Discuss evolution reading group

Feedback - Week 3 - BOOK CLUB Kauffman (1993) CH1

[sorry guys, just noticed I've been citing this book as being published in 1992 instead of 1993]

Thought we could test run a weekly feedback post on the readings. If anyone thinks there was a worthwhile point raised during the meeting, they can add a comment to this and future feedback posts.

("Week 3" above refers to the 3rd week of the UQ calendar)

My recollections: John pointed out that Chapter 1 as a historical overview of evolutionary theroy (to set up the backdrop for his ideas in the rest of the book) puts forward an invented history that didn't really happen if you go back and look carefully for yourself (which John appears to have done). Some of the "black and white" differences between pre-Darwin and Darwin that Kauffman talks about are not true representations of history, and though some like Linaeus were more "typological" thinkers, many were not and accepted change could occur within species. John said he still thought Darwin did some great important new stuff, but it didn't pop out of nowhere. Perhaps Duncan or John could correct me there, or add other important points.

Also there's Mitchel's group email that most of us recieved:

• "I have to bail on today's meeting... By way of a token (meta)comment:
  It seems hard to say much about Kauffman's work without first
  proceeding to the later chapters. In the introduction and chapter 1,
  he's stating some intuitions and setting out a research program, and
  in chapter 2, one only begins to see his substantive results. My
  intuitions may disagree with his - I might think that an organism
  would best be viewed as a combinatorial structure *made out of* forms
  of spontaneous order, in which the *combination* is a product of
  selection - but such disagreement won't count for much until I've
  walked with him through the concrete results he wants to present. Only
  then would I be in a position to have an informed opinion."

posted by Chris Glen @ 2:31 PM