Millions of people come to the American Museum of Natural History each year to see dinosaurs for reasons that are obvious: they are strange, magnificent creatures, awesome in the true sense of the word, and it is fun to be dwarfed by them, marvel at their ferocity, and imagine the world they lived in. They also hold a vivid warning to us 21st Century folk, as we struggle to address the massive and vexing global issues of our time, like climate change, energy supply, the economy, emerging health threats and cultural conflict.
For reasons that are still not fully clear, some 65 million years ago nearly all dinosaurs, the dominant large animals on Earth, went extinct. But one dinosaur group was clearly adaptive enough to survive the environmental changes and developed into modern-day birds.
Science has a way of describing the rapid, explosive emergence of new species, which often follows mass extinction events like that of the dinosaurs. It is the evolutionary theory of "punctuated equilibrium." Proposed in 1972 by Niles Eldredge and the late Stephen Jay Gould, scientists working at the American Museum of Natural History, punctuated equilibrium holds that evolutionary change occurs not in a gradual, step-wise fashion but in spurts of intense and rapid evolutionary events in response to dramatic environmental pressure. Long periods of seeming stasis are punctuated by explosive change.
With so many issues seemingly at the boiling point at the same time in our global society and national life right now, we seem to be undergoing a period of punctuated equilibrium with considerable social change. Think health care. Think education. Think energy. Think the economy. The old, long-relied-upon systems for problem-solving are struggling under extreme pressure and are not necessarily up to the task.
Just as there have been moments of intense evolutionary spurts, there are precedents for this kind of social phenomenon. The industrial revolution was a relatively compressed period of explosive change in agriculture, industry, production and transportation. New kinds of jobs were created and others went "extinct," the middle class rose and the landed nobility began to decline in power. Those individuals who could learn new skills, adapt to new technologies, and even relocate thrived.
Both science and history teach us that the evolutionary stress to adapt to changing circumstance puts enormous pressure on complacency and rigidity. But it also provides great opportunity for those who can adapt, who can think and act in new ways, who can lead. If today, after many years of "business as usual," our society, our systems, and our institutions are all undergoing a kind of evolutionary burst, then how do we ensure that it yields change for the better? As in natural evolution, in social evolution there can and will be winners and losers -- institutions, industries, and even, perhaps, entire countries.
Charles Darwin wrote: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."
So adapt we must, as we are more deeply and intricately connected than ever before in history, not just as individuals, but as a vast global system. The problems we are now struggling to solve defy traditional geographic, political, economic, and technological boundaries and other manmade systems. The very systems that we have long relied on to address these issues are shifting under our feet and we must now construct a new architecture for national and global problem-solving.
There is now not only an opportunity but an imperative to seriously consider what conditions and approaches can best fuel progress in this new era. We may need to re-imagine the roles of society's pillars -- from universities, corporations, museums, and libraries to governments and non-governmental organizations -- and to revolutionize the working relationships among them. We should not only welcome and foster these changes but proceed with urgency and intentionality.
In time, we may view this moment as the true beginning of the new millennium when we began in earnest to throw off 20th Century ways of living and working, and commenced designing a new architecture for a new century.
Punctuated equilibrium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Evolution: Library: Punctuated Equilibrium
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American Museum of Natural History - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I know, people like me who disagree with "the consensus" are anti-science, but people like me don't think that the lesson of dinosaurs is that we need to be worried about climate, it's that unless we adapt and aniticpate the genuine game changingn catastrophes, in contrast to what is in all likelyhood not going to be as bad as the doomsayers claim. Want clean energy, and improved science and an end to raping the wilderness for gold and iron, or zinc and rare earths? Insist that instead of money for carbon trading, put it into new systems for space based solar power and new lifting systems so we can dump the old fashioned balistic missile legacy of the cold war mercury/apollo program. We know how even if all the smart but "suck at math" types out there dont. Of course, who runs the science programs in gov't and write popular science books? They suck at math too, but they know what sells air time advertizing and books just fine.
One truth of evolution is that it has nothing to do with intention. Adaptive traits occur randomly and are then selected and reinforced by nature. While in the short run, we have managed to breed some species in certain directions, in the long run, neither mutation or nature can be controlled to follow a plan.
