The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories: Exploring the Significance of Diversity

Independence, on this planet at least, does not exist- nothing can be regarded as isolated from its environment. Species need other species for food, light, protection etc. All species need to extract/imbibe nutients/ oxygen etc from the inorganic world. Therefore, I think, there are no supreme creatures, only such that are well suited to a certain way of life better than others. Thus, living under certain conditions that are not as favourable to the other organisms, they avoid copmpetition, and consequently increase their chances for survival and reproduction.If it is the environment and subsequent adaptations that ensure a species' well-being, then is our re-shaping the environment an attempt to adapt to it? Is such adaptation justified?

Lot's wife was turned into salt. From my point of view, this can be seen as the transformation of living, moving cells, sometimes loose and not quite organized into something with regular structure where all molecules are located at approximately the same distance forming a highly orderly pattern. Preventing molecules from moving freely (contraction ) here means death.

Lot's wife was wistful of the past. She wasn't ready to "wipe off the slate" and start a new life at another place. Does this mean that she was not adapted to live elsewhere? That movement is one of the attributes of life is bolstered by adaptation. "Looking back" in biological terms means to revert to a former, usually not that advanced state, thus decraesing chances for survival. So, Lot's wife had to die...

Sorry if that was too confusing!

Religion: I am almost certain, but if you are a Christian, Muslim, Jew, you have to accept one thing, even though lots of other things are up for interpretation: The word of the "good book," (whichever good book you like), is THE STORY not A STORY. This is crucial. I agree with and respect the ideas introduced in class, but I believe that we are trying desperately not to address the greater complications of this particular story. The open nature of this story infinitely closes many others. If one of us has a "story" that there indeed can be many stories, and another one of us has a story that there can only be one story... don't we both have to fess up (especially those who believe in many stories) that we at least find that opposing view less true. I have struggled a great deal with this because I feel the topic demands that you give of yourself a great deal. I don't want to be the philosopher whose philosophy on life is not to philosophies.

I just want to make it clear that I am criticizing this approach so much because the better part of me violently wants to accept it. I think it's enlightened and the best "story" I have ever heard. And yet, the gut of me will not. And I want to end this controversy.

The best I can do for myself is this:
The story that was posted in class this Thursday about the girl (a woman in our class) who felt the desire to convince the man on the plane that his story was wrong was very moving to me. I have done that. A million times. I have a very close friend who is a devote Christian. I feel that... well I feel a million things in controversy with the bible. So we read the bible together, and argue. I EVEN went to church with her! And I did this solely to argue. And we did this in part to strengthen our own stories, to challenge wits, and to fight for our beliefs about our purpose here and what happens after we die. So this class has brought me to some conclusions that I was at the cusp of making during these debates but am now fully able to make. I will divulge this.

I think that we do have two different stories. I think that BOTH STORIES have a purpose, and they EACH serve us individually. But many times we cannot accept one person's story because it violates another. It invalidates another story. Even as Grobstien and Dalke infer that they may not have to, they do! And this is of ultimate concern. My friend is afraid that if her religion is wrong than her family is foolish and her purpose is lost. I am afraid that if I am wrong there is a hell for those who have certain stories. We may just be afraid. I'm not sure, it may sound cheesy, but it may be just that.

Historically we kill each other over this! Literally. This just blows my mind. How can I ever overcome this need to find one story if generations of people have died just for their story. And then we always look back, and for many of those situations, we think of how silly that was. To die for one story.

As many in this class have wisely said, this is so frustrating as it makes us look at our lives as not right or wrong but as another story.

But Paul, I gave you a bad answer. I am not happy yet. It was not the explanation of the science that had me hog-tied. My problem was that I counld not come up with the reason why such a knowledgeable and well-respected scientist chose to skirt this central issue for his topic. For me, whenever someone who is well-respected in his field does or says something so incongruous, my first thought is not, "What a jerk" or "He's just being a bit sloppy." My first thought is, "What am I missing?" Regarding Mayr, let's declare this a rhetorical question. But it's driving me slightly nutty in a new way now. Now that I'm into the second batch of Mayr chapters, it's taking me an inordinate amount of time to get through them, but not because they are more complex than the first batch (I have an adequate understanding of genetics, having bred animals). It's that I'm now second-guessing Mayr thought by thought. I'm no longer assuming that his writing is credible and unbiased. Bummer.

