Scribbels1

 

Working scribels

Emergence Spandrels pre-adaptations

Epiphenomena might start out as spandrels but develop into vital features. Eg. Gills might develop into food capture webs in say, barnacles, or into jaws, as in vertebrates, or into wings, as in insects. None of these were part of the original function of gills, and they might remain vitally important even after the gills totlly lose their original functions, but they piggy-backed onto the original function, at first as minor functions, or even minor impositions -- major impositions would generally cause rapid extinction -- then as vital functions, or even as barely recognisable functions while the original function vanished.

Mutualistic associations with functions such as mycorrhizae and root nodules arose from counterfunctional parasitic growths that originally were irrelevant or actively harmful epiphenomena.

There is a lot of mindless quibbling about what is or is not a biological spandrel as opposed to architectural spandrels, corbels, squinches, pendentives, or products of selection, but the term “spandrel” is sufficiently evocative and well-established in biology by now, that I support it practically unreservedly.

There are several aspects to such concepts, and they lead to a lot of arguments that really arise from cross purposes, in which a proposal based on certain assumptions, and lines of thought arising therefrom, evokes different assumptions in associates, and consequently vacuous shouting matches. Commonly the resulting arguments are unedifying until someone clarifies the field

One of my favourite examples along such lines is the concept of emergence. Various authors pronounce and impose assumptions such as that it is not emergence if it is not impossible to predict it from the nature of the universe of discourse from which it arose. Others say it must be of a different nature from that universe. Yet others say that if those requirements ar not met, it is not emergence, and accordingly that any argument about emergence can be quashed by defining emergence to death. They essentially conclude that there is no such thing as emergence. There might be none in the Aunt Sally that emerges from such definitions, but it does not follow that those definitions are of intrinsic significance. 

Emergence is unavoidable in any circumstances when it refers to things that could not occur with fewer components, or different

Unfortunately, the resulting definition tends to be trivial, and the abandoned fields of discussion are full of interest if one just looks and thinks a little.

And so it is with the spandrel concept. The concept is very fertile; the various alternatives terms are less so at best.

Spandrels are typically emergent.

 

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• Evidence is information that can validly affect one’s ranking of rival hypotheses

• Anecdotal evidence is a class of inductive evidence. It typically is weak. But weakness is only negligible in isolation.

• Even good inductive evidence is not conclusive, but can affect rankings of hypotheses.

• Mutually independent items of weak evidence are analogous to digital searches. Each item narrows the field disproportionately.

• Accordingly anecdotal evidence, abduction and induction are not to be neglected.

• Even deductive evidence is not immune to underdetermination 

   

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  Formal axioms are the arbitrary unproven bases of formal systems in which the theorems are ultimately derived from their respective axioms

  Material assumptions resemble axioms, except that they are not fully arbitrary, but in critical respects must be sufficiently compatible with material, commonly actual material such as matter and energy, whose behaviour the material discipline, such as physics, biology, mathematics, or logic the system undertakes to describe, predict, or model.
  

  Distinction is perfect continence... Only as a formal axiom; in the material world it is at best a crude assumption of limited applicability. In the real world perfect continence is rare, and usually unnecessary.