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memex/0_inbox/books/TWOW/html/41 Reproductive causation.html

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<title>Reproductive causation: Gradual evolution</title>
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<meta name="author" content="Amr Gharbeia">
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#ff0000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>R<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkCR_02" align="right" hspace="5" width="103" height="32" border="0">eproductive
causation: Gradual evolution.</b></font></font> The first of the two
main kinds of reproductive global regularities is gradual evolution,
and it will be explained here by considering, first, its <font face="Arial, sans-serif">Ontological
cause</font><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">, </font>the existence
of reproductive cycles in closed or isolated regions of space, and
then, its <font face="Arial, sans-serif">Ontological effect</font>, a
global regularity in which evolutionary change leads gradually in the
direction of an optimum, which will be called “natural perfection”
because it makes the most of what is possible in a spatiomaterial
world. In other words, reproductive causation implies that gradual
evolution is progressive. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Though
I have already suggested why gradual evolutionary change is
ontologically necessary (in the introductory section of <font face="Arial, sans-serif">Reproductive
global regularities</font>), there is more to be said about its
ontological cause. First, in order to show that reproductive cycles
are an ontological cause, it is necessary to show <i>how </i>they
derive from space, matter, and the ontological causes of simpler
global regularities. Second, in order to explain what gradual
evolution involves, it is necessary to explain what is meant by
“natural perfection” and to show how this ontological cause
generates gradual change in the direction of natural perfection in
both the organisms and the ecology. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>O<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkCR_03" align="right" hspace="5" width="119" height="37" border="0">ntological
cause: reproductive cycles.</b></font></font> What constitutes the
ontological cause of gradual evolution is a way that all the simpler
ontological causes of global regularities work together. Their
combination yields a kind of (derivative) substance with an odd
nature. It is the reproductive cycle. It is basically just an
organism with heritable traits that normally reproduces itself during
its lifetime. But explaining the derivative substances ontologically
will show the necessity and character of the global regularities they
cause. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Reproductive
cycles are, in effect, “substances” that derive from material and
structural causation. Enplaning that will show how reproductive
cycles are reduced to spatiomaterialism, since we have already seen
how those more elementary ontological causes are reduced to
spatiomaterialism..</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Material
global regularities </i>are involved, because what is going on in
reproductive cycles is the use of free energy to do work, that is, to
make things happen that would not otherwise happen. As we shall see,
most of the relevant free energy is supplied in the way sketched
earlier, that is, by the radiation from a star. That is a
thermodynamic flow of matter toward evenly distributed heat, and when
it is intercepted by a planet in orbit around the star, it can be
used to fuel reproductive cycles. Cycles of reproduction are
irreversible processes, though each reproductive cycle involves many
structural global regularities.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Structural
global regularities </i>are involved because what uses the free
energy to do work are structural causes. There are material
structures that coincide with the thermodynamic flow of matter toward
evenly distributed heat, and the ensuing motion and interaction
results in certain specific effects, which are events that would not
otherwise occur. This is an ontological explanation of how efficient
causes produce their effects, as we have seen in the case of
dispositions. In discussing structural global regularities, we saw
that structural global regularities entail efficient-cause
connections. What makes such structuring of the tendencies to kinetic
energy and randomness into a new ontological cause is <i>how
</i>structural causes are combined in the constitution of
reproductive cycles. </font></font></font>
</p>
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YxpbzwXHOEh6K4A9XU3LKocuzAXTxfBjDVGQkRcaEQaGEdFOxKld6DWRS54LHpYEweDFeLLirFoQ4kSEe1gFN8J5RXiOFgZgXH0OBhpi2NzD1oVfBBFDMBBm8HaYB136olI8NgmjIMSJMI4iN8VLHaDxBpt4Ad7o1hXK+HrmMyNetDcDlfBf38dskFFvluiWBcKY28PAe8lk/TKt7qBca4dNQ6szn5cTyahlBdqb1yUTOKnSolwFSsRr5lg1pzCwFp1Cq8lAawA1vSGR0khvenGn6y06cWUVozpl6oI/NUpNldOHWAIY1ckWacX56g9rKto2i/wd8eVPSivxzaSZtQrjOsYgdHdxziIMRj9fYzl4nrQ3E5h7JKL4SMHBoSBscubbNddApuQ6jYSl70Hv3FgdfYkRnzE/eTeIzAGvtGiY4wX0gMQG032Ma4PTuFHRDwUi6MxrtMLmep+C8FDGOeAzfokjIOCAhdBLohQ6GZ7LstbpFT2MU5WMI5zH2M3WkkWjIMPctbcjjBWNX0SjuaHGS9gnMNPr9vlhnL42AwRrYyKIIYr86ulRCu+nc0Pq+XewTZi7MbXfycN+8RFNsh4LwdrCiXJ6u1jnJMERyRqfiHcNBEcjXGOXqUOxQ2g7nYVJcYVNDFcilVpCr/GOGJMu0UP3+UO81GMJTeTL2SCqMlkwdiVa9fbFozBJK+3k32MXVC8VvDb2A6nI22ZZnexXU/6H+o5APihDoaEFzaC5FbabWUEKYxd0Z5fHtg4exTmImRN495ggURhq0i7XXQrjOG82DCoc4ymhVREm7WPsReq9gcBhQaVtD3EtAjlZW80xrD1Q/1BWh+q2RZUkb4Vxg+wgXiFMR7SKLShTVmv03tbe/W2XaUx1DA2HWg5ChZXnYIvXdD2qOewcAwmyUGWU7ENo8koOYswKmJOvhCv7xj1JmUliC+frBib52RQ2XrFTxtG6S2URbA28cDGHrTKnZMOK1lqYQLw5dUy2KJNan9JtbT/gQvjtVClAu00wT8G64tWrgfGCfs+WSzWeuirlWjd08daE00HiHtlejuNq00fa000GRRi5OsVihK4xuljrYkmggKUfO39sEJ5MX2TMF5x+lhrokmgICUf/P4/BVelP/k/fO2enMtWmj7WmmgiKERJ8PtIdFX6PkjJG4vxqtPHWhNNBOUrt9cfjHz8eLwqfYwE/d5JGK84faw10URQvvparFgfv//Th6/HY7zy9LHWRJNAca8ck48RSN3Yx2BWnz7WmmgSKIhJYoUS4jgafAPjVaaPtSaaDMqqMTFSN86qWHX6WGuiyaCsGhPGmDWVGGPWBogxZm2AGGPWBogxZm2ApsY4VdZr2fVKHWPMUpoa42ddK7+sV+oYY5bStBhrXfhIJbK1WrecSNx2u6VEIt/p6olUq6unVpM6xpilNC3Gqc+3GtCqveRTL/lEKZF6yWZfsola4llL3OqrSR1jzFKa2qjI6t3PHSqUdT2h3XY/a7VbWJx/0fVWdzWpewtjTdfzllmYLsupW6fSy1qRZvJUPGsS49JzPtEFSGCRBsu0/LijO5u6NzAutbRSzTLfJZLVFGujNC3GeS2BhgRi/JzXbxMpwBdafPnU57xJx7JT9wbGNWK423quJVrdbr78uZvv0hRjvHGaFuNs56X7XEpon7sv0Kx77nbAJtbhK5F/7j6vp22cun2Ghmg3BdSmyi0d4e1PsTZKM3Z/aMslYNEmXupZwvtchqJ5YIq1UdpgjGs1rdxJdEvw8azd6vCR7copxnjTtMGd0amyXgaLolxLJfK6piU0PVuWU+UlXgJrGdpgjKW45H0P2niMWe9BjDFrA8QYszZAjDFrA8QYszZAjDFrA8QYszZAjDFrA8QYszZAjDFrA8QYszZA645x8uP3GEb8tf70PXx8/YExZiXswTgvn23TRq7UuwuMJxMiBxwH/SNeWRIV7eAHf3BmjFNlvfTmRv3H9gZU7jr2nAtrIS2AccqIvqIGIXdHjUYudxKjHv/vavLvzdQVc8njj9HIayWFEJWPH2fFONUta7dvnrg7+sGs59nOZa+ytVp+1MOw/HxsYiGMNePZJe2Zilw9ob/oGgWvQGVbuLDb1ZF2rdTq5kvdFpZosD770tLxD0Nd4J5ZfXRAIiC1+I9fk6Ne9pDDEOP/rzIrxmUqZcv0RF7ruYwRN/L57nMN5rr4vFOq/9hef6MERubopGDxbCezU/luqdQZNeyUR6ImbML4JYvBK0Si/KxlP+cT8nHkFy3VKSdaLQxvAaZFKv+5lIAFMNspp55rGv5ln7MpKJRFZyzGb2u269WpJH5OZDvyKb1nKHVbJe0Z58rlbMvy2F5/I4ColSiv9uGnFt0hlbnMzFd+7lKiMJdp3UXstwmq1UYtzeqphDbws5UnmFz9lOWHvm2pTebGGMNT6JI+FbxC0MQLhWWRC+FP19XWcCr6yur4UKoyKmpwiC7uOTZ1dmMsS2PClD40/bkEiSByU92aZnlsr/9BWVZb7cNPhuFGmauf+RL9XKY5ZV7UxMuI5gTUwapQMKRPMNb6hHfHfC+kuTHWtFpL6xNrYpyqdT6nEmMxzsId0U2MdTgE5OglYixt425JV0XurabXarcKUYwb039sr78RPpuqdbS1KI1fZT4zl2lOPaBeg7v8unGr6Z2UDjVul3JP/rnb0jtgNdIHzN3CR+dzguoMmXBpnuU/d8tYo+C3fdEWbDEq8GaiUQHFA2a7Z8yVqZcU8jqMMW6CtTZkb/jTYKNEfpkYQzarleCjTPVcOVHS8UsvUa2Xx8B05mN7/Y0SWIVqo70Xy5JhG1Pm6me+UtnMZY5iLERrqKmO+UbX4B61kHDIZSm4i1BulaiBrL/goq6sMxKEsTTP8EOaawkboy3YgvHn7sstYQrWWef5WVZupefnVuq1UdF67nZ0WNmlP7DtnktLxfiLVRZDeanMZWY+KA/NXJZ92/MznyTG4o9BExl+/g7kJE3aEgijjvUVfZQ7hsFDdUbCYp6pb5q3L9rCund/rATjDfdhTXNXR+rFmlHQkPmsQS3wTG34W61WMzGGGu8lodPHrTaEcaeUpxoFvu2LtsAYj9Da+LCsBazKW30bNf/axpnO6rEHY0xbLYv2lzy1nodWTjlBH4lamT66ss6glFnMM6pR4Nu+aAsLYfzGzz1YyeXJtrod5ZSRG5ZfX5D9GGvPnedbaITU0DuFfquydFPRPLVCDB9WuQs2/kvnGd1bz+TNKj93uqkutBJnO+UCSlkcWt2Br4TFqOtruk7GOSH+Y6Tfbbzyz89La0zMjbFQf4ZG9MkN/twS4JFdd13D2TFD6oJ4Z3vHM2N8qxohJV06jTvKl4Tz1AoxbTgNmlTPWNp0oEGF3ixa08qOyG5OSdNTna7REWMGVKQMdvtMofMoe8n5LlbQ6ECWmc8+jW7ijRD14WdT+H9ArzvxYX54o4U0L8aagFaGGOyXoxUlDESvdToadutly3q3psLSl7O4GOolMz49LsknoF6R/X/6bWsY8jcw/vXrmY0eTZfWW0vXpN8qq1OvI81bPcWJFx2uELfRoJlCbgBak3cumvOo1OY7WbNlb/bMQAbLtmRpTNnLnO/KbprnUSX1/BrtcBsh6sM3Gn0Wve7E7072Ms+seTHOCiBQDPbL4fJSN5UqZ2UoeiGD06uw9F0NvlNQbpjx6dHv2cLyWfb/YU/f0NtFJmJc9341u+1uYNxBTxX5rdCPlZDzEmPpw0p0y1qNME49l0ol5IK2SXQdix86MrXl2+esyl5Gwx4zmOyPkZZFf75rdNPYjPGI7g+0sFT9hHUFVgCyD//l+Rb+32oJMorLsgZJDJpz6DSGjaCq6aCjefGqY1GjYqBfLqHqaDQPzP6QrgxLr767Wj8+vdbNtp4TnxNqQ+WUmzJ1/uDk9I0RNEyoEUKeKvRb5fUaVg00T60Qw4eVwqE4Zdwhq9ey2KBJ6Uh8a4nvo4LSuKZ18qojxuyZgQyWohmJMc13qdVvdNPYi/Eoo7hfc1El8ax6ObuqNIbagX5jw0U8ZM7J0risw8VNMeDwbS2OsaVfLqFs3yGMleeQvruaJT7951rpttSdD+O30ueAal0wOeH3WZ6yWgp+aqMjxuiZoQxGM9JfoOaBtrLRTeOYD9lUH2NVSQxinOioKOlqsyFzTmKstwAfW4yL+TFOve6XA+ktjExP9JoYU1h6tOCor9cSnx6qpfwzwYsHWXuM11o0QG+JIturU9bNWLua6sOv1ciDXHpJyc10fRBjMs06pTxspHW1cn61GOvPt6/65UCpFraY9WdFp+SZwtLDd+u5BU28fnz6WgsHwhn9f4zxl6QUFqpkgCnvb7bfh4+1h6q1jB79IXNOOY81vZzS7DDS1r37gzFeX0102SyzCcEYszZCTmKcai3qSmGMWVPJNoxH9MG1aiOfw7MtdYwxS2n+Jl4Zx0tTD16inK9p+NDd4HN4Rsee7NcrY9EMyzt5tUQ+hrdI6hhjltL8DrdSolOTPXiJ7rOu4UN3g8/hqY69/EsqVZYP4yWyeZhVPX3yMbxFUscYs5QW6f7QupYePDQqhp7Dk5RmP9fUapiHMlnInj71GN4iqWOMWUqLYWzpwUNOh57DU4VtVn/uKoxvWzjSQvb0ycfwFkkdY8xSWgTj25rRg4cY3756Dk+VxqlESuBs6jN29WWF6umTj+EtkjrGmKU0P8bd505K9eAhr9nnbn7oOTyF8XP3GWzjly6U3PmX7q1QPX3yMbxFUscYs5QWGho0g0b44xZOHWPMUmKMWRsg7oxmbYAYY9YGiDFmbYAYY9YGiDFmbYAYY9YGiDFmbYAYY9YGiDFmbYAYY9YGiDFmbYCmxDi1bE2TOsaYpTQdxql0OrtUpVNTpG4A46VnNNZaaAaMU+lsPq8tT/m84nh6jFOQQtb7U3aa8k5ighRr5XJ1WSqXNU1yPDXGqay2vPSx1kdadoryzsAYKK7Wlqiylp8R43y5dst6d6qV89NjPOfLIuZXtSxri6kxXnoKWWuh2+o6YwzFMWPMelszYry3TAHG1ZkxXmoKWWshxpi1AWKMWRsgxpi1AWKMWRsgxpi1AWKMWRsgxpi1AWKMWRugd4HxUXVv76AqpxOWxWm5RLMlrTQ8xbpAS4zecMxi1gJ6FxinX7S96ouc7vQXHxzJtVVb0ppOP6UHCK2mR2/YGb14rVWd6h5huVAaKBXghqSPHEqTVe8D42rnoNbZK3U6WuIP+Os8lfY6eiddTTx1anZhTHzWOk8H6adW5+Cg03lJH7Q6rb1qq6PvwYn0WnqvmoVfllLQsacKWJaq4iX79lZwJ0v6QG0Dt+TowLFU9fVOMK620nBHs9UO3lg9m37a6xzgXU9AIW0jxketdLWUrkFBrGn4UU23EoBuZ08/grJflwUxfLSO9p5mOTJcgCrTBsp7mFG5oWZH+ieoKoTovGkNpauajtcncy4UFphlq2nI0ni1lkytyhFckVa5ezG9E4wPECG9miaMO2DF4jfc9RYAbSPGaTh0Go5XTYNFAR864AdTHclvq1SSm6n/0wvyRudInWPghAbWThsqVRpFpr9RsKafXg4IY8q5VFjsySyNO1oytSpHKK8buXsh2YrxAdzUg/TBwVC1skjqbMKYEtLKaviRqNbSCuNSNWtraXzwhE8PIsZpKP7T8F9LEMZwytJe9oUwwBRUs7NhjJlC63QS2h/wB0XY3kvriWakqSTvsrlC2jawXEP7BpK1MCcSY/FHaeJW6VqCMqjMuaqwoCxNx+hnanMV/le5eyHZgfGBYcRjxa1DnWGt4hYqvu3yVOB9hCIBUNjDG6lBmaDR4hIUCEdjmmIzCw9ZLR3B8aBZky1lj7C8P4BpDYuixB6UO5QaTEFpJouxqoNp/wQ2C5Xj6WxrjyoRWagrU8mywrBt5Ab6kfbKEJ97WO/LpJsFSdJ0A2MqLDDLYm7GkmIgU8tyRIdlRu5eSHZgbBZngDFQvHek7WnZFth/UD7osEO105rTyTQ1xl+5vevvN9bnbrMDlIpJ+HhBx17HxNgwlSwrDNtGbpDQXxfGzmCMBUI2oe0ZOTeLWTaNuZmMX2umpnIE8rpu5u6FZDPGpQ597XVq2GbVWgdHYq/U2jua04afDePUSjEmR5PVuwRNdLsKeqqWO1moip/SRx0NDBTCGGekqSRLY2OFYdvIdVCHvzrgnBC/YVTMrCdo7y2Qu/taHONqVe+ohnT6D7pOxDiNn60sGhXa07iOgClSNy3GX38QIp1OpVaHMWVmq3cJ2DuwyWdKueOgpOFZjg5KYKCQLQQzylQiq6G/Qtk2sA7MDDs4ma6JtzotjnE6XdLTabrA9MvRk2bBGD7RNk7XXuZsRU2NsdvrF4KCs6wQ44MOGoLkNUbf0stTDZcNOZuMqbRtzqYJKnWe7Km0p3O4rU5228aJl0Qf41p170CgT2i2drk1ddNi/OFPQmhaPpteIcbwOwPGNdNhjMXlK2eTMWWfs2kZmq77Y3WyG2Pk2MT44KlTE3vZJywT5kzddBh/5f7wvRDlcknLrw7jl87BnuE1Vr6ldPWVs8mYss/ZtAxN1xm9Oq1794deLeWzqRScOPnxez8kb7REJCJEtVotayssjROdA4Ux+ZZKOPPK2WRM2edsYq0/xre1MkZyg0I2BxwH/R9GS4j/hpJb12vVlWGMTa5sWnmN0bcETTJqhg05m9SUfc4mln0YJ1pOGHlC/HZbq5VBQhRzyeOP0choyYb07a1emx5jqPHHDaWkhv/IcQqabQ0d25xNLPswfkmMqh3RWE4vwDc0j38DNEFCVIr/+DV5PEbSNf9b6/Z2aoyzejo7xjCVxv7IdM80ooe1LNngcGu1oOoUcsh4NdupHehg9B3p2HVXfYHmDvztZTuw0ZE26/AFIbqd1q0OAqsBOM79mhwto4/pt9bUGMvGFY1DqD09JXDEghqQ8PSkMH7qtA70o0RLFppqTMNsV8BaihbG+OjlCP8LOWRcZPdarYPEy95RYg8+taf0Ef5lWwdHLwfpP3SHMRbieWqMD2pPnSyNQ0AD9YBGLNCABN0sjY9K0B7Tah05tMYY08BaPy2MMbpi4E8tF3IBfGl6R5hGRUuvVl/Ss5sXs2MsZmniAbs4DkENgKMRC2moPgyMj57A8DjSdWiM7fW3YK2hnMK4BvVwH+NOKZ1OH8yD8Rya8tilalpr0TiEg6eslqARC3JAQromMU7gYMu9VmnvhQwmtQVrDbUwxkRp+hXGUF8fAcZPe/RXbeFwzvXC+ECragdyHMKRdI/tyQEJ2KOMG2hysCX816j5qrZgraFsGBpELaJhjBMv2IG3R0O64Q/s0Kc1w5i1QVr37g8HS+OjyY+wjR2WxwXy+un9YqyGlY/VuOfzx8WZmDpOBct+vV+M9ZfO4INrHf1Jl/Mt+Xw+DaOk0ZX0vBtMwSb4fIX29KRpw8/oTx2ngmW/3i/GWBoPPrh2QPMJfU8r9YdR0uhKet4Npw7I59bBAcSvBy5OF6eC5YDeN8avH1xTfuP+MEoalkbPu9GUgfHeUfXVs0FTxqlg2a91x3jK8cYGwp+nH1ORaGUHH1xTGB88pVvy+XwaRknw0jNtFoy1bLaUxeeDBjRlnIovUTzeeLHUTfn0h6K4k5/h6Q+tOvjgmuE3RvCkyxh7qWl0JT3vph7qxdlS6ShRffWM/pRxKubT6uKjoSY//XFUrb5qCFidQAn1sKDxqKJmWZsYvcuM2iSMn0ppe5/