- Nov 2023
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www.frontiersin.org www.frontiersin.org
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for: MET, MST, MCT, FET, MET - information, MST - information, Amanda N. Robin, major evolutionary transition, major system transition, facilitating evolutionary transition
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Title:Major Evolutionary Transitions and the Roles of Facilitation and Information in Ecosystem Transformations
- Author: Robin et al.
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Date: 2021
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Abstract
- A small number of extraordinary “Major Evolutionary Transitions” (METs) have attracted attention among biologists.
- They comprise novel forms of
- individuality and
- information,
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and are defined in relation to organismal complexity, irrespective of broader ecosystem-level effects.
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This divorce between
- evolutionary and
- ecological consequences
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qualifies unicellular eukaryotes, for example, as a MET although they alone failed to significantly alter ecosystems.
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Additionally, this definition excludes revolutionary innovations not fitting into either MET type
- (e.g., photosynthesis).
- We recombine
- evolution with
- ecology
- to explore how and why entire ecosystems were
- newly created or
- radically altered
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as Major System Transitions (MSTs).
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In doing so, we highlight important morphological adaptations that spread through populations because of
- their immediate, direct-fitness advantages for individuals.
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These are Major Competitive Transitions, or MCTs.
- We argue that often
- multiple
- METs and
- MCTs
- multiple
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must be present to produce MSTs.
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For example, sexually-reproducing, multicellular eukaryotes (METs) with
- anisogamy and
- exoskeletons (MCTs)
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significantly altered ecosystems during the Cambrian.
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Therefore, we introduce the concepts of Facilitating Evolutionary Transitions (FETs) and Catalysts as
- key events or agents that are insufficient themselves to set a MST into motion,
- but are essential parts of synergies that do.
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We further elucidate the role of information in MSTs as transitions across five levels:
- (I) Encoded (Genetic);
- (II) Epigenomic;
- (III) Learned;
- (IV) Inscribed; and
- (V) Dark Information.
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The latter is ‘authored’ by abiotic entities rather than biological organisms.
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Level
- IV has arguably allowed humans to produce a MST, and
- V perhaps makes us a FET for a future transition that melds
- biotic and
- abiotic life
- into one entity.
- Understanding the interactive processes involved in past major transitions will illuminate both
- current events and
- the surprising possibilities that abiotically-created information may produce.
Indyweb / Indranet citations - Michael Levin, Roy Baumeister, Adam Omary youtube conversation - specifically, the question about whether a social superorganism of global human civilization / society / culture constitutes a new Major Evolutionary Transition of Individuality - https://hyp.is/rQgvZn2hEe6-TF8HFSS9mg/docdrop.org/video/UfoVTA0ilsY/
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- Jul 2022
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bafybeiac2nvojjb56tfpqsi44jhpartgxychh5djt4g4l4m4yo263plqau.ipfs.dweb.link bafybeiac2nvojjb56tfpqsi44jhpartgxychh5djt4g4l4m4yo263plqau.ipfs.dweb.link
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FollowingSimondon’s social theory [37] and our previous work [10 ], social systems are themselves individualsthat harbour in them preindividual forces of transformation. Therefore we do not see in the currentorganization of personhood, inasmuch as it seems unassailable, a final unchangeable state of affairs.
!- references : evolutionary biology * Evolutionary biologists have developed similar ideas to explain how throughout history, groups of individual organisms that clustered together and discovered better fitness as a result of symbiotic relationships began to reproduce as a whole new entity. Hence the collective became the new individual * Robin et al. paper: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontiersin.org%2Farticles%2F10.3389%2Ffevo.2021.711556%2Ffull&group=world * Robin et al. video presentation: https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F6J-J72GoqhY%2F&group=world * Stuart West video: https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FVUfNEHl44hc%2F&group=world
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the conquest of the Americas was also a second human transition: an escape from agriculture to profit-driven enterprise: “Western Europeans began colonizing large areas of the rest of the world, creating the first globalized economy.” Lewis and Maslin call this the “Columbian exchange,” when humans, animals, plants, and microbes established themselves in places they had never been before. Energy from new foods, and information from printing, helped drive this new transition. Farming resumed in the Americas to feed and clothe the Europeans, using the labour of African slaves.
Second Transition: Columbian Exchange
In evolutionary biology, there are also another type of transition, Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET). Robin et. al propose that the introduction of writing (inscribed language) was a major information improvement that played an important role leading to a major system transition (MST).
Major Evolutionary Transitions and the Roles of Facilitation and Information in Ecosystem Transformations https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontiersin.org%2Farticles%2F10.3389%2Ffevo.2021.711556%2Ffull&group=world https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F6J-J72GoqhY%2F&group=world
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- May 2022
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www.usmcu.edu www.usmcu.edu
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This is the vision of OP Sapiens Star—that human’s evolution is not finished, and that the hyperthreat provides the impetus for a quantum leap into a new way of being. Through achieving a galactically significant mission—saving Earth’s ecological integrity—the Homo sapiens species “stars” within the universe. Humans go from being a menace and fighting one another to being heroic, creative, and tolerant.
This can be interpreted as an instantiation of the hero's journey, in the context of research that combines evolution with ecology as in the research paper: Major Evolutionary Transitions and the Roles of Facilitation and Information in Ecosystem Transformations (Robin et al., 2021).From this lens, cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) was first made possible through spoken language, then accelerated through written language. The authors claim that another Major System Transition (MST).is emerging, which they posit to be abiotic in nature involving Artificial Intelligence.
Faced with a self-induced civilization-scale threat, we may ask whether a major cultural evolution may be necessary to avoid catastrophe and whether it may constitute another MST. Could a rapid higher level global understanding of the epistemological dualism of self and other which undergirds normative alienation, othering and conflict, both with others of our own species, of other species and with the planetary system itself play a major role in the transition?
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