Organisms and Their Evolution
Agency and Meaning in the Drama of Life
This is a complete draft of an online book freely available, with proper attribution, for noncommercial, personal use (including classroom use). The above title is presumably the final title for the book, which previously bore the temporary title, “Evolution As It Was Meant To Be — and the Living Narratives That Tell Its Story”. This material is part of the Biology Worthy of Life project of The Nature Institute. Copyright 2024 by Stephen L. Talbott. All rights reserved. Date of the current draft: December, 2024.
Table of Contents
An expanded Table of Contents follows below this chapter-level table
Part 1: The Life of Organisms
Chapter 1: The Keys to This Book
Chapter 2: The Organism’s Story
Chapter 3: What Brings Our Genome Alive?
Chapter 4: The Sensitive, Dynamic Cell
Chapter 5: Our Bodies Are Formed Streams
Chapter 6: Context: Dare We Call It Holism?
Chapter 7: Epigenetics: A Brief Introduction
Chapter 8: The Mystery of an Unexpected Coherence
Chapter 9: A Mess of Causes
Chapter 10: What Is the Problem of Form?
Chapter 11: Why We Cannot Explain the Form of Organisms
Chapter 12: Is a Qualitative Biology Possible?
Chapter 13: All Science Must Be Rooted in Experience
Technical Supplement to Part 1
Chapter 14: How Our Genes Come to Expression (It Takes an Epigenetic Village)
Chapter 15: Puzzles of the Microworld
Part 2: Extending the Organism’s Story:
Toward an Evolutionary Narrative
Chapter 16: Let’s Not Begin With Natural Selection
Chapter 17: Evolution Writ Small
Chapter 18: Teleology and Evolution
Chapter 19: Development Writ Large
Chapter 20: Inheritance and the Whole Organism
Chapter 21: Inheritance, Genetics, and the Particulate View of Life
Chapter 22: A Curiously Absolute Demand for Stable Variation
Chapter 23: The Evolution of Consciousness
Part 3: Beyond Biology
Chapter 24: Is the Inanimate World an Interior Reality?
POSTSCRIPTS
These Postscripts (and perhaps others still to come) are not part of the book itself, but will be made available online as they are written. Links are given below. Future links, if any, will be included in the list given here: https://bwo.life/bk/index.htm#postscripts
- Postscript #1: “How Do Biomolecules “Know” What To Do?” (https://bwo.org/bk/ps/biomolecules.htm).
- Postscript #2: “The Logos-World — On Living as Natives Within a Landscape of Meaning” (tentative title; forthcoming). (https://bwo.org/bk/ps/logos.htm).
Expanded Table of Contents
Part 1: The Life of Organisms
Chapter 1: The Keys to This Book
Box 1.1: The Enigmatic Wisdom of the Potter Wasp
Some definitional hints about key biological terms
Integral unity of the organism
Chapter 2: The Organism’s Story
Organisms are agents capable of expressing their own meanings
The end is more constant than the means of attaining it
Every organism is narrating a meaningful life story
Chapter 3: What Brings Our Genome Alive?
The genome as you have probably not heard about it
Of dynamism and mystery in the cell nucleus
Does the lawfulness of molecular interactions explain global coherence?
Chapter 4: The Sensitive, Dynamic Cell
Does the cell possess its own “senses” and “limbs”?
Chapter 5: Our Bodies Are Formed Streams
A long way from crystalline order
Chapter 6: Context: Dare We Call It Holism?
Which comes first, the cell or its niche?
‘More than the sum of its parts’: clarifying a cliché
Every biological context is a a complex of embodied ideas
Chapter 7: Epigenetics: A Brief Introduction
An old problem newly recognized
Chapter 8: The Mystery of an Unexpected Coherence
Flexibility and precision in RNA splicing
Chapter 9: A Mess of Causes
The seductive appeal of master controllers
Biological clocks: who is keeping time?
