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RE: Philosophy of Science Part 1: The Bugbear of Teleology
Wow, our upvotes are big now, lol. Anyway I just wanted to point out what the other commenter did:
The problem is that we're not by any means an inevitable result of evolution.
I get particularly frustrated by the arrogance of mankind. Calling is the inevitable result implies we are the result, the end, the finale conclusion.
This is dumb not only because we're still evolving, but so is everything else. Chimps aren't behind us evolutionarily, they're alongside us, perfectly adapted to a different lifestyle. It's not like their genes are more ancient than ours.
I'd argue something like wheat or grass on the whole, or mites, or ants dominate the earth just as much or more so than us. Is wheat the inevitable result of evolution?
Yeah, your upvotes are definitely getting pretty huge. Definitely not complaining, though. :D
The fact that we're still evolving was the whole reason for my rant about the paleo diet the other day- while it's not actually a bad diet, it's entirely based upon the idea that we've stopped evolving.
In fact, I actually think that speaking of evolution as progress at all is quite harmful- take living fossils like the coelacanth, the opossum, or any number of other species that have maintained fairly stable forms for eons, with little adaptation necessary to survive in their niches. They are, in this sense, "less evolved", but that makes them by no means less well adapted to survival. Evolution isn't the goal for a species (for that to be true brings in yet more teleology)- it's just a means to survive.
And wheat definitely isn't- especially considering that we've bred it into functionally whole new species. And, since while culture, language, technology, and society can act upon evolution, they themselves aren't a subservient category to evolution itself, so wheat's nearly as far as you can get from an inevitable result of evolution.