But that has led to a whole new set of thinking about stories...about stories that evolve/survive by adhering to some minimum set of criteria, just as science progresses (or not) according to a set of disciplines that help to make the progressions believable. I'm now beginning to think about a story as a member of a family of stories—a strain. I think that the minimum criteria for the evolution of a story-strain needs to include connecting backward with its history, "now-ward" with the sense and sensitivities that its readers will bring that will lead to their either accepting or rejecting the story (see Elizabeth Catanese's post re: believing in stories), and also connecting forward, i.e., that quality of good writing that triggers imagination in others, triggers others to host the story, incubate it and give it off-spring. If a story loads itself with ego, personal agendas, biases, sloppy reasoning, whatever—let's call these "mutations"—they might be lethal; they might lead to the quick demise of the strain.

I'm also thinking about the 2nd law—the water wheel transmogrified into being the sun—and how that law applies to the creation and evolution of stories...a spending of energy (thought-energy) in order to make order from disorder...

Once upon a time there was a Siamese car who pretended to be a lion and spoke inappropriate Zebraic.
That language is whinnied by the race of striped horses in Africa.
Here now: An innocent zebra is walking in a jungle and approaching from another direction is the little cat; they meet.
"Hello there!" says the Siamese cat in perfectly pronounced Zebraic. "It certainly is a pleasant day, isn't it? The sun is shining, the birds are singing, isn't the world a lovely place to live today!"
The zebra is so astonished at hearing a Siamese cat speaking like a zebra, why-- he's just fit to be tied.
So the little cat quickly ties him up, kills him, and drags the better parts of the carcass back to his den.
The cat successfully hunted zebras many months in this manner, dining on filet mignon of zebra every night, and from the better hides he made bow neckties and wide belts after the fashion of the decadent princes of the Old Siamese court.
He began boasting to his friends he was a lion, and he gave them as proof the fact that he hunted zebras.
The delicate noses of the zebras told them there was really no lion in the neighborhood. The zebra deaths caused many to avoid the region. Superstitious, they decided the woods were haunted by the ghost of a lion.
One day the storyteller of the zebras was ambling, and through his mind ran plots for stories to amuse the other zebras, when suddenly his eyes brightened, and he said, "That's it! I'll tell a story about a Siamese cat who learns to speak our language! What an idea! That'll make 'em laugh!"
Just then the Siamese cat appeared before him, and said, "Hello there! Pleasant day today, isn't it!"
The zebra storyteller wasn't fit to be tied at hearing a cat speaking his language, because he'd been thinking about that very thing.
He took a good look at the cat, and he didn't know why, but there was something about his looks he didn't like, so he kicked him with a hoof and killed him.
That is the function of the storyteller.

Thanks for listening/reacting to my stories Tuesday and Thursday. Both Anne and I are looking for to hearing more of yours.

Maybe we will dwell for milleniums, on whether we can know or not know and reach such a state of futility, that we will find it useful not to care about what we know, and what will come. Maybe our useful story will be silent, and teach us to focus on experiencing, and our curious nature will be put to pasture.

Why do we care what we know? Why do we want the truth? Some of us more than others? Me, I don't think I care, if I can attain truth, just living is awesome enough. But then why do I explore philsophy and the discoveries of science with a passion? Because the stories are awesome and useful.

Evolution is such a beautiful summary of observations, simply beautiful intricacies. We know so many details that fit together so well, that it makes me feel that we are getting some true knowledge, some part of the big TRUTH. Although the attainment of the "WHOLE TRUTH" seems dubious, not enough time. And then there is the question of whether we are getting any true knowledge at all, since our observation methods and our subjectivity, are intersecting with the observed and are part of the created story, --- creating it partially.

This quote would have been more pertinent while we were still discussing Mars, but I thought it was very beautiful and hope that you can all still benefit from it.

On a similar note, Nin also explains that we write/tell stories so that we could "taste life twice." I think this is a terribly nobel idea. It seems like an idea the entire class could probably assimilate into their own ideas about why we tell stories. I like it because it is so far reaching.

Thanx for listening. Cheers!

smart guy.

However when we had the discussion about whether anything could be real on Thursday with Prof. Dalke, I didn't get much of that anxiety that cut off my childhood philosophizing. I think that's because I found something I can have real faith in. As a child, "religion" was chocolate Easter bunnies and some medieval Christmas music around the time of year we put up a tree. I was taught that the nature of reality was shown by science, and that religion's opinion on the universe was a bit silly. Unfortunately, science and religion are not exact opposites, and one of the places science cannot replace religion is in giving you faith in, well, anything.

A good scientist doubts everything, up to and including the information her senses and instruments give her. In which case there's no reason to believe in any of what I think is real. Everything I think is red could really be green, but maybe since we all call red delicious apples red it doesn't matter if they're green or not. Or maybe the aboriginal Australians are right and this world is a dream. Or maybe it's someone else's dream, like the Red King in _Through the Looking Glass_ and when he wakes up we'll all disappear. Science can't disprove any of this, and as a child I found it terribly distressing.

