To understand the continuity of the genesis of bionomic and psychonomic species, one must first understand central principles of the origin of species. The following is not intended to provide a comprehensive explanation of the origin of species, but rather to present these central principles, which are essential to psychonomics.
Why „origin“ and „genesis“ instead of „evolution“ and „development“?
The latter terms contain the idea that something exists (e.g., a humunculus) that simply needs to evolve. It is probably not without reason that Darwin himself titled his treatise „On the Origin of Species“ and used the word evolution in a completely different sense in this text.
On the other hand, due to theological/philosophical tradition, these terms always imply a predetermined, teleological, mechanistic, monocausal (causa efficiens), monofinal (causa finalis), and stage-based (scala naturae) origin.
Some of these ideas have been abandoned, at least in biology, and the assumption is no longer that there is a teleological evolution toward something higher, but rather that life forms are increasingly differentiated.
But how does this increasing differentiation come about?
Biogenesis
Not only has the Earth undergone massive changes during its formation to its present state. Biomass, which essentially distinguishes Earth from, for example, the Moon, has as well.
Firstly, it has increased, which allows us to define reproduction as a goal of living nature (purely quantitatively). Since reproduction is only possible if the previous generation survives for a sufficiently long time, survival is the secondary goal. However, since the emergence of the first cyanobacteria, biomass has not increased through a homogeneous life form, but through increasingly diverse, increasingly differentiated ones.
There is not just one way to achieve these two goals, survival and reproduction; rather, different life forms have developed a wide variety of teleological strategies through continuous change in these strategies.
Multidimensional-dynamic instead of monocausal-static
Every life form not only adapts to existing physical, chemical, and biological conditions, but also changes and modifies them passively, simply through its presence. Without cyanobacteria, there would be no oxygen; without plants, there would be no herbivores; without herbivores, there would be no predators or scavengers.
At the same time, life forms also actively change living conditions. Be it nests for breeding, dens for hibernation, beaver dams…
With each new life form, biomass becomes more complex, offering ever more opportunities and risks, ever more physical-chemical noise from which the information necessary for nutrition and defense can/must be extracted. The possibilities and difficulties of constructing (in the sense of C. Llyod Morgan) one’s own „Umwelt“ (in the sense of Jakob von Uexküll) become ever more complex.
„A much closer analogy is this: Something stands without and knocks at the doorway of sense, and from the nature of the knocks we learn somewhat concerning that which knocks. In other words, at the bidding of certain stimuli from without we construct that mental product which we call the object of sense. It is of these mental constructions—“constructs” I will call them for convenience—that I have now to speak.“ (Morgan, C. Lloyd 1890/2015)
If only the constructivists had simply read Uexküll and Morgan… instead of reinventing the wheel.
The fact that life forms are becoming increasingly complex and differentiated is thus the necessary consequence of the origin of species themselves. Mutation per mutationem.
Where does selection act? In the gene, the individual, or the population?
The question is already posed incorrectly, and for that reason alone it is impossible to find a reasonable answer to it. What you could know if you had read the English „Empiriker” (Lewes, Morgen, Romanes, … in contrast to the Empiricists).
„We cannot be sufficiently on our guard in the use of abstractions, and especially against our tendency to confound ideal separations with real separations. It is this tendency which keeps up the tradition of Mind existing apart from Life, and following other laws.
We separate, for convenience, mental phenomena from other vital phenomena, and then again separate mental phenomena from neural phenomena; this done, we overlook the real identity, and do not see that every mental phenomenon has its corresponding neural phenomenon (the two being as the convex and concave surfaces of the same sphere, distinguishable yet identical), and that every neural phenomenon involves the whole organism; by which alone the influence of the body on the mind, and of the mind on the body, can be explained.” (Lewes, George H. 1874)
Analysis, which involves singling out individual parts, is necessary to reduce the complexity inherent in the overall system.
Analysis consciously distinguishes the inseparable!
Analysis is thus a fiction in Vaihinger’s sense. In contrast to a dogmatic separation of the inseparable.
„The object and subject, involved in the sense-impression, are like the color or the scent of a rose, distinguishable in thought but they are not separable in experience. We distinguish quite clearly the color from the scent of the rose, but we know that they are inseparable in sense-experience. Thus we distinguish the objective and subjective aspects of the impression, but in the impression they are inseparable.“ (Morgan, C. Lloyd 1894/2005)
Variability and Zones of Adaptability and Modifiability
Life forms are not simply statically adapted, but possess zones of adaptability and modifiability of varying sizes. This applies both between species and, due to the variability of individuals through sexual reproduction, also within species. The zones of adaptability and modifiability (ZoA, ZoM) of species result from the sum of the zones of individual individuals.