Fm3EY5ZRxKubT6uKjoSY/i5fW068ylNV+wihj8jAqhqllbWf0LjNqkzBe7ZPRb2uhwcWri4+GmvxkNGFM51JnJ38OtodxBxox2IHWbyfx8lSDRCY6uEmJTDS8ChplqD11GGMhcquOUzHhYX47PMiri4+Gmhz8ipoEdC7j7Nga0DSqfuSIwc4ePo9ZldmqYw6z6phhkGYNazeoTcH4w8qjBk0YS22HB9ne+GhzuYBQI6MGqRGBSKs6O+H5VEvIlWk56OopKxM1jLGKdsQYr8NLE7A7BXtO9nAkVEejyMlWD3Kt33+CH1T9YkWLf1Mc3t74aDZjTLax9nJknp3wrJErR44YhHuTrpZKMt/B2qzW2mtpVQoNKaMdUYCjecUY2yVsx2DPyd6ejMaNkZNND3JJ29MTZv/JgVH9YkU7ZfADe+OjzQnxGKNCeioOcKU6O7kmVAREGjGo7WWr6OLRsC0IazEWoxEakkYZ0szcYoztkqw8qWzEkJkqcrLhQVYflsoUq1+saPHPifTY+sjqXMGvltjZwxjbpUQrSz0ne4SxETnZ8CAD1QcDGFP1ixUt/q0oydNrgeBXQ+1bZ8ZLMca2SavKnhPZK6EiJ/c9yEeW/hOj8seKNlv9AkZ+LhD8aqh960wRzRizptACndF9b7auwuXbmC5DjDHLWfW92Qea7tTDjIwxy1n1vdlPWokxZoy/TPW92eRAfnJkOBNjzHJWfW82OZDTVcaYMWaNFGPM2gAxxqwNEGPM2gAxxqwNEGPM2gAxxqwNEGPM2gAxxqwN0JwYHxwc/Oyo4AR7C2LseBpZayADlHkwPvj56OjoFwcFh4cELoSx42lkrYFMUObA+ODnXxKpVNpJpRK//LwQxktII2sNZIAyO8ZASCqbz2sOKp/PpiB582O8hDSy1kAmKHNgfJTI5ktlR1XKZxNHi2C8hDSy1kAGKPNgnAJCqjUnBclLLYax82lkrYEMUGbHeO5YHTOoVl4M42WkkbUGMkBZV4y19C8/M8asN2SAMg/GPodlB8ZOp5G1BmKMWRsgxpi1AWKMWRsgxpi1AXIE40AsoD5GaNdY3JwldYwxa4LsxDgQUhMxUfD5CiKmZpsx61aXu8apZ0kdY8yaIDsxjhWMieZ9wNcEek+bzYIv9Omq4Nu9aZ4C2qFC6DTku2w2Dxljln1yCOOzs9MzwBjsipvTwP1ZLHQfCsC8uCmE4OvQF/gUYoxZtsk+jAuFq2ahQHZFrBm4v0dsQ4XmpwIaFWewCgpm3AHpvmz+HlsFxrFCYde3O3SS4fnLmW4gax1kH8ax2NlVTDbrYk2AGngNfTqUE74CrIqFFMaH97u4TLxOzfjU2YLx4VXs8OxV0/Ktedb6yyGjAj+bsdi9zwd2MRjCsU8BLPYELS5c+gL3q8D47Aw+dn9vnjavIBW+QizQbN6f/t7cbSK8sPCsCRY8Y/zlyVGMfVf3zZuC7/C+6Tu9b94fKowDsHQlGAcu7yFLIbMBH2F8euoL0DxhDDntsNBkjL9Avbfuj8C9wpYwLqAr0MQYq44YY/wl6l1hfAbl743v5hCNiN3m4X0shrbFfSx0cypL4ZvDU8b4S9S7wjhwWjgN+EIAM8wcnh2GoEwGu70QCuAiWGh8s74w2YzxYIedOoUdqWO/MWuCbPQbN292qcPudPcsdhryhaBUO2w2D2OicIrTsAjXwHZXIezUK4xJ0ejUMcasCbIN47MbX+gQO+x8zXtoKMXQXXHYDAROQyK2i66LplxzWYDFvt93fWczpW4OjCmSDGP8LmQbxqf3p7vSqFB/gO7NIZ1CeuAQY1jze6FQEL5Pl2PGv41L3awYQwoxkMzPjPG7kI29eJey39mCsbSUxQDGIgbyBc5ufp+C47kxTqWFSKVSv/zCGNuqwjSm4ApkG8a7aAljh53E+NB32vQVrqjrLuCL3VO/Ha05w2Ww9f2I1uCI1AG+iSMh9GopnwUwhUh+/N4PyRujrz8Qv+msENlsNp1ijG1VQXw6XHUaRsk2jA/vm/e71GGHsB5+urlq+gJX99CSK9xfglV8pTAO3Nzf3/jgY5oROIAvJC8Lp7uF7zxIiBxwHPR/GCN/EPnNtzQhKCbSmxjHCpMdbKGYHCs0kNzd1TjlwB47heJh97IZkmWANRnDI5ycSYEQojnzmSjdu83T0/6u5th0e7TufuPfbmvVkkbfNYxxJEQxlzz+GI2MUfSjEKVSSbzAF4ZEejONofvJvwrcb9m1bl0YW03deh+L7fruwXwzKLAmfSm9NgWKCXE1TbvGIkp3MwBJN2XzHVx3jDvIcZm+dYxxJESl+I9fk8djlRSiWq3hzYavWvXtNMLP/+nmsnCDhdx94DLmKxzuNu/PcKTQabN5Cvf7E44AafpwNWyPw4li9zf4qzRvAjRFiwI3zRt8TsDBghpxOP29eQUN5ILv8v5+twknhLRBAnE5Qo1Lr5ow2QRSIElqC7skMRa/T+NmGkz37u/Ny9+bdJN275tXV59szXbrjnH3t5aO8HY7rVsdJMR/A8e5X5Nj9GsOrqhGGH/u0sRb54DbCaVE4dAXuokVzkJXsODqEIx54BQ9LQAMWEc3viathu1xOBGUh4WYL3TWjNEULIKPQuxm98ZRy/ETVs7IJ/Y8XmGOwmGvN1hAF2RpTEsDpzisEJbt3oR8cotxmjtIz6dZsoZKN/ynm3QVgjv4vkrjBTAGkH/Tp8IY/hfQtVIooP0OCBQKhEWo0CxIQJAXWk1bynFFofvDq5gxwgg+rgqFEO7h3O1Q1g1hTBw0LWTTSlp6f3omMfadXt6HaItxWg7GhlWGjX64SU3fuzMqFsJYoIn8xinQNpYYB+4PDw99p59CvsKlxOLs8PAGjYrYJdgYcjU6D4mhQmz3BiZpKnaFU83Y6S7u4dztkDamxBiScwpGBVg9Z3LRfSyEA/hg6T32MX2K3RR2z6Dsoy3GaU6I5zAqJMZ0k+D2ntlcb204xmIqTwWUVshACGwKX4AMB7AxYOFu4SwQivnOzrAvXa6mPQ5hIeyAg4uMqatdPFIA93DudkhPBTpP8D+cDuybs8KuXBSjB8hClIhYzIcfgVPMnbiFbSmgWzprE0+lm+4zDs46xTTbWhyvO8YLNPGmw9gWQZtlGadZveZzuDmvdcd4XofbHBhToXW6Gxpl9Z2ibys25OsMrJTdq0BIFoqjLN9dhyz0Ed0fIeVWH5WMUAw9g3P5bk53Z7m9647x4pr2XCG6a4XYSMc8mXah4br0dIVDk8k7QlMjC8cre7sXDI3ojJZnao5MBphkhTk7ZuDiZri9jLGhyxi6hD/FlLu1eXV/hm7gXTmHD6IW0Dd86SvcgAmx24Qpqz9/2YJTf7q/jDWbp/ig443xId3Il9hFshwFmjgsDG8ROc1j9zf3AbpN0umO/mFas0vebdwD/e+nl76b3QI6keEjZnjc6abiavohZrm9jLGhpirhDHcrPmt67wvdyDnpzYC23tVuAZ9KPSsEfCuNBaCchJcqbcaHdCMvMWlY3Krzk5v9Etq7dJuk012uxvsovds+6Z73XV2doq/+Eu+m6XHHm0qrVVUz/TUwxoYkF4gxuVv7aMg5Wi0dxNilFzi7aq4DxoVBjI2OhpVgrNzssQLdJjk3kEDCWPrfDz8FfMbdND3ueFNpNa1hjOfBGF1m0hMs3a2Hpze+5mFBzeGDqID4Tew+QBgfnmIQjtUaFWeU56gYPFUfyo0M9uiymp9QzMJtoidxyc0Ot3CXbpN0umMp26T7aGBM/vcAxgYpFA7vZb+T8rjjTaXV9EOwUTEPxniPpSeY3K3N07MAlLmnPppDrzGGPULnLHzB7BlOrXD0LXmET9GtAkksgCkhP6Qb2Wc0/5agm4DxJC46zWNXspczZDjdTwuYQOV5p0Sh//1w1wfFQkHeTdPjTjeV3PPqed+pE8EYm7oZaFFPUaEFmg52dcxy8jMcI0sfhnYd7EscUmyg3J8lZ7+R1Wa5vYyxqRGdXfhclm/YkeyUu1idf6yLwVyxOzlc4tjB0H2/92XzdOBiL+13z9HVvD0u+9Ke0687xnM+xDQHxqERdFJ58cqR7Iy72Dj/2GqgaZmYVFeMLRBNv7ccoDfi3PZJHvHtstkcl7eYGGNDl9DWuL+5v2xe+SgiIY6KJRcxtJtpeDE6NB10F8P5abQwuVevTEcrfdBQ5yZ5sCEXYezEq/tT00kMqVTzsBMconBYAFIHxkTTZcnQi3CEq0+XygfexPCMMqidI1dTgKTfBKxDsdUZcTGmvek7vbLh9BuO8dNMDjcspShUIUYkxFGxNAcYY+lFDk0H3cVNNVqY3Ks0ZJim8EO6WpvkwZZbklfbcBJjKg0vd+hKDtq8Cg2OicYLUaEX1ThTcu5ehW5wF/tbhPJqYoXdK9/pmXUotjwjLca0Nw+xJF749BuN8Yt2NBvG+PMiA0ZEQppT4zLJoemgu7ip6mA56tIcMkznlyOhyYPt68dONJzEtE55Z8lvCwXezfCYaMJY4dIfJH16dnmJXgQnMDaGRccK1qHY8owymZjge1v8KhuM8R+1meJU0FBL+XuTCxZHxVoxJoemg+5iOL8aQ0yDhy8tGMuhzk3yYPtw+K7qnFFOYhPjwwJsinsGfo/5hsZEE8YUelFhTM7dwKfd3d8ha9zY3cajq4GkwMfNwFBseUZaLFN9dWrD6TcY46PZogbBbysHD59KPyiOipUu4phcjg5NB93FeFQ5hjgkRwtLR6scXoy+1FPyYNOWFEzMdBJTKg3vLO1JdfrQmOhTX0yGXjRW0QDlM/ofsN0/R0OCMCkh6UfuD8WWZ6TFcghyIbD46TcV4+7sMdxuphyJ5ZS7eNrzT6FZfSlX9neWzHI1i59+QzGucSjCd6UNxZgjar4vMcasDRBjzNoAMcasDRBjzNoAMcasDRBjzNoAMcasDRBjzNoAMcasDdD7wfgb1kbKPowdS6F9GH/zTYC1kfr2229twdgxQr791jaMvwn8+bvQD6yNU+i7PwcGyrt5MXaKEEygXRhDGn/Y/THG2jj9uPsDcLw4xo4Rggm0C+Nv//zDjz8d/uWUtWH6y+FPP/7wZ2u1PSfGThFCCbQL48B3uz/95a9/Z22c/vqXn3a/C3yzMMaOEYIJtA3j0I+Hf/37Py9ZG6Z//v2vhz+G7MDYIUIogXZhPF+8Idb6659//0vsBxswdjSBNmH8jWOJZK1Yl38/tQNj5wjBBNqHsYe1gbITYwcTyBizJokxZm2AGGPWBogxZm2AGGPWBogxfof629827XyM8TvU38Tj/madjzFeX21nMiN+/bhnZ9ED/00I0Vj4KAufL5zJDCw8HzM9uGh7y7MdHl7HGK+tthvh8Ihfc8fTWPTIf6NupYutEefMbHnC23JyaPVO3ObznWfC+wOX0hgzPbgoE/ZsbQ+vY4zXVjvX9HnXuDhpNOKexkVjq9G48zR2eo2ThmdrAZglVqJ38mpN+C6DnKAyQ0VeOGPv+bYv6Ovx+vyiAUV1/K7RQFIbHpqlqztv3G2dhz2Z/R26AZikhufx7hySct643grfXTdU1mCM11cnDYDqYtuz5dnPwE+85YnHYZp+7Ivt+NjCcYZ+/sfh2jmcud7KhCHrnCtcMuEwIHSH0LzGeNrT/G3U+eB4YDV57jyerfhFRhJMH8asZ/s6nDkB2hue623YTmEMH+HMzoUnfgJ1lZHXGOO11kUYf8+LTJh+YvrRaGrnYnxhvBjGYLCGPTuZR4kLYgyGzfYJGDg2Y7wNwIYRTs9d/MSKsTHrCTcwLY2wubKPMSyjj+VgvBUOv7LGB3T+yvDfGlryfjEOX4DtuJU5D59c78fpJw7Ln/R6Hyrd8VX81BCPMioynuvzcPwa+DIxhlLzbv/CBoyHzncB1/dIGIfP4bLwGq/jUO3IWdhg625/f98Tf9z2QFsXb8DJebznOcEkbd2Fr8NOY2ya4OHHzPnjK3vcosYA5Vj07Ay1ahzAGOqycTWy5eTbZmNnVdqHKtXjiWd2oJ6PezDJ4Qz8rJD+MNoa82t8Ew9LuV74JAN8AS47jf07hGXnOjyyNF7wfGgy4GXtAJgeukb6oFn6gbZxgy2EP36yhYtO0Kw6iW+H6R7Al/ELOYKxecXIJdg/nkwDbns4fgG2+3Ycb9X1NfALn1DLwGossjONa6jKMuHt+BbundnaumhAs9kJjKGYuxjDsaWqxvs04oceqzhBZ2qgYT/C4bCYVPtoTo13uKErCy5D4eLZP9nfxkXGt+3ns0vOY3wd90AlAZVCprG104PMfpHZftyW/6Fu8Agi/fzcs70fvwtvwy6PO56dR6hbcD9HMIbknHjiDTjD4zV9nMcHG8vxu7s4NHEyYdVOvntd/Q6rEYdsapkfKLwWdpHZq3Xq/hhLd3xwzfB2g/4/BzDOZKAczVDJFO417qAk6mUyGUHFMtRNRgGdOTkno0Ji3MOCL0z2nwdwuIjvPOJxnMH4sQHN/kZ4/xrav1v4Af+3ry2tDPiA+g0KZGonX+yDqfiGlOPAcB+d392hfQcsYyN/7TB+o3PYggjah/M7jKc439hbM+TwG95u0MZxAONw+AQaBFQfA5OZazhJGJt6wxjLeYWxUJvj39Yj/AuDVRbecag03gKMH9FC7pNrIZg+PISxbCdTUieLGkRxw30E9IcVxtjIXzeM35IFEZx00hyI9xo76AOGYuARygKLh5y8GpnrxoUHF+70GnHpqLhG/9+58xgPGxXwe57gvQAWtnoGqlgYUiPVI7Y86CdEUx8LPVx3AWnf6u3QDXTGqNi5RivgxPMYPj8hcvcz1sZyI76/D00cuG/UTj5/u3kTB2ClVwz9ReQPIoypkf+FYLzTADywy4G6F+62sLfl4hEvimwuMMAcALrhIR/w9sV+Yx8aUH0POZXG0KRteORCj/K37XvIH7hsjLfu4lvXd3fXnsxjA0wkcoRmsM71XMBNgiLv8RpIh1vYgCQDW+itENvUfXXnjG1MjZadrZPMjucO2jFYaWJ7xtJY3jo52YZFYaOdPGpsw6C2GrBfw3AfbZHT6DF8naFG/heC8Qk0qanLAXIffmE7D3/KhrS57hbpyBsrqrIwz59vX1xbPeQSY7x3loXkNiZ/4BIwHq23a+ZRctZvbCNf8Ux8y3Qf9T+wkb+4dbkUbZ1cNKjLAaoh/EKQJMbK0nIC47vwDvqAsY1/ceExPeSU+xW5tPB6f4fcxrCE/IGMMWu09uPhO+pywO4F/IKGwc41VuvS5nIEYyj50QcMFqUHmkKmh5xyvwf9wqqCxI2wfkBPMX4P+v+WgPHrnrpZxBgvTdsnmW3qcqDuhZNt2duS8UgfsmcYnXXSEjBuLHTxjPF71NZ1v8doZwqXnwMY71w3Muh53D6hScQYvuOyo27mC2KM36OsberGFC4/+zHeftz2nGz1tjyZc5oEjLfvtrca4ZNrz/bsnUeM8TtR4+LO7Fo9f7yL0+T53V2814AWHo04Ji/ySNmP8QlVBxdxz+O2nASAod3byMTv4nNYyTZhfCDEt99i+Nv57jHLcTVoKLXsWpUdT/vXOHRki9wkNOJYepFHyX6MpUNi5xHSIyehvXsRDkMLM3z+OHtTFxL4v//zJ4lv4kgIvVrKZ1MpOHHy4/d+SN4Yff1BiFSKNjwAwXWFQt99xxivrYhWo2sVMMZJco30O1czYz3w9mMcfiRbBjsT5WQjHH7cgglYuD+7n1aIK0ghpAqSl03J7zxIiBxwHPR/GCN/UIgsSohfQLDnTz/9x4+M8dqqsR9XXauqpwMmt+724zvX+zsNOeJ4mRh7MneNa2hc3hmT0MSL3zXu9vfhY54m3v/812VBiN9ua9WSRt+1MkiIYi55/DEaGaPoRyFKKCGQetgTI34L8b/mvs8sR9XAMcXUtRonfzFNbmfiW9voNqYRx+GxHUmOOdzGjeidVUI0gWMhOshxmb71GkiISvEfvyaPxyopRBUlaYavf/3rX5eM8dpqoQ5VpzDe7i12UZYE/rt58y8hur+19BrA2O20bnWQEP8NHOd+TY7Rrzm4Isl7uVztwNfNzc1/CTF2JPx2JmMdGzgpKgJr3fQFPFJqB8biBYyT/2n+zwSMwxdh60NLk6IisNZN7wVjULP57+ZbGL8VFYEefQ83GtcZz6hQKKwV6R1hLD79+9+TMMZBXW9GRaChrucUFYQL6fXRF4CxHU08+YT55/8zoYkXNpzck6IimENdT06uHblc1lz6AjC2w+HWj5kwHmOyjd+IimAOdd3qLb/hF6bn4pQBPxxS7VWItb7NE19m2MHV6AvA2I7ujz7GY08kPRVvRUUwh7qu4IEOdKQ0jKgDw2N/X40F7ifwzedhv3x9ARjb0Rk9BcazaXwINeeUOQlTNB98Ri5MLc6t68Y1DpjZIYzNyH00qoYwxofo4r0v4xmqRfQlYGzD0KBpMV5r70PmIkOx1eh5S2pxxjPh6x05qFE9P0dtVBpgQ+wagQs2XV8AxvZq8tnW+heXRgU9I5eRpjqCvS07bdTzc9RGNQbY9IfVbLoYY0MUPJgeYr8zvMRUe1PFvRYyMIbGaCOsgraG4zsGxv3IfcYAGyNwwWqTvQwxxoYoePCdESFF1tlxo+J25NJmlemp2D+52JEtznAmviVdF8bzc9hGNQbYeIyH6BzQ9K+lgSw1Mgl29o4yxoZU8GAVIUXW2WGj4nbk0ubW3biHIJao6ePAZe5Gj6+08zlrxtiQCh4czhhhUI3aGytuRy5tNo1528sbjVKrOzm8bWMBOH2UzAy1NzGeI7Q/r3coGCgGKMKARGi/2WG6McamVPDgsBEGVdXeVHE7cmmzaczbXt4wfK1F3vaoFx/Mq/ExkoeFtZqK59jYapyTqxIDFGFi0H6zw3RjjCdptbU3NDPv5GCkzHXjvEdl38X2zjV8NC7u4jKymizncPPzu7sdI9jaBTRQaXflTo6fQzmYCUMBSI5lGxI3/jU4w8pgUSvjOV6c7F+fY41AAYpUGHs7TDfGeH0Fzcz9E/kejn3qv4NfOh4/hyJNPn+pnMIqbi09fmkEWzuXnuV9Ixyb5+Iirl6AcDG6AJ/7hr56f8iwENOejOe4f+c5oT5FDFCETyeR/WaD6fYFYLzM7o+1Eo1IMt7D4cE3voS3ti8uwNIZiGGr4tZaH780XtoRzhju5P3HLbnIc30ysgB1DmN8ICkj4zluxVWMBwpQFM/IGFc2mG6M8foK4/Ht0GAkxPhOOtauTzyPRlxm6RRWcWvp8ct+sDVgFndX7uStBj6WGcaIbAj0CM0J8RRGxZuywXRjjNdX4QvE14i/F5a2I8bnpIFLZmQ1I24tPn7ZD7YW3qbdlTt5f8ezvxOmAnCx14aYmr6Jhxo1yE75WHY8Nrwq6F1h/H//0zGMR73dSRl7W9tzPs63oF9hzO42Dfef7bU0owbZNcyvmV4VNFLvCOPfL0POhVsZ9XYn9YQq4DS3v3ZcB5zKIdMVY448Ezt190d/kB35hrFxuqV8LGgaybchwKrzCbGt3tQ7wjgUCAScw9h8u9M+PqYnQ47JTpSLx4Z6nM8yZKMx3XufxxV3KodMV4w58kzs1J3R/UF25BuOx8GqUcuMhmomDLbQxc742FZv6r1g3HE4hpvl7U74mJ4MORbuewzocb6BIRsT3/tsqOEhD7HH088hsuCSrzrLhPtDmDweGa9PvSI9bDic8W069FYP5U6m6SWqP8iOfMNbjZOw6WMxMZa+4/nfLvFOMK46HVHT8nan8/C1EXLM6vgaeKkNveBownufDSkPscfTzyGy4JIPv2YsQ5hgG/ksrPECGOVwxnNip5nhTqbpJao/yE76hi/MNwbJ1wVd7++QV+VuizF+C2PHA8Na3u60/Rg3Qo7R22p3rvfV43wDQzY8k977bMh425mnn0PMgsvII6os83gspZvx9GtGnhM7zQw/HE0vUZZBduQb3tk3lxlvQ6ChetsTYlu9KcbYHlne7uQ52TJDjskX2GTU43wDQzam8hn0MTZziFFw0cOvliFMHo/xLKyH5g2HM9KLnWYGxjS9aWKMV6ZpHLhxj1GU9XOIKrhwYHHYOoTJYz4LK+eVwxmzjuw0k+5kmt40McaboOF+sHUYkLxUMcasDRBjzNoAMcasDRBjzNoAMcasDZBtGPscw/iff/8LY8yaqC8A47//9fBHmzB2KpGsFUsWdmuN8V//8tMuY8yaJFnYhdYZ48OffvyBMWZNkizsvltnjH/c/eHPjDFrkmRh92ccibswxg4p9N2fA4wxa5JkYRf4xre+GAcCMpPlU0cHi2PM2kxhYfeNDRijvnFIkLpyiTFmjRcWdt/iD2yUdwtg7JiEKOWzicUxdjKvsVYrBYpR3q0nxvls6pefbcGYtcHql3friXEqARTvMcasieqXd/Ng7LyOjn4+YIxZb6hf3q0nxgcA8d5CGLPehYzybnaMlyfGmPWGjPJuzTEuz4cx611p3TGulvOMMestrTvGZS2fZoxZb0h2g6wvxpqWZYxZbwnLu+zUGCeWbsHnJcWzYMx6j5K257pinE4Ppm4MxYzxe1dKcvIGKCYmqWXLSN3HyJ+mwZj1vjUZlK9WjAmk7ntI3TibYuXpY62JJoPylXvVGEeCfu9Y03jl6WOtiSaDsmpMhAj6J7TwVp4+1ppoMihffbVqG54SNx7jlaePtSaaCMrKMfF+7R5fGK9B+lhroomgfPXVV2731ysUpG18YbwG6WOtid4GBUhZlb6amLbVp4+1JnobFAOW5evtdK02faw10fSgsFgsFovFYrFYLBaLxWKxWCwWi8VisVgsFovFYrFYLBaLxWKxWCwWi7UJ+v9CjulxoQP7kwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" name="GlbRRwh" align="bottom" width="710" height="440" border="0"></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Reproductive
cycles.</font> What makes the reproductive cycle a new ontological
cause is the kind of material structure that generates this
structural global regularity (which is ordinarily called an
&quot;organism&quot;). It is a kind of material structure that
generates a cycle of irreversible processes that includes both
reproduction and non-reproductive work. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>The
organism.</i> The organism is a complex material structure, for it
includes a number of material structures bundled together as various
structural causes. But in addition to the distinctive structural
global regularity that each such a structural cause generates, there
is a structural global regularity in which the material structure as
a whole is reproduced, making the whole process generated a
reproductive cycle. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Such
material structures will be called &quot;organisms,&quot; or
&quot;reproducing organisms, when they go through reproductive cycles
on their own. But after a few stages of evolution, as we shall see,
there may also be a few levels of part-whole complexity of such
material structures within the reproducing organism, and so it will
be useful to refer to material structures of this kind as &quot;primary
structures.&quot; That is, <i>primary structures are complex material
structures that are able to reproduce themselves, </i>and the use of
this technical term will make it easier to describe the structures of
