Richard Dawkins - Evolution, Embryology, Stars & Universes

Richard Dawkins answers my question at the end of a lecture in Portland, Oregon 10/10/09.

Question: Would you consider the life cycle of stars to be evolution? Natural selection?

Dawkins: The problem that sometimes talk about, the evolution of stars, and I think theyre wrong to do so, What they are seeing is not evolution but embryology. Stars go through a life cycle. A life cycle that actually is not that different from the life cycle of an individual animal. But evolution is not like that. Evolution is not the changing of one individual object into a later form of the same object. Its more like a series of cinema frames where you have successive generations which are being reborn all the time, changing progressively as generations go by. And stars dont do that.

It has been argued that universes might do that. Not many cosmologists take this seriously, but one physicist, Lee Smolin, has made the suggestion that universes give birth to daughter universes. The universe that we live in is just one bubble in a great foam of bubbles. And bubbles give rise to daughter bubbles; Smolin suggests through black holes. He even suggests that there is an evolutionary process going on because in the moment of birth, when one universe gives rise to another universe through a black hole, the laws of physics in the parent universe mutate to produce slightly different laws of physics in the daughter universe.

And if that were true, then you could have evolutionary progression toward universes which are better at having babies. That would mean evolution in the direction of whatever it takes to make a universe good at having babies, which as Smolin ~~cant hear~~ making black holes. So any universe whose laws of physics cause it not to last long enough before fizzling out, or reaching the end of its own life cycle, would be unlikely to give birth to baby universes. So for Smolin, there is an evolutionary trend toward universes that are better at making new universes. And he also speculates that those qualities that make a universe good at making baby universes also happen to be the qualities that make life likely to arise. ~~~~ long time ~~~~ You would see stars producing basic elements and so on.

So there is at least one model that suggests that there is something astronomically equivalent of natural selection. But the life cycle of stars is not evolution, its embryology.

Category:

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• Dawkins
• evolution
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• Portland
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• PSU
• embryology
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• universe
• cosmology
• natural
• selection
• lee
• smolin

[geckothelizard]

sort of disagree with dawkin's first answer. stars are made up of previous generations of stars that blew up in super novae. matter changes from being in a star, eg you get bigger atoms formed. so todays stars are more metal rich than the earlier generations of stars (initially the only atom that existed was helium).

it's not "evolution" as such but previous generations do have a direct impact on later ones.

[bdhanes]

I agree. This is why I asked the question. The more I study, the thinner the line get's between the evolution of life or biology and the evolution of matter. At some point matter became life; so why wouldn't we see evolution and/or natural selection in matter in the cosmos?

[Unkewlioso]

Good question! How did you get your questions to send? I had a series I really wanted answered, but wouldn't go through.

[bdhanes]

I tried to text it but it wouldn't go. It was a longer question, ultimately asking about examples of cosmological evolution or natural selection, but I condensed it and wrote it on a yellow post-it note then simply handed it to the girl reading the questions. I was annoyed how she asked it; as if it was a dumb question. However, Dawkins totally got what the question was getting at, and gave a wonderful answer, clarifying what evolution actually is.

[Unkewlioso]

Yeah, I wasn't pleased with how the whole night went, but it was pretty good nonetheless.

LOL have you seen the "related videos" to this?

[bdhanes]

I don't see why every single related video is by ZULKARNEYN2099. WTF is going on YouTube!?

[Stringprodigy]

Wow, what a great answer. Dawkins is amazing.