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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (41381)	4/2/1999 10:12:00 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

Punctuated Equilibrium .... controversial and thinly supported This is one of those great moments in science where the controversy proves the point (prove in this context means supplies a critical test). The ideas Darwin presented in The Origin of Species were attacked and defended and over the course of 20 or 30 years became a self supporting meme. For each critism there was a counter argument and the whole concept was self nurturing. It became hard to accept a change in one area without leaving many parts of the theory of natural selection exposed to inconsistancies. Most important in the accepted view of the mechanism for evolution was that of gradualism. There were those who surmised that a change in species would be promoted in time of catastrophe, this was agreed, but no one would agree that there was catastrophe after catastrophe to bring about all the species since we don't see that kind of operation in the world today. It wasn't until the 1960s when mechanisms for multiple catastrophes was determined. The most important being the movement and collisions of continents around the world, and the variations of temperature causing alternate hot times, and ice ages over the course a few tens of thousands of years. The crowning achievement was the evidence for the comet that killed the dinosaurs (and likely other space events every 100 million years or so). Gould et. al. made refinements on those earlier catastrophe/selection arguments and came up with a much clearer picture of why life on earth looks like it does. Gradualism leads to refinements of life, but also leads to a stable, very slowly changing community. The great part is that his theory predicts that the memes of gradualism have formed such a self supporting network that it will not go away through a gradual blending and incorporation of his ideas. The other scientists will either have to change their mind or die off before the new meme set can prevail. It is (absolute) gradualism that is now thinly supported. OT - By studying the degree of interrelation in a computer program as it changes one can make a determination when more modifications will lead to further refinement (gradual) and when the program needs a rewrite (punctuated). A program that is highly refined and interdependant will resist change until a catastrophe (like Y2K) forces the rework. TP