Contingency Theory of Stephen J. Gould

Mr. Pessimistic

I am reading up on this. I wanted to post Shermer's explication of this theory because I find it satisfactory.

So, is evolution geared toward H.Sapiens, or could we have a different outcome upon rewinding and replaying the tape?

I admit to not having much opinion at this time, as I am still trying to find more info on the theory.

Glorious Contingency

Quote:
The Problem of Meaning

Many of those who oppose the idea of a predominantly contingent universe have misread contingency for accidental or random. Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, for example, have stated explicitly that, "The survivors, who produced us, did so by contingency, by sheerest accident;" "Gould [argues] that contingency—randomness—plays a major role in the results of evolution…", and Gould "sees the evolution of humanity as being accidental, purely contingent." Yet Gould states quite clearly in Wonderful Life:

I am not speaking of randomness, but of the central principle of all history—contingency. A historical explanation does not rest on direct deductions from laws of nature, but on an unpredictable sequence of antecedent states, where any major change in any step of the sequence would have altered the final result. This final result is therefore dependent, or contingent, upon everything that came before—the unerasable and determining signature of history. [Emphasis added.]

As Gould notes, contingency is an unpredictable sequence of antecedent states, not randomness, chanciness, or accident.

Daniel Dennett likewise takes Gould to task in a chapter entitled "Tinker to Evers to Chance," a play on words linking Gould's love of baseball—the three names represent the most famous double-play combination in baseball history—to chance, which Dennett identifies with contingency. But contingency does not mean chance, nor does it mean random, despite Dennett's conclusion: "The fact that the Burgess fauna were decimated in a mass extinction is in any case less important to Gould than another conclusion he wants to draw about their fate: their decimation, he claims, was random." True, mass extinctions may seem random, as when an asteroid hits the Earth. But by contingency Gould means a conjuncture of preceding states that determine subsequent outcomes. just as astronomers knew exactly when and where Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was going to strike Jupiter in July of 1995 (and nailed the timing and location precisely), astronomers from (say) Mars, observing Earth 65 million years ago could have calculated the collision with the Yucatdn peninsula with pinpoint accuracy. But the effects of those impacts could not have been adequately computed (and in the case of the Jupiter hit were not), because of the number of contingencies involved.

More at the linked site.

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

marti1900 · Senior Joined: 14 Mar 2005 Posts: 354 Gender:

Interesting stuff. But I am not sure I completely understand the difference between contingency as he uses it, and chance or randomness. Perhaps it's only the twist of semantics. Is this it?: contingency requires choice, (I choose Action A), whereas randomness makes one the passive recipient of 'fate' (asteroid wiping out population)? But does that work for amoebas and virus? Do they 'choose'? Maybe I don't want the word 'choose', but rather 'active participant'. Hmmmm

I'm working myself into a convoluted morrass here trying to make a clear difference in my mind.

Any help for the groping here?

Marti in Mexico

Mr. Pessimistic

I struggle a bit with this too...sometimes I think I am right on the mark, then the next second has me doubting.

I am reading up on this now, along with Collapse, so...

I probably posted this prematurely, but I just wanted to get some other input from the people here to help me understand it better.

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Ken Hemingway · Intern Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 188 Gender:

Here’s my take on this question.

A system is something which transforms inputs into outputs. The Earth is a system.

You can consider the Earth and its surrounding parts of the Universe (lets say the Milky Way) as it existed, 4 billion years ago, as the input.

You can consider the Earth as it is now as the output.

Now let us consider what kind of a system it is.

If it is a random system, then you could put in exactly the same inputs a number of times, and each time the output would be totally different.

A determinate system would be one in which certain aspects of the output (say the existence of humans living in cities) always comes out the same even if you make reasonably large changes in the inputs. For example you might increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and split the landmass into two large continents instead of one – and humans still show up, and develop civilizations.

A contingent system is one where even very small changes in the inputs totally change the nature of the output. So, the acidity level in a small pool close to the ocean is 1% greater than in a previous trial, and this time life does not develop at all.

Gould is claiming that the history of the Earth is contingent in exactly this sense. Other people believe that it is more determinate than that. i.e that humans would have developed under some range of initial conditions. Just how big that range is, of course, is something no one can talk about with any confidence.

Mr. Pessimistic

Again...the main issue with this theory, to me anyway and I assume to many, is how it differs from TOTAL randomness. I hear proponents say it is NOT a random system.

I like the analogy of rewinding the tape...

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

MadArchitect

The key to understanding the difference, I think, lies in placing the emphasis on the scientific process of prediction. Both randomness and contingency may be unpredictable, but they are unpredictable for different reasons. On the lowest levels, contingency may be predictable, which is why, given a set amount of information, astronomers could predict the collision of the Shoemaker-Levy comet with Jupiter in 1995. The effect was unpredictable only because there were too many factors on which the effect was contingent.

Scale plays a very large part in determining whether an event will be predictable or not. Not so with randomness, because random events are not contingent -- there's a fundamental disconnect between the effect of a random event any anything that might have caused it. Random events are so unpredictable that it seems somewhat misguided to think that we can even anticipate randomness. We can only name an event random in retrospect.

Observation indicates that most of the events in material reality are contingent, so if there are strictly random events -- and it seems fairly likely to me -- then they must take place at a microlevel several stages removed from what is observable to the unaided eye. Rolling a pair of dice, we might reflect, is not truly random, but it's contingent on so many factors that it is, in most cases, unpredictable.

Mr. Pessimistic

Thanks Mad...this helps.

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

marti1900 · Senior Joined: 14 Mar 2005 Posts: 354 Gender:

Hmmmm. Still thinking. I'm doing better using Ken's inputs and outputs. I'm going to let this churn a bit.

Marti in Mexico

CSflim · Experienced Joined: 30 Dec 2003 Posts: 114 Gender:

I find it interesting how Nature seems to repeatedly converge on similar designs.

Think of the favourite toy of the creationists - the eye. Something incredibly complex; something which seems incredibly unlikely to come about by chance.
Of course it didn't come about by chance - it came about via the process of natural selection (which merely harnesses randomness in the form of mutations). We all accept this, but what is most interesating about 'the' eye is that is that it evolved more than once. (This means that there are creatues who both have eyes, but who's closest common ancestor does not).
It would appear that natural selection has quite a knack for rediscovering "good tricks", and hence might not be as contingent as some may believe. We can understand the reason behind this by the image that two mountain climbers will find the same peak of the mountain, even if they start at opposites sides of the valley.

Of course such a metaphor stinks of adaptionist thinking, and one can only assume that Gould's contigency is simply a part of his broader assault on adaptionism.

Yet adaptionism is exactly what makes evolution work. The adaption is where the actual 'design' comes from. William Paley remarked that on coming across a pocketwatch in a forest, with all of its intricate workings, one would naturally postulate a designer. Paley was correct to an extent - it's just that we need no longer postulate God in order to explain the apperance of design - natural selection will do just fine.
Yet Gould wishes to do away with the 'Panglossian' paradigm of adaptionist thinking. But if he does that, it appears that he must answer to Paley.

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Mr. Pessimistic

Great post CS!

But as I understand it, Gould is not saying that contingency would NOT repeat certain designs, but that given another go around, certain things MAY not develop. That each step is contingent upon the previous step, and that with any variation, things can proceed very differently than we have experienced to date.

Paley's mistake also lies in good old anthropomorphism...the watch is a human invention...nature is not. Is a bird creating a nest a sign of god? To some I guess...but probably not. I agree that there is no need to assign a god as creator.

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper


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