Of crosstalk, horror graphs, and collaboration
Box 9.1: Cause — Or Effect? Ambiguities related to gene expression
Chapter 10: What Is the Problem of Form?
The problem of form exists even at the molecular level
Michael Levin: Counter-revolutionary
Chapter 11: Why We Cannot Explain the Form of Organisms
Looking for physical explanations of form
The mastery of genetic switches
Chapter 12: Is a Qualitative Biology Possible?
An animal expressing the character of the tropical forest
How to generalize upon a transformational series
The movement is continuous and ideal
The formative movement requires both difference and sameness
An awareness of the movement changes our perception of the leaves
Each individual leaf is “coming from” and “passing to”
Whatever specifies the appearance of forms in time has causal significance
Threefoldness, the biology of form, and evolution
A starting point: living polarity in the human being
Interpenetration of the three aspects
Threefold organization in mammals
Can evolutionists escape responsibility for explaining these patterns?
Chapter 13: All Science Must Be Rooted in Experience
Two distinguishable but indivisible aspects of human experience
Without relations of thought, we have only chaos
We do not see with our eyes alone
It is careless thought that deceives us, not our senses
Technical Supplement to Part 1
Chapter 14: How Our Genes Come to Expression
High expectations: the promise of molecular biology
Transcription factors and DNA engage in a complex play of form
Table 14.1: Some factors regulating RNA polymerase elongation
The nucleosome: a complex marriage of DNA and protein
Chapter 15: Puzzles of the Microworld
This is not your familiar Aesop
From here to there — or, down the rabbit hole?
Part 2: Extending the Organism’s Story:
Toward an Evolutionary Narrative
Chapter 16: Let’s Not Begin With Natural Selection
What are the “guaranteed results” of natural selection?
The “algorithm” of natural selection is widely treated as if it were an agent
The inadequacy of the theory of natural selection has long been noticed
Chapter 17: Evolution Writ Small
A ‘magical’ power of self-transformation
Chapter 18: Teleology and Evolution
Introduction: “The life and death of cells”Are there reasons to reject agency and teleology in evolution?
Individuals versus evolving populations
Do populations lack the necessary causal connections?
Can the presence and nature of agency be explained?
Is the claim of agency anthropomorphic?
What about the differences between development and evolution?
Natural selection: The shortest path to confusion is circular
(1) The problem of the “arrival of the fittest” remains
Chapter 19: Development Writ Large
Evolution as a transformation of developmental processes
The heart of the evolving horse
Evolutionists should not forget the directedness of biological activity
It is, in the primary sense, populations that evolve, not individual organisms
Chapter 20: Inheritance and the Whole Organism
E. S. Russell picked up Johannsen’s problem
Is it really all that difficult to recognize the principle of holism?
Chapter 21: Inheritance, Genetics, and the Particulate View of Life
DNA as the essential substance of evolution
Getting to the bottom of things?
How the image of “particles” has distorted the biologist’s imagination
Chapter 22: A Curiously Absolute Demand for Stable Variation
Richard Dawkins, genes and the biologist’s “ultimate particles”
A short critique of Dawkins’ view
Chapter 23: The Evolution of Consciousness
There was a primordial unity of inner and outer meaning
What words can teach us about the evolution of consciousness
Europeans and their changing landscape
History of ideas — or an evolution of consciousness
The long historical arc of the evolution of consciousness
An ideal degree of detachment — before and after
From myth to literacy: the coming into focus of the human individual
At the edge of literacy and beyond
The evolution of consciousness, like all evolution, is not a straight line
Part 3: Beyond Biology
Chapter 24: Is the Inanimate World an Interior Reality?
How the world lends itself to our knowing
We know the world through thinking as well as sensing
The Cartesian diversion — is there a way to bypass it?
Our eyes do not give us a representation of the world
We cognize the world by participating in its creation
This document: https://bwo.life/bk/index0.htm
Steve Talbott :: Organisms and Their Evolution
Agency and Meaning in the Drama of Life