organisms at later stages of evolution. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Organisms
(and primary structures) generate, therefore, two kinds of structural
global regularities during a reproductive cycle. Each structural
cause that is bundled together in the organism usually generates a
different kind of structural global regularity. But the organism can
also generate a structural global regularity as a whole in which it
reproduces itself as a whole, including all the structural causes
bundled together in it. In order to keep these two radically kinds of
ontological effects of its structural causes straight, I will call
the former “non-reproductive work” and the latter “reproductive
work.” </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I will call
the structural global regularities generated by structural causes
&quot;structural effects&quot; in order to have a simpler way of
referring to them. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In
organisms (and primary structures generally), many structural causes
are bundled together, and since the structural global regularities
that each generates involves a connection between an efficient cause
and its effect, we can also say that different efficient-cause
connections are bundled together in the organism. But that means that
the structural cause is not just an ontological cause, but also an
efficient cause, for its inclusion in the structure of the organism
is sufficient to bring about the effect during the reproductive
cycle. Such an effect is simply the difference that the structural
cause makes to what tends to happen (in the organism, its behavior,
or in the environment as a result of its behavior) because of the
structural global regularity it generates. (Or as the technical
formula for our ordinary notion of efficient cause goes, it is a
non-redundant member of the set of conditions in the organism that is
sufficient for the effect.) Such an effect is what I will mean by
&quot;structural effect.&quot; </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Talk of
“structural effects” ignores the difference between the material
structure as the ontological cause of the structural global
regularity and the inclusion of the material structure in the
organism as an efficient cause (along with other conditions) of its
occurrence during the reproductive cycle. But that is useful in
describing organisms, because different parts of the organism are
responsible for different structural global regularities and, thus,
different structural effects. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
difference between the reproductive work and non-reproductive work of
structural causes can, therefore, be put in these terms. Since the
structural effect is the work done by the structural cause in
generating a structural global regularity, the two radically
different kinds work that are essential to organisms (and primary
structures) can also be described as the organism's “reproductive
structural effect” and its “non-reproductive structural effects.”
</font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This will
be useful, because in all organisms (and primary structures),
including the most basic, it is not only the organism as a whole that
has both a reproductive and non-reproductive structural effect. Each
of the structural causes bundled together in the organism has both a
reproductive and non-reproductive structural effect. In fact, the
reproductive structural effects of the parts is what enables the
organism to reproduce as a whole, for it is a process in which each
part reproduces itself. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
non-reproductive structural effects of the material structures
bundled together in an organism (or primary structure) are often
called the &quot;traits&quot; of the organism. But notice that when
traits are explained ontologically, their <i>heritability</i> by
offspring is entailed. Since traits are non-reproductive structural
effects of the material structures bundled together in organisms,
they are necessarily inherited by offspring, because such parts of
organisms (and primary structures) also have reproductive structural
effects as part of the reproductive work by which the organism as a
whole reproduces. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>The
cyclic structural global regularity.</i> In order for reproductive
cycles to exist, however, organisms must actually go through cycles
in which they do both their reproductive and non-reproductive work.
It is not enough for their material structures to endure though time
without doing both kinds of work. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">When
structural causes are bundled together spatially as an organism, a
number of different non-reproductive structural effects are bundled
together. But these structural effects do not necessarily occur at
the same time. The various structural causes often (though not
always) have their non-reproductive structural effects at different
times. But to hold that the organism goes through a <i>cycle </i>is
to hold that its parts have structural effects that ultimately put
the organism back in much the same position where it began, so that
it can go through another cycle. That means that the bundle of
structural effects has a temporal structure as a whole. Thus, not
only are the structural causes bundled together <i>in space </i>as a
complex physical organism, but their structural effects are combined
<i>in time </i>as a cycle. It is a cycle of changes. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">What
makes the cycle a <i>reproductive </i>cycle, however, is that at some
point during the cycle, the organism is reproduced. That is, one or
more additional organisms of the same kind are constructed and put in
a position to go through reproductive cycles side by side. The
reproduction of the organism as a whole is essential to reproductive
cycles being a new kind of derivative ontological cause.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In all the
basic organisms, as we shall see, reproduction depends on each
structural cause bundled together in them having a reproductive
structural effect as well as a non-reproductive structural effect.
