the assessment of the purpose and possible advantages to the Noisy Miners of their mobbing behaviour . Mobbing has proved effective in the exclusion of other avian species from a defended territory. Furthermore, their distinctive call, after which they are named, proves to be an effective tool for the mobilization of fellow individuals, serving to ‘maximize’ the effects and advantages of possessing such a call (Kennedy et al. 2009, pp. 488–489).
- 2.
Indeed, the continuity of such practices with the persistence of colonialist violence towards indigenous human populations.
- 3.
See Ernst Mayr’s (1972) summary of the Lyell-Darwin relationship and why the Darwinian revolution was slow to take hold.
- 4.
Lyell, Book I, p. 12. Cf. the persistence of mythological tropes in the ‘first philosophers,’ such as the image of a founding or generative fire in the fragments of Heraclitus.
- 5.
A number of commentators note the problematic nature of Lyell’s image of an enlightened advancement of human knowledge; see, in particular, Gould (1987).
- 6.
Lyell identifies a ‘favourite dogma’ that the fossils of marine animals were not, in reality, of animal origin, grounded in a generalized disbelief that life could have existed before the formation of existing mountain ranges. He refers to the example of Steno, who ‘had dissected a shark recently taken from the Mediterranean, and had demonstrated that its teeth and bones were identical with many fossils found in Tuscany’ (Lyell 1835, p. 39).
- 7.
See also Burns et al. (2004) for a discussion of the earliest evidence available to us in the form of the microfossils known as stromatolites. They point to the rather precarious status of such fossils as evidence, reliant upon the comparison of the visible physical features of modern stromatolites with those of potential ancient examples.
- 8.
Cf. the adoption of this stance for the purposes of biocentric environmentalism. For Taylor (1981), our awareness of our relative insignificance should be humbling and force us to adopt a stance of respect towards a broader ecosystem that would thrive just as well without us, but without which we would perish.
- 9.
Followed by Hugo De Vries (who contributed to the popularization of Mendelian inheritance), to become the process of pangenesis or genetic mutation. See De Vries (1910).
- 10.
- 11.
Consider Darwin’s characterization of our negative reactions to extinction as a reflection of our ‘profound ignorance’ and ‘high presumption’ such that ‘we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life!’ (Darwin 1996, p. 61). This echoes Lyell’s point in his Principles of Geology: ‘…although we have as yet considered one class only of the causes (the organic) whereby species may become exterminated, yet the continued action of these alone, throughout myriads of future ages, must work an entire change in the state of the organic creation, not merely on the continents and islands, where the power of man is chiefly exerted, but in the great ocean, where his control is almost unknown’ (Lyell 1832, pp. 156–157).
- 12.
This discussion is featured in comments added by Darwin to an American edition of The Origin of Species published in 1861.
- 13.
Their survey of key works of the Modern Synthesis illuminates the persistence of a view shaped since Darwin that species display ‘special properties’ that render them real and objective. They cite Theodosius Dobzhansky’s Genetics and the Origin of Species for its promotion of modern genetic research in the study of species as ‘real genetical and evolving entities,’ and Huxley’s The New Systematics as ‘the historical touchstone for modern systematic research programs that see species not just as categories with representatives in museums, but also as dynamic evolving entities that exist independently of human observers and of human-assigned categories’ (Hey et al. 2003, pp. 597–598).
- 14.
Elsasser expands on this problem in his book, Reflections on a Theory of Organisms. The loss in descriptive accuracy that ensues when we try to consider the numerous possible configurations of the elements of organic compounds provides us with a key distinction between physical and biological description and verifiability. Physical laws are assumed to be applicable to infinite sets of ‘experiments;’ that is, they hold everywhere at all times. Biological principles, on the other hand, can typically only refer to finite sets, because the features are so variable (true individuals are so numerous) that a sufficient amount of data (number of samples) is unavailable. Therefore, the biologist can only deal in rules not laws. Unfathomable complexity refers to this limitation rather than to some unknowable vital principle (Elsasser 1998, p. 41).
- 15.
Compare the later formulation of the dynamic of island biogeography by Robert MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson (2001): ‘By studying clusters of islands, biologists view a simpler microcosm of the seemingly infinite complexity of continental and Oceanic biogeography. Islands offer an additional advantage in being more numerous than continents and oceans. By their very multiplicity, and variation in shape, size, degree of isolation, and ecology , islands provide the necessary replications in natural ‘experiments’ by which evolutionary hypothesis can be tested’ (MacArthur and Wilson 2001, p. 3). And further, a ‘basic equilibrium model is developed which postulates immigration rate curves that fall and extinction rate curves that rise with an increase in the number of resident species’ (MacArthur and Wilson 2001, p. 66).
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Khandker, W. (2020). Transmutation. In: Process Metaphysics and Mutative Life. Palgrave Perspectives on Process Philosophy . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43048-1_2
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