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 Newsletter Nr. 673  
 Amsterdam, September 6th, 2017


EPISTEMOLOGICAL SOAP - Naturalistic Methodologies and Evolution - Resisting the ‘Transcendental Temptation’ - DAVID LANE

Thus while I enjoyed Joe Corbett's latest essay, Trans-Darwinian Evolution, and can appreciate that one can indeed speculate about “non-local” influences and how such could play a role in morphology, I don't think we have fully exhausted all of the (“here and now”) physical influences that have shaped evolution's past, present, and future. For instance, it is only in the past three decades or so that Darwin's theory of sexual selection has been properly reconsidered and is now regarded as elemental along with natural selection in determining the genotype/phenotype of future replicators.

I don't see the pressing need (at least not yet) for invoking “involution”, “eros”, “morphic resonance”, or “Akashic fields,” particularly when much more mundane mechanisms may be operative. Genetic drift, for example, helps explain how genes that are not fit may be passed on simply by random chance or because they are neutral, neither adding nor detracting from the genome. Cooperation versus competition (co-evolution for mutual assistance and survival) has also shed a clearer light on the field. Neo-Darwinism isn't stuck to a 1930s/1940s synthesis, as any one conversant in the field knows, especially with the advent of advanced computational simulations and our deeper understanding of fossilized DNA.

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/lane128.html


THE AQAL TRINITY - JOE CORBETT

Perhaps the most frequently repeated phrase in all of integral discourse is Truth, Beauty, and the Good. It has become the general mantra to indicate the essential nature of the AQAL, not just one trinity among possible others, but THE Trinity of the AQAL. Because this trinity is often used to represent the totality of the AQAL as a four-quadrant reality, yet only accounts for three quadrants in the limited sense of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person perspectives, with the exterior quadrants reduced to one external world of impersonal material existence, this trinity is an incomplete representation of AQAL reality in its totality, something that pretends to represent that totality but does not, and therefore it is a false Trinity.

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/corbett45.html