Egy érdekesség:
Ray Bradbury idézetén törtem a fejem... 'We are an impossibility in an impossible Universe'
Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) ünnepelt evolucionista biológus 1989-ben írja egy művében:
“We are the accidental result of an unplanned process, ... the fragile result of an enormous concatenation of improbabilities..."
(Bradbury mondata tulajdonképp egyfajta parafrázisnak tekinthető, a két idézet lényege ugyanaz.)
Épp egy könyvet fordítok, amelyben ezt a kérdést járja körül a szerző az egyik fejezetben, azaz:
kontingencia vs konvergencia a biológiai fejlődéstörténetben - más szavakkal véletlenszerűségek halmaza-e az élet fejlődése a földön, vagy van bizonyos tendencia, irányultság, konvergencia benne.
A kérdés hallatlanul érdekes, mert a kontingencia eleve kizárja az értelmes tervezés gondolatát, míg a konvergencia mentén legalábbis elméletben elképzelhető a magasabb rendű tervezés, magasabb rendű rendező erő, illetve célzottság a természetben.
Bradbury így ezen a ponton a kontingens evolúció gondolatát teszi magáévá, legalábbis az idézete alapján...
Bővebben egy remek összegzés a könyvből az angolul szívesen olvasóknak (a magyar fordítást sajnos még nem hozhattam itt, mert még a megjelenés folyamatában tart.)
...The celebrated evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould (1941–
2002) insisted that “almost every interesting event of life’s history
falls into the realm of contingency.” It is pointless to talk about
purpose, historical inevitability, or direction. From its beginning to
its end, the evolutionary process is governed by contingencies. “We
are the accidental result of an unplanned process, . . . the fragile
result of an enormous concatenation of improbabilities, not the pre-
dictable product of any definite process.” As Gould famously put this
point, using the characteristically 1990s’ analogy of a videotape, if
we were to replay the tape of evolutionary history, we would not see
the same thing happen each time. “Run the tape again and the first
step from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cell may take 12 billion years
instead of two.” The influence of contingency is such that what hap-
pens is the product of happenstance. “Alter any early event, ever so
slightly and without apparent importance at the time, and evolution
cascades into a radically different channel.” Gould argues that the
role of contingency in biological evolution is so substantial that the
tape will disclose different patterns on each individual replay. So is
the process of biological development really so subject to the hap-
penstances of history?
Yet Gould’s emphasis on historical contingency is regarded with
suspicion by many within the professional community of evolution-
ary biologists. The Cambridge palaeobiologist Simon Conway Mor-
ris, for example, takes a significantly different approach. For Gould,
“the awesome improbability of human evolution” is a result of con-
tingency in adaptive evolution. Conway Morris argues against this,
challenging the “dominance of contingency.”
Conway Morris argues that the number of evolutionary end points
is limited. “Rerun the tape of life as often as you like, and the end
result will be much the same.” Life’s Solution builds a forceful
case for the predictability of evolutionary outcomes, not in terms
of genetic details but rather their broad phenotypic manifestations.
Convergent evolution is to be understood as “the recurrent tendency
of biological organization to arrive at the same solution to a particu-
lar need.”
Conway Morris’s case is based on a thorough and systematic com-
pilation of examples of convergent evolution, in which two or more
lineages have independently evolved similar structures and func-
tions. His examples range from the aerodynamics of hovering moths
and hummingbirds to the use of silk by spiders and some insects
to capture prey. “The details of convergence actually reveal many
of the twists and turns of evolutionary change as different starting
points are transformed towards common solutions via a variety of
well-trodden paths.”16 And what is the significance of convergent
evolution? Conway Morris is clear: it reveals the existence of sta-
ble regions in biological space. “Convergence occurs because of
‘islands’ of stability.”
A hosszabb idézet származási helye: Alister McGrath, Surprised by Meaning. Science, Faith, and How We Make Sense of Things, WJK Press, 2011, 77-79.oldalak)
