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"Extracts"-- Reviews...,
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Evolution...,
Abortion...,
My exhibition of woodcuts continues at London Calling's Pixel and Paper Gallery.
WM
http://www.demon.co.uk/london-calling/artgal.html
to william who makes woodcuts - fraternal greetings from andy english who is a wood-engraver. he wishes well for your exhibition
andye@mailhost.cd-online.co.uk
Browsing in the rec.arts.prose newsgroup, I happened to see a letter from a librarian in the Udmurt Republic (Russian Federation) who urgently appeals for books in the English language. For over two years they haven't received anything foreign and people are desperate for reading material. I am preparing a bundle myself and couldn't resist the pleasure of adding a few copies of "Extracts of Existence." WM
His email is db@twist.mark-itt.ru and he asks you to include your email address on any package you send to the following address:
Dmitri Bender
8 - 100
Mayskaya str.
Izhevsk 426000
Udmurt Republic
Russian Federation
"'Extracts of Existence' is the kind of book to be savoured in half hour installments of contemplation." THE ICONOCLAST, Mohegan Lake, NY
"This is the Pandora's box of Markiewicz's consciousness and he shares it with us the way one would share a dream with one's closest friends." POINT Magazine, Niagara
"If you have ever enjoyed Jung or Alan Watts, you will enjoy 'Extracts of Existence.' VIEW, Hamilton
"The Extracts are unique, grounded and concrete, much like the existence from which the author endeavours to squeeze out more than a few rare drops of human essence." TRANSFORUM, Toronto
Mathew Schwartz reviews "Extracts of Existence" at RAPTURE
http://www.webgenesis.com/theglobe/rapture/starvingartist/mocha/mocha.html
I'd like to draw your attention to new illustrations for "The Noneness of Symbols or the Dance of the Ghosts" and "Eternity and Determinism" in the February issue. Those who read "Noneness" before February 15 are invited to take another look -- the glitch has been corrected. WM
"Well-designed, monthly E-zine format provides soap box for Mr. Markiewicz's intelligent ponderings on the future of business, ecology, culture in general, himself, and other subjects. Well-written, compelling ideas and perspectives -- excellent." EXCITE Search Engine
http://www.excite.com/
Hi William,
Thank you for pointing me to your site. I enjoyed your writings, they are idealistic and compassionate. Nice to talk to another non-conformist. Your comments/link page is unique. I'll be back to read more. Hope you'll visit our site again soon. Anyone interested in world transformation, please visit us too.
Jan Shepherd
Project Mind Foundation
jansheph@telos.ca
http://www.webscope.com/project_mind/project_mind.html
Do I know you? Why did you send me this?
I read your bit on evolution and wrote the following response.
"I feel that the theory of evolution at its present stage puts us in a limbo in which we miss not only the link but also the point."("Notes About Evolution")
The link to what? The point of what? Are you saying that the theory of evolution doesn't provide adequate meaning for your existence? (There's no point.)
This process of fetal development is not at all an illustration of the process of evolution. First, there is the question to what extent your assertion is true. I am not a biologist, but when I studied genetics, I was taught that ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny (that the development of an individual does not repeat evolutionary development). To the extent that it looks like it does, one can reason as follows: mutations which affect the development of an organism earlier in its development are likely to have a greater impact on the organism. Mutations which affect later development are likely to yield smaller changes in the organism.
Since the organism before the mutation was probably already reasonably well adapted to its environment, huge changes are not so likely to useful. They are also more likely to be fatal.
Confusing fetal development with evolution seems like a large error.
The development of a fetus is a one time event which is carefully orchestrated. Everything happens on a particular schedule. Deviations from that schedule typically lead to miscarriage. There is no option for a fetus to develop in a different ways. The only selection process in operation is that the fetus should develop according to the standard plan which is built into human biology.
A real example of the process of evolution is domesticated dogs. Numerous breeds have formed recently due to the nature of their particular environment.
"Competition doesn't tolerate intermediate stages." ("Notes About Evolution")
This imposes a restriction on how organisms can evolve, but doesn't constitute a serious challenge to evolution unless you can produce an organism with a feature which clearly would not have been beneficial during its intermediate stages.
