5 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2024
  2. Nov 2023
      • for: MET, MST, MCT, FET, MET - information, MST - information, Amanda N. Robin, major evolutionary transition, major system transition, facilitating evolutionary transition

      • Title:Major Evolutionary Transitions and the Roles of Facilitation and Information in Ecosystem Transformations

      • Author: Robin et al.
      • Date: 2021

      • Abstract

        • A small number of extraordinary “Major Evolutionary Transitions” (METs) have attracted attention among biologists.
        • They comprise novel forms of
          • individuality and
          • information,
        • and are defined in relation to organismal complexity, irrespective of broader ecosystem-level effects.

        • This divorce between

          • evolutionary and
          • ecological consequences
        • qualifies unicellular eukaryotes, for example, as a MET although they alone failed to significantly alter ecosystems.

        • 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
        • as Major System Transitions (MSTs).

        • In doing so, we highlight important morphological adaptations that spread through populations because of

          • their immediate, direct-fitness advantages for individuals.
        • These are Major Competitive Transitions, or MCTs.

        • We argue that often
          • multiple
            • METs and
            • MCTs
        • must be present to produce MSTs.

        • For example, sexually-reproducing, multicellular eukaryotes (METs) with

          • anisogamy and
          • exoskeletons (MCTs)
        • significantly altered ecosystems during the Cambrian.

        • 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.
        • 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.
        • The latter is ‘authored’ by abiotic entities rather than biological organisms.

        • 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/

  3. Jul 2023
    1. Julian Huxley
      • Julian Huxley's biology work was to lay the seed of
        • how one individual organism transforms over many generations
          • into a new higher-level individual organism
        • he called this the "movement of individuality"
        • It has also come to be known as
          • major transitions
          • major evolutionary transition (MET)
          • evolutionary transitions in individuality
        • grandson of Thomas Huxley
        • brother of Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
        • wrote The Individual in the Animal Kingdom (1912)
        • advocated for closed, independent systems with harmonious parts
        • endorsed gradients of individuality
        • "closure is never complete, the independence never absolute, the harmony never perfect"
  4. Feb 2023
    1. somewhere, somehow, through evolutionary iteration, a bunch of individual, independent, single-celled organisms stumbled upon governance principles that made them fitter together. Such “fundamental organizational changes in the history of life”1, known as major evolutionary transitions, had happened before — the eukaryotes that became multicellular are themselves held to be the result of symbiosis, and that’s not even the beginning — and have happened since.

      Other references for METs: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=major%2Bevolutionary%2Btransition

      • Each = MET is a transition from many to a unified individual
      • or from one superorganism level to a higher order superorganism level
  5. May 2022
    1. 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?