Gregory Bateson gives the following example of the physiological zone of adaptability:
„There are gradations of depth in somatic change. If a person climbs from sea level to 4,000 meters in the mountains, unless they are in very good physical condition, they will begin to wheeze and their heart will race. These immediate and reversible somatic changes are adequate for dealing with an emergency situation, but it would be an excessive waste of flexibility to use wheezing and tachycardia as the permanent adaptation to the mountain atmosphere.“ (Bateson, Gregory 1984)
If humans climb even higher, they will eventually reach the limit of their adaptive zone, and they will develop altitude sickness, for example.
If, on the other hand, they remain at 4,000 meters for an extended period, their physiology will first adapt. And then, over many generations, the physiology of their offspring will adapt.
„Adaptation“ here means a „regression to the mean,“ which is not defined absolutely, but relatively. A mean of the newly emerging zone of adaptive capacity to different altitudes. High mountain dwellers will then experience physiological problems when descending to lower regions.
The „success“ of adaptability depends on the relationship between the zone of adaptability and the combination of speed and extent of change.
In major mass extinctions, the extent and speed of change were too great for the majority of living organisms to cope with their zone of adaptability.
But the zone of adaptability is determined not only by physiology, but also by the various survival and reproductive strategies.
An example of this is the many different strategies for surviving the winter. As with migratory birds, animals that hibernate and/or store food…
Zone of Modifiability
As already mentioned, every life form automatically changes its biomass, passively and actively, directly and indirectly. One can argue about whether cyanobacteria or humans have the largest ZoM. Organisms with large ZoM are called „keystone species“ in ecology.
These different zones should be understood as distinctions, not separations. On the contrary, these zones are interactive and dynamically interdependent, and the transitions are fluid. Humans are probably the best example of how an expansion of the ZoM through technology also leads to an expansion of the ZoA.
Example in Individual Genesis: Vygotsky – Zone of Proximal Genesis (Development)
Due to the above-mentioned problems with the concepts of evolution and development, I would like to rename the „Zone of Proximal Development“ (ZPD) described by Vygotsky for individual genesis to a „Zone of Proximal Genesis“ (ZPG). Vygotsky describes this as follows:
„…the zone of proximal development. It is the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.“ (Vygotsky, Lev S. 1978)
„When we determine the level of actual development, we use tasks that require independent resolution. These tasks function as indices of fully formed or fully matured functions. How, then, do we apply this new method? Assume that we have determined the mental age of two children to be eight years. We do not stop with this however. Rather, we attempt to determine how each of these children will solve tasks that were meant for older children. We assist each child through demonstration, leading questions, and by introducing the initial elements of the task’s solution. With this help or collaboration from the adult, one of these children solves problems characteristic of a twelve year old, while the other solves problems only at a level typical of a nine year old. This difference between the child’s mental ages, this difference between the child’s actual level of development and the level of performance that he achieves in collaboration with the adult, defines the zone of proximal development.” (Vygotsky, Lev S. 1988)
„Similarly, in normal children, learning which is oriented toward developmental levels that have already been reached is ineffective from the viewpoint of a child’s overall development. It does not aim for a new stage of the developmental process but rather lags behind this process. Thus, the notion of a zone of proximal development enables us to propose a new formula, namely that the only „good learning“ is that which is in advance of development.“ (Vygotsky, Lev S. 1978)
Survival of the fittest?
Here, too, it is well known that this formulation originates not from the biologist Darwin, but from the philosopher Herbert Spencer. And in this primitiveness, it is simply wrong.
First, nature kills indiscriminately, as C. Lloyd Morgan explains. Here, too, the scientific mimicry of philosophy and psychology is evident in the lack of research.
„The law of increase is a law of one factor in life’s phenomena, the reproductive factor. In any area, the conditions of which are not undergoing change, the numbers of the species which constitute its fauna remain tolerably constant. They are not actually increasing in geometrical progression. There is literally no room for such. The large birth-rate of the constituent species is accompanied by a proportional death-rate, or else the increase tendency is kept in check by the prevention of certain individuals from mating and bearing young. Now, the high death-rate is, to a large extent among the lower organisms and in a less degree among higher animals, the result of indiscriminate destruction … Those which are thus destroyed are now either better or worse than those which escape.” (Morgan, C. Lloyd 1890/2015)
If out of a thousand sea turtle eggs laid, one survives to sexual maturity, then that is the survival of the luckiest.