(This is rather straightforward in the case of bacteria and protists,
but it also holds in a more complicated way for multicellular
organisms, as we shall see.)</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Notice that
crystals do not go through reproductive cycles of this kind. The
reason crystals are sometimes said to go through reproductive cycles
is that, as each molecule is added to the growing crystal, the
structure required for the addition of another molecule is created,
enabling the processes to be repeated. But this is not the kind of
reproductive cycle that is an ontological cause of reproductive
global regularities, because the crystal is not an organism (or
primary structure) by our definition. It does not have a
non-reproductive structural effect distinct from its reproductive
effect, not to mention that with just one structural cause, it cannot
be a <i>bundle </i>of structural causes at all. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Natural
selection. </font>Reproductive global regularities are caused
ontologically by space and reproductive cycles (as a derivative
ontological cause), because reproductive cycles add up in space over
time to natural selection. That is, as they endure through time in
the region, they reproduce, and since their own population increase
makes free energy (or other resources) scarce, they impose natural
selection on themselves. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Reproductive
cycles endure through time like substances because they are cyclic.
Each cycle begins a new cycle, and thus, the cycles have a continued
existence. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Unlike
basic substances, however, derivative substances can be destroyed.
But since there is both a spatial and a temporal aspect to
reproductive cycles, there are two ways that this kind of derivative
substance can cease to exist. A cycle can go out of existence either
because the material structure of the organism going through the
reproductive cycle is destroyed, or because the organism is unable to
generate its entire cycle of structural effects. But as long as they
do not go out of existence, they are like substances, enduring
through time. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">As
<i>reproductive </i>cycles, however, they also multiply in space.
Endurance through time also involves, in the case of reproductive
cycles, the reproduction of the organism going through them. That is,
in addition to <i>reproducing in time </i>as one cycle follows
another, they also <i>reproduce in space </i>as additional organisms
of the same kind are constructed. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Reproductive
cycles would not be a new kind of (derivative) ontological cause, if
all they did was endure through time, for then they would be a mere
cyclic irreversible structural global regularity, like a motor. The
reproduction of the organism is what makes them a new derivative
ontological cause.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Space
is the other ontological cause of evolution, along with reproductive
cycles. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Spatial
causation is the only simpler kind of global regularity that has not
been mentioned thus far in explaining the ontological cause of
evolution. But spatial causation is one of the ontological causes of
every global regularity, because the wholeness of space is what makes
the motion and interaction of bits of matter in a region add up over
time. And adding up in space to natural selection is just another
such role for spatial causation.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In causing
material and structural global regularities, however, the structure
of space within the region was relevant in another way as well. Its
geometrical structure was needed to explain why potential energy
tends to become kinetic energy and why kinetic energy tends to become
randomly distributed heat. And structural global regularities depend
on the geometrical structure of space not only because it helps
constitute material structures (that is, material objects with a
geometrical structure), but also because it enables them to move
around in space without changing their geometrical structures. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In the case
of gradual evolution, by contrast, the geometrical structure of space
within the region is not directly relevant. It is only the wholeness
of space that works together with cycles of reproduction to
constitute reproductive global regularities. Thus, the role of space
as an ontological cause of evolution depends only on the fact that
all the parts of space in the region fit together uniquely as a
whole, much like how it worked together with matter to cause the
conservation of matter. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Being
contained by space makes reproductive cycles add up in a unique way
as time passes. Since the continued existence of reproductive cycles
entails the multiplication of reproductive cycles <i>in space</i>,
expanding the population of organisms, it combines with the space
that contains them to cause ontologically a scarcity that imposes
natural selection on them. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Though the
total matter in any isolated region of space does not change, there
is a way that push comes to shove when some of the matter constitutes
reproductive cycles. As the organisms going through them reproduce
themselves, generation after generation, the reproductive cycles not
only endure through time, but also multiply in space, and thus, the
population of organisms grows. But the matter in the closed or
isolated region must add up arithmetically in space as time passes,
that is, as a total that does not change over time (according to the
principle of the conservation of matter). Though some of the matter
in the region must exist in the form of free energy in order for
material structures to do work of any kind, there is only a finite
thermodynamic flow of matter from potential energy through kinetic
energy (and photons) to evenly distributed heat in any isolated
region of space, such as a planetary system or the surface of a
planet. Thus, as reproductive cycles multiply in space, scarcity of
free energy, if nothing else, will eventually limit the number of
reproductive cycles that can continue to exist in the region. Some
reproductive cycles will have to come to an end. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In other
words, organisms going through cycles of reproduction impose natural
selection on themselves. That is how the wholeness of space works
together with reproductive cycles to generate a new kind of global
regularity. It is simply how reproductive cycles add up in space as
time passes. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">To be sure,
it is <i>natural </i>selection, and not just <i>random </i>selection,
because the organisms are not only reproducing, but also doing
non-reproductive work which can control conditions that affect
reproduction. Those differences among organism are, as we shall see,
why natural selection leads to a gradual change in the direction of
natural perfection. What makes such variations among organisms
possible is that organisms have non-reproductive as well as
reproductive structural effects. But what forces a selection to be
made at all is their reproduction in space as well as time. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Random
variations. </font>This explains all but one of the three elements
generally assumed to be part of Darwin’s mechanism. Since <i>heritable
variations </i>and <i>natural selection </i>are entailed by the
nature of reproductive cycles as an ontological cause, only <i>random
variations</i> remain to be explained. There must also be random
variation in the organisms in order for natural selection to cause
evolutionary change. But random variations are due to another fact
also implicit in the nature of reproductive cycles as a ontological
cause. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">What
makes variations in the traits of organisms possible is the fact that
organisms (and primary structures) are <i>complex </i>material
structures, that is, that they are <i>bundles </i>of various kinds of
structural causes. If different varieties of structural causes can be
bundled together as a complex material structure at all, they can be
bundled together in different ways. That is, different bundles can
include different kinds of structural causes. New structural causes
can be added, both new kinds and additional particular material
structures. And the same structural causes can even be bundled
together in different ways. The part-whole complexity inherent in
structural causes being bundled together as organisms makes an
enormous range of kinds of reproductive cycles possible. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
possibility of random variations is actualized in the simplest
organisms, because the global regularity caused ontologically by
their material structures is merely a tendency. The structural global
regularity that they generate includes the construction of imperfect
copies as well as perfect copies of their material structures,
thereby introducing random variations. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Material
structures have their ontological effects by how they channel the
thermodynamic flow of matter toward evenly distributed heat. It
depends on how the geometrical structures of the material objects
involved coincide with the geometrical structures inherent in the
thermodynamic flow of matter toward evenly distributed heat (the
geometrical structure of potential energy being converted into the
kinetic energy of objects and the geometrical structure of the
nonrandom distribution of their causally relevant factors becoming
random). Thus, when various material structures are involved (such as
an organism and the many parts used to construct copies of it) or
free energy is supplied to them in various ways (for example, by
radioactive decay as well as chemical energy and the usual photons),
what is ontologically necessary about the future may be only a
tendency. In particular, the structural global regularities generated
by simpler organisms include the construction of imperfect copies as
well as perfect copies of their complex material structures. The
imperfect copies will tend to resemble the structure of the organism
being reproduced, but there will be random variations on it. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is not
to say that structural global regularities, as global regularities,
are inherently probabilistic. With the addition of other material
structures, it is possible to ensure that no errors occur in
reproduction, as in some higher organisms. Reproduction is imperfect
in simpler organisms because their material structures cannot control
all the structural causes that may be relevant to what happens. The
structural global regularity includes various different outcomes with
different probabilities. In higher organisms, where reproduction is
infallible, special mechanisms are required to introduce random
variations. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Darwin’s
mechanism as a consequence. </i>Thus, the way that reproductive
cycles add up over time in the wholeness of space includes all three
of the elements generally considered essential to Darwin’s
mechanism (natural selection, heritable traits, and random
variations). </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
bundles of structural causes that generate reproductive cycles as
structural global regularities make up the populations of <i>reproducing
organisms</i> in which Darwin’s mechanism is assumed to be at work.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><i>Natural
selection </i>is caused by how reproductive cycles add up in space
over time, that is, by the scarcity, due to population growth, that
requires some reproductive cycles to come to an end. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><i>Traits
are inherited </i>by offspring, because the traits are the
non-reproductive structural effects of the structural causes bundled
together as organisms and those same structures are what is copied in
reproduction.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">And there
are <i>random variations</i> on the traits of organisms, because
reproduction is a structural global regularity that involves only a
tendency to make perfect copies (or there are mechanisms for
introducing random variations). </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">All
three elements of Darwin’s mechanism are entailed in the
ontological cause of evolution as a reproductive global regularity. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It may seem
paradoxical or even perverse to take reproductive cycles, rather than
reproducing organisms, to be the ontological cause that helps
constitute the reproductive global regularities. Organisms are three
dimensional objects, which endure through time like other substances,
whereas reproductive cycles are four dimensional objects, which
endure through time only in the sense that the changes involved are
cyclic and can go indefinitely. And since reproductive cycles are
derivative substances, constituted by reproducing organisms (and a
thermodynamic flow of matter toward evenly distributed heat),
reproducing organisms do work together with space to cause
ontologically the same reproductive global regularities. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">There are
two reasons for preferring to think of reproductive cycles as the
ontological cause of evolution (along with space). The first is that
reproductive global regularities are fundamentally different from
simple structural global regularities, and the source of that
difference is that reproduction occurs cycle after cycle (for it is
the scarcity due to their population increase that imposes natural
selection on them). And since an ontological cause is something that
endures through time like a substance (or a basic relationship among
substances), what causes evolution ontologically is the continued
existence of reproductive cycles, not just the continued existence of
reproducing organisms. What endure is a series of four dimensional
objects with the property of multiplying in space. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The other
reason has to do with the nature of the ontological effect. What
changes in the entire region, as we shall see, is the kinds of
reproductive cycles. Though these cycles are implicit in the
organisms that are their ontological causes, the nature of changes
that occur in evolution has to do with how they fit into the
structure of the whole cycle, and we keep that in mind, by
recognizing that the causally relevant unit is the whole cycle,
rather than just the three dimensional organism. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Since
reproductive causation entails all the essential elements of Darwin’s
mechanism, it can explain everything currently explained in
evolutionary biology. But this ontological derivation of them is not
merely proof that there is an ontological necessity about what has
already been discovered by empirical science. It is the beginning of
a proof of new propositions about the course of evolution, first of
all, that evolution is a gradual change in the direction of natural
perfection. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>O<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkCR_04" align="right" hspace="5" width="137" height="37" border="0">ntological
effect: gradual change toward natural perfection.</b></font></font>
Reproductive causation implies that evolution is progressive. The
reason for calling it progressive is that the global regularity
constituted by reproductive cycles and space involves change in the
direction of natural perfection. That is, as we shall see, how
reproductive cycles add up in space over time. But this is also to
introduce the foundation for explaining the nature of goodness, which
is one of the mortgages that must be paid back in order to use
spatiomaterialism as an ontological foundation, and thus, it is
appropriate to start by explaining what I mean by “natural
perfection” and making clear how it affords an explanation of the
nature of goodness.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Natural
perfection.</font> A dictionary would tell us that “perfect”
refers, in general, to the most complete, whole, or mature state of a
thing, that is, a state without defects, a state in which no change
would make it superior in any relevant way. Things can be perfect in
different ways, but in every case, what makes the perfect stand out
is that it is an optimal state that can hold in a certain kind of
part-whole relation. And what I mean by “natural perfection” is a
certain kind of optimal part-whole that is most appropriate to the
basic nature of what exists in a world like ours, where everything is
constituted by matter and space enduring through time.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>What
</i>is perfect is always a whole that is made up of parts in some
way. Though there are many different ways that parts can make up
whole, the whole must be more than just the sum of its parts. There
must be relations among the parts. And to be optimal, its parts must
be of the right kinds and numbers and they must be related in the
right ways. Thus, in general, a part-whole relation can be said to be
optimal when it <i>makes the most out of the least </i>in some
salient, determinate way. Though it depends on the kind of part-whole
relation involved, perfection is an optimum that comes from combing
the fewest and simplest parts of some kind so that the whole makes
the most of them in a salient way. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Something
can be said to be perfect of its kind, therefore, to the extent that
it makes the most of things of its kind in the appropriate way.