The evaulation of "primitive" or "developed" is not particularly useful. How do you define it? You seem to be arguing here that the octopus should be a challenge to the theory of evolution because it is not as "primitive" as it should be. There is nothing in the theory of evolution that says that vertebrates are somehow "better" than invertebrates and that when you look at an invertebrate, you should see some kind of clear inferiority. Evolution didn't stop for the invertebrates once the vertebrates developed.
What features of the octopus do you think are "primitive"? Can you point to some feature of the octopus which lowers its prospects for reproduction? In order to produce a credible challenge to the theory, you need to find an organism which has some feature that seems actively disadvantageous, not just features which you happen to think are "primitive". If a particular "primitive" feature did perfectly well for an organism, why would evolution develop some more "developed" feature? The "developed" feature actually has to be superior. Is it?
Actually it's not survival that matters but reproduction. You have listed here a few ways in which organism X is allegedly superior to organism Y even though you consider Y to be "more evolved". In order to yield a challange to evolution, you have to find an example where an organism has developed features that didn't contribute to its reproduction in the environment where it developed.
If "conifers resist harsh winters better than leafy trees" it won't help much in environments where there is no harsh winter. A new organism evolves for the particular environment that it evolves in.
Organisms do not (as a rule) become more generally superior than the organisms they evolved from. If this happened, that would surely be a serious challange to the theory of evolution. How many species of trees have evolved in the presence of pollution?
Of course, living matter must be resistant to mutations, otherwise there would be no stability. But recall that a timescale of 5 billion years is a bit different from a timescale of 5 years. Have you tracked lab workers who didn't take adequate precautions with radioactive materials and studied their children's genome to evaluate the degree to which it had mutated? But wait, there's another point to be made here: during meosis, cross over shuffles the genes around even without mutation, leading to a new combination of genes that was likely never seen before. This mechanism alone already provide some variation. And what about ordinary copying mistakes made during cellular processes?
How do you know that bugs that fly around TV screens didn't experience mutations? Did you study the chromosomes of their offspring?
Here you go again with that word "primitive". If an something evolves to a particular state, there is no a priori reason to expect it to evolve to some other state that you like better. Do you think that ingenious architectural and agricultural structures somehow lead directly to TVs? Evolution isn't something that is "in sight" but rather it is something that happens over enormous time spans. I suspect that providing stability is an important function of a culture. Why should people change it? In particular, if nothing in the environment changes, why should the culture change? If it did, that would be a more interesting challenge for a theory of cultural evolution than the existence of cultures that don't change.
Out of sight out of mind?
Just because you don't have a written history doesn't mean that evolution didn't occur. The Indian culture has records of their civilization going back longer than our civilization in the West. One can identify various changes in the civilization. Why doesn't this count? Just because a culture says it was created by the gods and has existed eternally doesn't mean that it's true. Surely it's more likely that the civilization reached it's present form in some evolutionary manner. Without further pressures to change, no further change should be expected.
Evolution doesn't keep history, so it's no surprise that we don't have videotapes of the evolution of the rabbit available. But the fossil record certainly does provide some information.
All domesticated animals are a clear example of evolution in action. Evolution can be readily seen in bacteria which are rapidly becoming resistant to the antibiotics that we use.
It seems to be rather well established that evolution occurs. People argue now over whether evolution suffices to explain what we see. Was there enough time? Can it explain the start of life?
I recommend the book Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett which explores (and attempts to refute) the various challenges to darwinism that have arisen. This book also explores the implications of the theory.
adrian@cam.cornell.edu (Adrian Mariano)
http://cam.cornell.edu/adrian/aphorism.html
Interesting page. I disagree that "An unwilling mother will make at least two unhappy beings: the baby and herself." I propose that if we balance unhappiness with death (to the child or possible death to the mother from a botched abortion) we should err on the side of unhappiness.
You offer your position in very eloquent terms, for that I applaud you. You also seem to take a more middle-of-the-road approach than more fanatical proponents of abortion or of the right to life.
I would refer you to several of the educational factsheets in our educational section of Ultimate which deal with biological isues and with libertarianism and abortion or feminism and abortion. I think you'll find them of a particular interest to you.
Cheers,
Steve Ertelt
http://www.prolife.org/ultimate
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