So what's the difference now? What have I developed faith in? Well, the possiblility of nothing being real panics me. Instead, I've decided to believe in everything. I'm not quite sure where I encountered the multiverse theory, but it's always struck me as sensible. Basically it says that there are an infinite number of multiple dimensions. Therefore, with true infinity, everything must have happened somewhere. There must be a finite number of stars in this universe, there could only have been so much matter in the Big Bang, but there is an infinite number of stars in the multiverse, with an infinite number of planets around them and an infinite number of people on them. Somewhere in the multiverse is a universe that has already collapsed under entropy, and somewhere is a universe that doesn't have it at all. And somewhere there is a universe where I wore a purple shirt today instead of a blue one. I wonder how different that universe will be from this one, if at all?

The question here may seem to be, why believe in a multiverse, but my question is, why not? How can there not be infinity? Besides, I sometimes think that the mere telling of a story creates a universe, or at least proves it's existence. Even if the story only exists in our heads, it exists there, doesn't it? Why should that existence be worth less than another? How do we know we aren't a story, being told around someone's campfire, or drawn on a page, or filmed for 24/7 television like in the Truman Show.

I find this all incredibly comforting. Everything's somewhere. Whether or not my perception of the universe I live in is correct, it's certainly correct for somewhere. Somewhere we're all someone's dream and somewhere we're all dreaming someone else. Somewhere God created all the animals and somewhere they evolved unaided. So with the question of who's story is true out of the way, the question becomes what happened here in particular, which isn't too different, but it's different enough to comfort me.

i agree...that is so so comforting.

Another unrelated comment. We were talking about the idea that evolution produces directional change, the idea being that there must be some type of perfection or ultimate complexity in that direction. But if you think about the fact that there is a certain level of biological simplicity at which organisms cannot evolve to be any LESS complex, than all evolution necessarily exists as movement away from this original simplicity, directional simply because any change from this point requires additional complexity.

I was thinking about Mayr and the description about genetics. I was trying to think about how genetics might relate explicitly/metaphorically to stories. What are the genes of a story? Is the story a product of nature or nurture? I think that words are the genes of a story. I think that a story IS a product of nature (these words) and nurture (the culture into which the story is born and in which it is read.) Mutations are experiments in style or content, sometimes radical which are either viable enough to be transferred into the style of other stories or not. Professor Schwartz (my fiction class Prof.) was saying the other day that that using the present tense has become a convention for short stories. She said that she wondered how it got to be that way... There is probably an answer to that- a cultural need perhaps? Something that matches a human desire for immediacy... all sorts of explanations- Story conventions change, adapt, evolve as we've said. And like the whole process of evolution- stories are heavily dependent on the way things have evolved in the past. Every past story is in some sense both still alive AND a "story fossil" Variation in stories is indeed, most often, a recombination of certain story elements. Is a story's creation closer to sexual or asexual reproduction? I would say something closer to sexual reproduction- the union of thought from many places... but there is something that also feels slightly self-generative about stories.

And what a fine story evolution makes as well. I particularly like when Mayr (while not being very objective) tells the story that "evolution is not deterministic" on page 121. I like the case that evolution is a constant story of change without a greater direction, just chance interactions which can lead to more change. While some changes seem to occur because they express a state of being better suited to continue in the story, it is actually just random happenstance that the right combination of trait and environment should arise. I find such complex randomness just mind boggling.

A long time ago, I read something that claimed that there are really only seven basic story plots in the world, and that those stories just keep getting built on, or varied. I think Margaret Atwood has something in her collection, "True Stories", that starts with the "boy-meets-girl" plot and complicates it to demonstrate the nature of stories to go anywhere—up, down, inward, outward, every which way. Anyway, I find myself both loving and hating the idea that there are only a few basic components woven through every story. I hate it because I would like to think that there are infinite possibilities for a story, just as there are an infinite number of stars in the universe. But I also love it because the organization of the concept relates to evolution so well. Elizabeth was wondering what "genes" made up a story. I love thinking about how stories give way to one another, for example the Pyramus and Thisbe myth to Romeo and Juliet, to West Side story and so forth. It seems to me that stories have parents just as we do. At least, there seems to be some essence, "salt" if you will, running through each one, just as we are all made up of the same basic components. We are all so LIKE our parents and yet, we're all little variations...

Last class we talked about clumpy diversity, which I think relates really well to the generation of stories. Maybe whatever it was I read about there only being a few stories really meant that there are a few clumps that plots, if simplified, could be grouped into. I guess that would still make it possible for infinite stories to abound, while sharing certain "traits" as living things do.

