Progress vs. Variation -- Part III
Feb. 17th, 2004 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prof_pangaeaAn argument against "progress" and instead for INCREASING VARIATION in evolution, from Full House, by Stephen Jay Gould
3. Life's successful expansion must form an increasingly right-skewed distribution.
Life has to begin next to the left wall of minimal complexity (see statement 1). As life diversified, only one direction stood open for expansion. Nothing much could move left and fit between the initial bacterial mode and the left wall. The bacterial mode itself has maintained its initial position and grown continually in height. Since space remains available away from the left wall and toward the greated level of complexity, new species occasionally wander into this previously unoccupied domain, giving the bell curve of complexity for all species a right skew, with capacity for increased skewing through time.
3. Life's successful expansion must form an increasingly right-skewed distribution.
Life has to begin next to the left wall of minimal complexity (see statement 1). As life diversified, only one direction stood open for expansion. Nothing much could move left and fit between the initial bacterial mode and the left wall. The bacterial mode itself has maintained its initial position and grown continually in height. Since space remains available away from the left wall and toward the greated level of complexity, new species occasionally wander into this previously unoccupied domain, giving the bell curve of complexity for all species a right skew, with capacity for increased skewing through time.