In the short run, a country like China may be able to "adapt" more quickly, but only as long as they happen to pick the right adaptions. In the long run, they are not likely to do so and will come crashing down.
The only ultimate truth of life on this planet is the power of chaos. Trying to use evolutionary "need" as a justification for more centralized government power is a tremendous irony. Humans are not one big organism. We are billions of individual organisms who often benefit from working together. The only hope for success is to harness a little chaos by convincing people to apply their efforts in certain directions. The most likely way to achieve this is a free market approach, not a coercive campaign for "change".
I think you are quite wrong in your conclusion which does not follow from the premises. Convincing people...etc is best addressed by exactly gov't incentives and policies to direct change along lines that benefits the society and hence the individual. Free market chaos does not convince people to behave in ways other than to satisy profit incentives of corporations. For example, Mickie Dees is not in the health business but in the fast food business. They make profits by supplying unhealthy food, fast and at cheap prices. How is the free market going to change Mickie Dee's as a corporation such that they would convince people to eat healthier. Not going to happen. The free market is generally in opposition to the best behavior we want to encourage in people to avoid catastrophe. The same goes for EXXON and CONSOLIDFATED COAL and clean energy. The free market is the antithesis of the kind of change society needs to make to avoid extinction. And hence it is the enemy of civilization not our friend. Your conclusion is wrong.
If you haven't heard, quantavolution is an awkward term for the idea that man (i.e. civilization) developed often out of cataclysmic events. I'm always fascinated when science coincides with mythology, or what I like to call poetic history.
It's like when clods claim evolution is untrue. I wish those sorts would read the Bible; they would see, plain as day, that nothing in Genesis rejects evolution. In fact, it is otherwise. For example, the creation of the first persons in Gen. 1 are seemingly inexplicably fashioned again in Gen. 2. Why? Are they they merging of 2 different traditions, or are they, perhaps, evidence of evolution. May all the mention of giants, flying beasts, and the rapid advancement after cataclysmic events tend to suggest evolution? Development of man is the very product of evolution. All of this is compatible with, if not directly said in, the Bible.
Now, as for man descending from apes. Again, it's a false frame, but that's a different story, and my words are limited here.
Sports? (Mutated organisms)
“Think health care. Think education. Think energy. Think the economy.â€
Or just, think.
“Charles Darwin wrote: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."â€
Or the species intelligent enough to realize that, it doesn’t need to wait to change; until change is forced upon it?
“how do we ensure that it yields change for the better?â€
What is it that we attempting to achieve?
Then if what we may decide to do acts counter to that prime requirement. It acts to the detriment of all.
Very simple. Ignore Republicans.
A more centralized regime, like China, can deploy all its resources to respond to a challenge. The Chinese will the the global leader in solar energy production in 2 years, simply because the Communist party made the decision to go green. The risk is that you must have the best talent leading the country.
In the meantime the US is torn apart by cultural and ideological wars.
Now, you tell me the kind of political scenario that would lead to a coherent and effective US response to its internal and external challenges?
I see only two scenarios:
1. The appearance of a strong population movement that would capture power from both the Republicans and Democrats. The movement would advocate a "third" direction that is neither capitalist nor socialist. A new ideology must be created (B.T.W. the Pope leads has made an attempt recently)
2.Break up of the US into 5-6 independent republics. Each of those republics will pursue either a capitalist or a socialist path.
In the cultural dimension, the US culture needs to "grow up" and transition from the adolescent phase to maturity. And fast.
While it's true our species has expereinced some rather severe climate changes in the past few hundred thousand years (several glacial and interglacial periods for example), there are two points that are important to remember. 1) There are several orders of magnitude more humans today than during those past events and 2) these huge masses of people depend on foods that evolved and were later domesticated since the end of the last glacial period. If the climate changes gradually and we are able to adapt not only our selves, but these domesticated species to the new climate climate conditions, fine. If, however, our actions precipitate rapid climate change, then rising sea levels may be the least of our problems. I can understand why the petrolium industry wants claim global warming is bunk, they have a vested interest. Why an average american would take their word over a majority of academics and scientists (an exceedingly skeptical group of people) actually investigating these processes is beyond me.
Some Capitalist today remind me of those same dinosaurs of the past; self-centered, self-motivated, and egotistical (savages)...
DenverJJ