I'm not sure I agree with his linkage of "story" with "truth," if indeed he is making that link. I can't remember who it was and I'm too lazy to check back in the archives, but someone wrote about comforting stories -- stories that are there not to educate or enlighten, but are simply a source of bonding with family and friends and a means of enjoying oneself. How is that role of a storyteller any less valid than the one Holst speaks of? I'm taking The Historical Imagination this semester and one text we just finished reading (History: A Very Short Introduction) took pains to demonstrate over and over that the notion that historians were to uncover "the true story of the past" may be romantic, but is simply not practical; there IS no one story of the past, and there are always different points of view. Can the storyteller ever really find THE truth?

Reading the story over again, it occurs to me that the zebra storyteller only seems to stumble upon the truth. He wasn't out there looking for it in the first place; he'd been looking for stories to amuse the other zebras, and his story just happened to be true. But even that -- the idea that stories intended for amusement can possess some truth -- brings us back to the question of what truth is. When you're speaking of "larger truths," it's not as straightforward as 2+2=4...

A long time ago, I read something that claimed that there are really only seven basic story plots in the world, and that those stories just keep getting built on, or varied. I think Margaret Atwood has something in her collection, "True Stories", that starts with the "boy-meets-girl" plot and complicates it to demonstrate the nature of stories to go anywhere—up, down, inward, outward, every which way. Anyway, I find myself both loving and hating the idea that there are only a few basic components woven through every story. I hate it because I would like to think that there are infinite possibilities for a story, just as there are an infinite number of stars in the universe. But I also love it because the organization of the concept relates to evolution so well. Elizabeth was wondering what "genes" made up a story. I love thinking about how stories give way to one another, for example the Pyramus and Thisbe myth to Romeo and Juliet, to West Side story and so forth. It seems to me that stories have parents just as we do. At least, there seems to be some essence, "salt" if you will, running through each one, just as we are all made up of the same basic components. We are all so LIKE our parents and yet, we're all little variations...

Last class we talked about clumpy diversity, which I think relates really well to the generation of stories. Maybe whatever it was I read about there only being a few stories really meant that there are a few clumps that plots, if simplified, could be grouped into. I guess that would still make it possible for infinite stories to abound, while sharing certain "traits" as living things do.

Listening to the class discussions about the evolution of people's perceptions of the outer world, I gradually came to the definition of a story as a batch of statements with certain logic entwined around them to form a coherent unit. Fear of the unknown that urged people at first to come up with an explanation of the processes in the outer world no longer dominates people's consciousness. Instead it is supplanted by a desire to have power. On an individual level, creating a story helps one express what s/he holds to be correct and use it as a guiding principle in life. So that a story empowers one to get hold of his/her life and not be governed by other people's stories. On a "population" level, presenting a credible story give the author much respect, and, hence, authority in society. Not surprising is it then that the best storytellers still maintain ascendancy over the majority of people (think of Darwin, Homer etc). Because people do not tend to adopt a story without first subjecting it to rational analysis, a sort of "natural selection" acts upon stories, treasuring those substantiated with the soundest logic.

"By searching out origins, one becomes a crab... eventually he also believes backward," says Nietzsche. So, should we seek the origin of stories or focus on their impact on the present moment?
If the plausibility of a story is determined by human logic, how can we determine that something is true? Can anything be proven to be true?
What is the aim of the stories we tell? How can we explain the presence of stories with no sound logic behind them?
These are the questions, for which, I hope, I will be able to provide a plausible answer before the end of the semester.

Also, here's something about evolution that bothers me. Maybe I just don't know enough yet, but wouldnt the fact that everything started out as the same type of organism throw off everything we have observed about evolved creatures? By 'everything' I mean things like food chains or resource competition. And if evolution occurs partially as a means to make sure that every existing organism isnt wiped out by some disaster, does this mean that if (when everything was the same organism) that the chance existed that something might have come along and wiped out everything (including the possibility for life) ??? If this is a valid question, it makes me less likely to buy into the theory of evolution. It just seems to shaky a basis to start EVERYTHING on.

In response to Thursdays class: I was in Anne's section, and towards the end of the hour, we all became involved in a wonderful conversation about the meaning of and the search for truth. Here's another question though: just because we know what we believe to be the truth (or a "good story") about something, what bearing does that have on anything? Just because we decide we believe in evolution do anything to alter its occurence. And even if we collectively decide to start a worldwide 'evolution lies' club, nothing would change. This really bothers me. In the humanities and the social sciences, I am conforted by the fact that my words, my explanantions, and my emotions could possibly change something or someone. But with science, even the most earnest show of emotion does nothing to stop the processes of life and nature. Why do we need to decide to believe or not believe in something that we have no control over? I have no answer what-so-ever, and so I am going to bed.


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