Beautiful works of art might be said to be perfect of their kind,
because, given a suitable, classical definition of beauty, they
involve such an optimal part-whole relation. But what I mean by
“natural perfection” involves a far more basic part-whole
relation, because perfection of its kind is a part-whole relation
that makes the most of what exists in a natural world, that is, of
the substances that endure through time. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
a spatiomaterial world like ours, perfection would have to make the
most of space and matter enduring through time. Though its basic
nature is just a form of matter in motion, it is not fair to paint
the portrait of the world as a bleak picture of cosmic indifference.
To living things, at least, there seems to be a difference between
good an bad. And the significance of the law of entropy increase is
not, despite its universality, that the fate of the world is a heat
death in which everything has the same temperature. Rather, its
significance is that there is such a thing as free energy, for that
affords a salient way in which the most can be made of the parts in a
spatiomaterial world like ours. Though entropy never decreases, the
large scale structure of the universe is such that potential energy
is constantly becoming evenly distributed heat, and since that means
that there is a constant supply of free energy, there is a salient
way that the most can be made out of what exists. As we have seen,
material structures can use free energy to do work, and if such
structural causes were to use as much of the free energy available in
the region to do the work of controlling as much as possible what
happens in the world, such a world would obviously have an optimal
part-whole relation of the kind by which “perfection” is defined.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">An
optimal part-whole relation is one that makes the most out of the
least, and in the case of something that is naturally perfect, <i>the
whole does the most </i>in the sense of exercising maximum power,
given the available free energy, and it does so <i>with the least </i>in
the sense that it uses the fewest and simplest structural causes
needed to exercise that power. That is an optimum that is often
called “maximum efficiency,” though as we shall see, that does
not characterize what is involved in natural perfection adequately. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Maximum
efficiency is the kind of optimal part-whole relation that is the
goal in designing machines. In the case of automobiles, for example,
the goal is maximum power, reliability and efficiency in serving its
function (say, safe transportation) at the least cost in parts,
effort of construction and energy consumption. And since machines
eventually wear out, the goal is a machine in which all the parts
wear out at the same time. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Natural
perfection involves maximum efficiency, but it is a more basic and,
thus, more general kind of optimal part-whole relation, because it
also involves doing as much as possible in the way of using free
energy to control what happens in the world. The ultimate natural
perfection is a optimum in which any relevant change in the parts or
their relationships would make the whole less powerful.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Natural
perfection is the direction of evolution by reproductive causation,
but as we shall see, natural perfection involves several part-whole
relations that are optimal in this sense. Two of them characterize
the direction of gradual evolutionary change, the natural perfection
of organisms and the ecology, as we shall see shortly. But gradual
evolution is only one of the global regularities generated by
reproductive causation, for there are also revolutionary episodes in
evolution. Together, as we shall see, these two global regularities
entail change in the direction of a natural perfection with an
overall structure on planets (or in planetary systems) like ours. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Goodness.
</font>It should be noted at the outset that natural perfection plays
a very important role in this ontological argument, because it
affords an explanation of the nature of goodness, enabling us to pay
back one of the four mortgages we took out in order to use
spatiomaterialism as the foundation for proving these necessary
truths in the first place (that is, along with an explanation of
consciousness, how Einsteinian relativity could be true, and the
existence of something worthy of worship). </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Goodness
can be defined in terms of natural perfection, because perfection is
a kind of part-whole relation. Natural perfection is the property of
the whole in such optimal part-whole relations, and so goodness can
be defined as the property of the parts. That is, goodness can be
explained ontologically as the property of contributing to the
natural perfection of the whole of which it is part. And since all
forms of natural perfection fit together in a necessary way as part
of the overall structure of natural perfection, there are no ultimate
conflicts about what is good, and <i>goodness is simply the property
of contributing to natural perfection</i>. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Every part
of the optimal part-whole relation that defines natural perfection is
good, but since the perfect whole does the most with the least in the
way of parts, each part makes a unique contribution. No part is
redundant (though many parts of the same kind may be needed for the
whole to be perfect). </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">By this
definition of “good,” therefore, what is good ought to exist,
because it is “called for” by natural perfection. That is, if
anything that is good did not exist, the whole would not be naturally
perfect. There would be a change that would make it more perfect.
That is the sense in which natural perfection can be said to &quot;call
for&quot; its existence. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Goodness is
just a property of parts in relation to natural perfection, but as we
shall see, it explains why all the things that are ordinarily
considered to be good are good, including goals that are good for
beings like us. It even explains an the aspect of goodness that makes
such a theory seem impossible, namely, why rational beings ought to
choose the good. And it reveals goals to be good that are not
generally recognized as such today.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">If
evolution is progressive in the sense of involving change in the
direction of natural perfection, it is also progressive in the sense
of making things good (or bad). Progressive evolution is, in other
words, the source of goodness in a spatiomaterial world, and since
such evolutionary change is inevitable in a spatiomaterial world like
ours, the ultimate source of goodness is the nature of the world
itself. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
reason for believing that evolution by reproductive causation is
progressive is that it is change in the direction of natural
perfection, and in the end, there will be at least five different
ways in which evolution by reproductive causation makes the world
naturally perfect. They all fit together as part of a necessary
overall structure, and since there are no basic conflicts to cast
doubt on the whole being naturally perfect, it will be clear that the
change involved in reproductive global regularities is indeed
progressive. The first global regularity caused ontologically by
space and reproductive cycles is gradual evolution, and it is change
in the direction of the natural perfection of organisms and the
natural perfection of the ecology. And gradual evolutionary change is
itself a kind of natural perfection. Thus, three forms of natural
perfection will be discussed below. Two further forms of natural
perfection will be introduced later in this argument (both having to
do with stages of evolution). </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
natural perfection of organisms is maximum holistic power. The parts
of this optimal part-whole relation are the structural causes that
are bundled together as an organism going through reproductive
cycles. Its power is holistic, because it depends on all the
non-reproductive work done by its structural causes and all those
parts must be of the right kinds and combined in the right ways. Its
power is maximized in the sense that those non-reproductive
structural effects control as many of the conditions affecting its
reproduction as possible for organisms of its kind. But since free
energy is consumed in generating structural effects, power is also
maximized when the fewest and simplest structural causes are used
because free energy is used most efficiently. Since that is to do the
most with the least, maximum holistic power is a form of natural
perfection, which will be called the “natural perfection of
organisms.” </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">By
the ecology, I mean how organisms exist alongside one another in
regions of space. There must be an ecology, because organisms
reproduce in space and go through reproductive cycles alongside one
another. And there is a natural perfection about the ecology that
complements the natural perfection of the organisms, because there is
an optimal part-whole relation at the ecological level as well. It is
also a kind of maximum holistic power. The parts, in this case, are
the organisms going through reproductive cycles, and the whole is a
power that depends on all the organisms in the region. Again, the
whole is not merely the sum of the parts, because it depends on the
kinds of organisms in the region, the numbers of each, and how they
interact. In this case, however, holistic power is measured by how
much of the free energy available in the region is being used by all
of them to fuel their reproductive cycles. Given the kind of
perfection that is appropriate in a spatiomaterial world like ours,
that is the most salient way of doing <i>the most </i>that can be
done. And as we shall see, it is also a case of doing the most <i>with
the least</i>, because the organisms that use the free energy are
each maximally efficient. I will call it the “natural perfection of
the ecology.”</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
is even a natural perfection about the process of gradual evolution
itself, for there is a way in which evolution also makes the most out
of the least when it is due to reproductive causation. In this case,
the parts are all the moments in the course of evolution, and the
whole is the overall course of evolution itself. Evolution by
reproductive causation makes the most out of each moment, because the
moments all add up as time passes to change in the direction of the
natural perfection of organisms and their ecology. That is, since
evolution is progressive, it is itself a form of natural perfection,
which will be called the “natural perfection of evolutionary
change.”</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
order to show that evolution by reproductive causation is
progressive, I will show that reproductive cycles add up in space as
time passes to a gradual change in the direction of natural
perfection. The first step is to see why organisms change gradually
in the direction of maximum holistic power, and then why the ecology
evolves gradually in the direction of their maximum consumption of
the free energy available in the region. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>G<img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAEAAAAAaCAMAAAAwoqp9AAAAwFBMVEX////38PDv4ODn0NDfwMDbwJbXsLDJsInMmZnKlnXHkJCumXe/gIC3cHCLel+vYGCsYEukWEWmUFBwYk2XTTyeQEBeU0CZMzOFPjBaTz1VSjp4MyhjOy6OICBwKyFrJx6GEBB+AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACWpgSSAAABIUlEQVR4nNWUf0/EIAyGUSriLFbRip5W6ff/khZOc8Tk2On+ML7pktJ1T9Ifw7ltunBOt8hdbgVcTwDCZR1wMwHwOa0D7mclgD1LBC8TwOMaAEQzTgC7VYCV8meA3sQtgD5Gszpr4rSEE/RfAMs6IEOsqiQoWkKwrktoEaEI2eLWSIQoShmwhJ4KgQdACc0UElf1Ur19UDUlZegHG2UiLaLAanR7UaJKGQDIPastThs6NCR4/Dq0XfCYu2OpFq1+oToAUv4OCKV5B4BWDukAaHlhAAhwWvaJCpnOVGPiMAIy8UIHQElMcWyiYPv16dM1dk2psO1iD5pJwr3P0qKVkI6NETFOxnZsjINOucimgJ+pAbZp565u7x6eXt7ef6fX5w8joa2mAQWGJAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" name="OdkCR_05" align="right" hspace="5" width="64" height="26" border="0">radual
evolution of the organism. </b></font></font>The new derivative
ontological cause that has been derived from spatiomaterialism is the
reproductive cycle, and reproductive cycles add up in space as time
passes by imposing natural selection on themselves. Reproduction is a
cause of natural selection, because resources are finite and
population growth eventually makes free energy (if not other
resources) in any isolated region scarce. Though such scarcity is a
change in the environment of each organism, it is not caused by
anything external. It is internal, since reproduction is an aspect of
reproductive cycles. And since population growth eventually leads to
scarcity in a world like ours, some organisms will eventually be
unable to survive and reproduce. But as long as there are new,
heritable traits within the range of the traits being “tried out”
by random variations that would make organisms better able to control
the conditions affecting their reproduction, natural selection would
tend to favor individuals with new traits that increase their power.
