Sociobiology, universal Darwinism and their transcendence: An investigation of the history, philosophy and critique of Darwinian paradigms, especially gene-Darwinism, process-Darwinism, and their types of reductionism towards a theory of the evolution of evolutionary processes, evolutionary freedom and ecological idealism

Based on a review of different Darwinian paradigms, particularly sociobiology, this work, both, historically and philosophically, develops a metaphysic of gene-Darwinism and process-Darwinism, and then criticises and transcends these Darwinian paradigms in order to achieve a truly evolutionary theory of evolution. Part I introduces essential aspects of current sociobiology as the original challenge to this investigation. The claim of some sociobiologists that ethics should become biologized in a gene-egoistic way, is shown to be tied to certain biological views, which ethically lead to problematic results. In part II a historical investigation into sociobiology and Darwinism in general provides us, as historical epistemology', with a deeper understanding of the structure and background of these approaches. Gene-Darwinism, which presently dominates sociobiology and is linked to Dawkins' selfish gene view of evolution, is compared to Darwin's Darwinism and the evolutionary' synthesis and becomes defined more strictly. An account of the external history of Darwinism and its subparadigms shows how cultural intellectual presuppositions, like Malthusianism or the Newtonian concept of the unchangeable laws of nature, also influenced biological theory' construction. In part III universal 'process-Darwinism' is elaborated based on the historical interaction of Darwinism with non-biological subject areas. Building blocks for this are found in psychology, the theory of science and economics. Additionally, a metaphysical argument for the universality of process- Darwinism, linked to Hume's and Popper's problem of induction, is proposed. In part IV gene-Darwinism and process-Darwinism are criticised. Gene-Darwinism—despite its merits—is challenged as being one-sided in advocating 'gene-atomism', 'germ-line reductionism' and 'process-monism'. My alternative proposals develop and try to unify different criticisms often found. In respect of gene-atomism I advocate a many-level approach, opposing the necessary radical selfishness of single genes. I develop the concept of higher-level genes, propose a concept of systemic selection, which may stabilise group properties, without relying on permanent group selection and extend the applicability of a certain group selectionist model generally to small open groups. Proposals of mine linked to the critique of germ-line reductionism are: 'exformation', phenotypes as evolutionary factors and a field theoretic understanding of causa formalis (resembling Aristotelian hylemorphism). Finally the process-monism of gene-Darwinism, process-Darwinism and, if defined strictly, Darwinism in general is criticised. 1 argue that our ontology and ethics would be improved by replacing the Newtoman-Paleyian deist metaphor of an eternal and unchangeable law of nature, which lies at tire very heart of Darwinism, by a truly evolutionary understanding of evolution where new processes may gain a certain autonomy. All this results in a view that I call 'ecological idealism', which, although still very much based on Darwinism, clearly transcends a Darwinian world view

Random Unitary Evolution Model of Quantum Darwinism with pure decoherence

We study the behavior of Quantum Darwinism (Zurek, [8]) within the iterative, random unitary operations qubit-model of pure decoherence (Novotny et al, [6]). We conclude that Quantum Darwinism, which describes the quantum mechanical evolution of an open system S from the point of view of its environment E, is not a generic phenomenon, but depends on the specific form of input states and on the type of S-E-interactions. Furthermore, we show that within the random unitary model the concept of Quantum Darwinism enables one to explicitly construct and specify artificial input states of environment E that allow to store information about an open system S of interest with maximal efficiency.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure

Quantum Darwinism and non-Markovian dissipative dynamics from quantum phases of the spin-1/2 XX model

Quantum Darwinism explains the emergence of a classical description of objects in terms of the creation of many redundant registers in an environment containing their classical information. This amplification phenomenon, where only classical information reaches the macroscopic observer and through which different observers can agree on the objective existence of such object, has been revived lately for several types of situations, successfully explaining classicality. We explore quantum Darwinism in the setting of an environment made of two level systems which are initially prepared in the ground state of the XX model, which exhibits different phases; we find that the different phases have different ability to redundantly acquire classical information about the system, being the "ferromagnetic phase" the only one able to complete quantum Darwinism. At the same time we relate this ability to how non-Markovian the system dynamics is, based on the interpretation that non-Markovian dynamics is associated to back flow of information from environment to system, thus spoiling the information transfer needed for Darwinism. Finally, we explore mixing of bath registers by allowing a small interaction among them, finding that this spoils the stored information as previously found in the literature

4. Social Darwinism

The singular impact of Darwin in fields other than biology can be attributed largely to one man, Herbert Spencer (1820- 1903). It was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the expression survival of the fittest. Although neglected today except by historians of the nineteenth century thought, Spencer\u27s influence on his own time was so great that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was able to wonder if any writer of English except Darwin has done so much to affect our whole way of thinking about the universe. Herbert Spencer was born into a traditionally nonconformist English family of modest means. He refused a university education and trained for a career as a civil engineer. He was employed first as an engineer and later as an editor of the Economist, a publication advocating free trade. By 1853 his major ideas were fixed and he spent his remaining years systematizing and propounding them. [excerpt

Stove's anti-darwinism

Stove's article, 'So you think you are a Darwinian?'[ 1] was essentially an advertisement for his book, Darwinian Fairytales.[ 2] The central argument of the book is that Darwin's theory, in both Darwin's and recent sociobiological versions, asserts many things about the human and other species that are known to be false, but protects itself from refutation by its logical complexity. A great number of ad hoc devices, he claims, are used to protect the theory. If co operation is observed where the theory predicts competition, then competition is referred to the time of the cavemen, or is reinterpreted as competition between some hidden entities like genes or abstract entities like populations. In a characteristic sally, Stove writes of the sociobiologists' oscillation on the meaning of kin altruism: Any discussion of altruism with an inclusive fitness theorist is, in fact, exactly like dealing with a pair of balloons connected by a tube, one balloon being the belief that kin altruism is an illusion, the other being the belief that kin altruism is caused by shared genes. If a critic puts pressure on the illusion balloon - perhaps by ridiculing the selfish theory of human nature - air is forced into the causal balloon. There is then an increased production of earnest causal explanations of why we love our children, why hymenopteran workers look after their sisters, etc., etc. Then, if the critic puts pressure on the causal balloon - perhaps about the weakness of sibling altruism compared with parental, or the absence of sibling altruism in bacteria - then the illusion balloon is forced to expand. There will now be an increased production of cynical scurrilities about parents manipulating their babies for their own advantage, and vice versa, and in general, about the Hobbesian bad times that are had by all. In this way critical pressure, applied to the theory of inclusive fitness at one point, can always be easily absorbed at another point, and the theory as a whole is never endangered.[ 3] Now, it is uncontroversial to assert that Darwinism is a logically complex theory, and that its relation to empirical evidence is distant and multi faceted. One does not directly observe chance genetic variations leading to the development of new species, or even continuous variations in the fossil record, but must rely on subtle arguments to the best explanation, scaling up from varieties to species, and so on.