Furthermore, as Espinas and Kropotkin correctly pointed out, there is not just this constant struggle of all against all. And above all, there is cooperation, even across species.
„It is not the struggle for existence, not the annihilation of the individual that is the characteristic feature and condition of life in the same body and the same society, but rather the union that enables us to better endure this struggle, the respect for the individual.“ (Espinas, Alfred Victor 1879)
“I failed to find — although I was eagerly looking for it — that bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution.
On the contrary, a lecture “On the Law of Mutual Aid,” which was delivered at a Russian Congress of Naturalists, in January 1880, by the well-known zoologist, Professor Kessler, the then Dean of the St. Petersburg University, struck me as throwing a new light on the whole subject. Kessler’s idea was, that besides the law of Mutual Struggle there is in Nature the law of Mutual Aid, which, for the success of the struggle for life, and especially for the progressive evolution of the species, is far more important than the law of mutual competition. This suggestion — which was, in reality, nothing but a further development of the ideas expressed by Darwin himself in The Descent of Man — seemed to me so correct and of so great an importance, that since I became acquainted with it (in 1883) I began to collect materials for further developing the idea, which Kessler had only cursorily sketched in his lecture, but had not lived to develop. He died in 1881.” (Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich 1902)
And since there are a wide variety of reproduction and survival strategies, selection also takes place in different areas.
The sick and weak are the first to be selected. This, on the one hand, serves the survival of the species, but on the other hand, also exposes the offspring to the greatest risk of premature death.
The lucky individuals who have not fallen victim to indiscriminate destruction, and whose ZoA and ZoM are also sufficient in the face of changes, survive. And the species that have enough such individuals to maintain the species.
Moreover, selection is generally not continuous, but rather through the alternation of „good times, bad times.“ C. Lloyd Morgan once again points out this point:
„Now, what would be the result of this alternation of good times and hard times? During good times varieties, which would be otherwise unable to hold their own, might arise and have time to establish themselves. In an expanding area migration would take place, local segregation in the colonial areas would be rendered possible, differential elimination in the different migration-areas would produce divergence. There would be diminished elimination of neutral variations, thus affording opportunities for experimental combinations. In general, good times would favour variation and divergence. …
Intermediate between good times and hard times would come, in logical order, the times in which there is neither an expansion nor a contraction of the life-area. One may suppose that these are times of relatively little change. There is neither the divergence rendered possible by the expansion of life-area, nor the heightened elimination enforced by the contraction of lifearea. Elimination is steadily in progress, for the law of increase must still hold good. Divergence is still taking place, for the law of variation still obtains. But neither is at its maximum. These are the good old-fashioned times of slow and steady conservative progress.
… and it is not at all improbable that we are ourselves living in such a quiet, conservative period.“
(Morgan, C. Lloyd 1890/2015)
As an example, foxes and wolves can serve as a starting point. They both belong to the same family and live in the same sensory and physiological „Umwelt“ (Uexküll) and habitats.
The difference lies primarily in their reproductive and survival strategies. While female foxes raise their pups alone and foxes live and hunt solitarily, wolves do so in packs. This is why, in addition to the primary sociogenesis, the attachment, which is necessarily found in all mammals and other species, wolves also undergo a second, secondary sociogenesis in packs.
It is impossible to say in advance which of these strategies is „fitter“ and has a larger ZoA. This will only become apparent through the nature and extent of a change during adverse times.
Although I assume it will be the wolves, since they are able to build more stable and complex cultures (here as socially transmitted knowledge about the world, of strategies) through the pack than the foxes, where this knowledge can only be passed on for a much shorter period of time and only from female to female. (See also www.dogmatism.net)
„On the other hand, hard times would mean increased elimination.
Elimination by competition, passing in this way into elimination by battle, would, during hard times, be increased.
“ (Morgan, C. Lloyd 1890/2015)
This can be a consolation that obscure subjects like „gender studies“ will naturally perish. (see also: Spiro, Melford E. 1979 – Gender and Culture: Kibbutz Women Revisited)
Intraspecific sexual selection
It may be due to the prudishness of the past two centuries that this form of selection explained by Darwin has been and continues to be largely ignored.
Sexual selection is of interest to psychonomics in that it helps explain some of the excesses of Western affluent societies.
SUVs are the deer antlers of city dwellers.
And in a more amusing way, courtship behavior can also be found in humans. The traditional erection of a maypole in southern Germany is a collective courtship behavior, similar to that found in maypole bowerbirds.