Their greater reproductive success would eventually change the
population until every member had the new trait (that is, acquired
the new power). </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">If
that is how reproductive cycles add up in space as time passes, we
can see how evolutionary change would lead to the natural perfection
of the organisms going through them. Reproduction would be the main
cause of evolution, if these conditions held of organisms that start
off simple, uniform and weak and it were possible for new traits to
be tried out and bundled together with others in the organism,
because evolutionary change of this sort would go on for a long time,
adding one new trait after another, making the organisms complex,
diverse and powerful. Indeed, it needn’t stop until the organisms
are as powerful as possible for organisms of their kind, that is,
until there are no more new power-enhancing traits within the range
being tried out by random variations on existing organisms. That
would be their maximum holistic power, because at that point, no
change in the causal connections bundled together in their
reproductive cycles <i>that is possible for organisms of their kind
</i>would make them any more powerful. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is to
restrict the range of possible traits to those that can be &quot;tried
out&quot; by random variations during their gradual evolution, and
that depends on the nature of the organism and how random variations
are generated (that is, the nature of the structural global
regularity). It may be possible to imagine useful traits that fall
outside that range, but that would not show that the organisms had a
less than maximum holistic power in the relevant sense.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Example
of amphibian evolution. </i>To illustrate how reproductive causation
could generate such a regularity, consider how it would explain fish
evolving into amphibians. Reproduction among fish of various kinds
would eventually cause a scarcity in the usable energy and other
resources available in the water. Those fishes in which random
variations happened to try out traits that enabled them to move their
bodies across land, would find plants and other animals that provided
a new source of usable energy. Those fish would tend to succeed in
reproducing, while otherwise they might have failed. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Something
like this apparently occurred among lungfishes about 345 million
years ago. These fresh water fish had already evolved lungs, perhaps
to absorb oxygen from the air when the water was stagnant and
deficient in oxygen, and they had “lobe fins,” or large fleshy
bases for their paired pectoral and pelvic fins, making it possible
for them to move across land. At first, they were relatively uniform,
simple and barely able to complete cycles of reproduction requiring
locomotion across land. But reproductive causation would make them
increasingly complex, diverse, and powerful. As random variations on
their inherited multicellular structure tried out new traits, one new
trait after another would be added. Each new trait would make them
more powerful at controlling conditions that affected their
reproduction, and as their complexity and power increased, new ways
of controlling conditions could be tried out by random variations.
Thus, fins would gradually evolve into legs, enabling them to crawl
more efficiently across land, and since land plants and insects
provided many different sources of usable energy, the different ways
of acquiring energy would lead to the evolution of different species
of amphibians. Amphibians would go on adding one new trait after
another, increasing their power, until none of the new traits that
could be tried out by random variations on their multicellular
structures could make them better able to control conditions that
affect their reproduction. Evolutionary change would stop only when
they were as powerful as possible for organisms of their kind in
whatever environment they occupied. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Such a
proliferation of species is called a “radiation,” and it would
occur again and again. When a more basic random variation on
amphibians finally tried out internal fertilization (instead of
fertilization in the water), making it possible for eggs that
remained on land to house a form of embryological development that
did not involve a larval stage, reptiles would be able to acquire
usable energy from new sources on land. Two legged locomotion would
be the start that gave dinosaurs their day in the sun. Those with
wing-like limbs would begin a radiation of birds. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Long
periods of gradual evolution are possible, however, only if the
structure of the organism makes it possible for random variations to
try out a wide range of new traits. In the animals mentioned above,
what makes it possible to accumulate traits in that way is their
multicellular structure. Each cell together with its behavior is at
least one of the structural causes that is bundled together as parts
of a multicellular animal going through a reproductive cycle, and
what makes it possible to bundle such parts together is its way of
coordinating their behavior as parts of an organism. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Random
variations ultimately involve differences in genes, the most
elementary structural cause with both essential kinds of structural
effects in living objects. But as we shall see, genetic variations
make it possible not only for cells to try out specializing in new
functions, but also for multicellular organisms to try out new ways
of arranging such cells. The latter aspect of random variations is
possible because each multicellular animal is constructed by asexual
division from a single, fertilized egg cell in a process called
“embryological development.” </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The kinds
of random variations that <i>can </i>be tried out at any point
determines the range of new causal connections that are <i>possible
</i>at that point. And since they occur randomly, all but a few whose
complexity borders on making them impossible would eventually be
tried out in a finite period of time. Thus, random variations on
existing multicellular structures are, in effect, continually “trying
out” new, possible powers, as if they were <i>feeling around </i>for
new conditions that it might be useful to control. Whenever a new
trait happened to control a new relevant condition (or an old
condition in better way), it would tend to be selected. Moreover, as
multicellular organisms became more complex, new varieties would be
added whenever some were able to tap a new source of energy or an old
one in new ways, and each variety would become more powerful in its
ecological niche. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">The
principle of gradual evolution.</font> The example of the evolution
of amphibians suggests a basic principle about gradual evolution. If
evolution is by reproductive causation, then <i>every power that it
is possible for such organisms to evolve will evolve as it becomes
possible. </i>This may seem too progressive to be true, but consider
the following.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">(1)
If organisms start out simple and uniform, all possible traits are
likely to be tried out, because the range of random variations is not
very large. And later on, when organisms are more complex and the
range of possible random variations is greater, there will be many
more varieties of organisms to try them all out. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is to
assume that a complex variety that acquires a new <i>basic </i>power
which makes it better able to tap the usable energy claimed by
another will tend to supplant the other. That may require violent
storms or other disruptions.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">(2)
It is not necessary for a random variation to happen on the best way
of controlling the relevant condition. Even a weak and unreliable way
of controlling some new relevant condition would be selected, and as
random variations <i>on it </i>were tried out, that structural cause
would be shaped to control it as effectively as possible and to fit
it together with other structural causes and their causal connections
as harmoniously as possible. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">(3)
Nor is it plausible to suppose that there are possible powers that
just happen <i>not </i>to be tried out, at least, not any basic ones,
because organisms are <i>not being forced to make do </i>with
whatever random variations are available at the time in order to
adapt to externally caused changes in the environment. When the cause
of natural selection is reproduction, <i>they have all the time they
need </i>for random variations to “feel around” for new powers
among alternative ways of controlling relevant conditions and make
those traits maximally efficient. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Maximum
holistic power. </font>Natural perfection in organisms is <i>maximum
holistic power</i>, or the <i>maximum power </i>of the organism to
control <i>all </i>the <i>relevant</i> conditions using the fewest
and simplest non-reproductive structural effects. That is the optimal
part-whole relation in organisms. Let me explain these terms.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Power</i>.
What is maximized is power. Power is the capacity of structural
causes using free energy to make things happen that would not
otherwise happen. The power that is maximized in organisms is the
power of its structural causes to do non-reproductive work. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Holistic.
</i>The relevant power is <i>holistic</i>, because it is the result
of many structural causes working together in some way over the
period of the reproductive cycle. Organisms are bundles of structural
causes that are reproduced as a whole during the cycle, and each
structural cause is responsible for a non-reproductive structural
effect, or what is usually called a “trait.” Each such structural
cause is a part of the organism that generates a structural global
regularity in which free energy is used to make something happen in
the world that would not otherwise normally happen, and with many
different structural causes bundled together in the organism, their
structural effects may occur at any time during the reproductive
cycle (including some that occur during the whole cycle, such as the
circulation of blood in multicellular animals). Thus, the relevant
power of the organism is holistic, because it includes all the
non-reproductive work its structural causes do during its whole
reproductive cycle.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Relevant.</i>
The structural effects that are <i>relevant </i>to the maximum
holistic power of the organism are those that control conditions that
affect its reproduction. Though it is possible for structural causes
to control many kinds of conditions in the world, not all such powers
are relevant to the optimal part-whole relation in organisms. Powers
are not relevant if they make no difference to whether or not the
organism reproduces. In order to contribute to the maximum holistic
power of the organism, structural causes must control some relevant
condition. (However, this limitation on the powers that are relevant
changes, as we shall see, with the evolution of rational animals.)</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Maximum.
</i>Holistic power is <i>maximum </i>when the organism’s
non-reproductive structural effects control as many of the conditions
affecting its reproduction that it is possible for it to control. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The powers
that are possible are those that are within the range of those tried
out by random variations on evolving organisms as they are evolving,
including both variations in kinds of structural causes and
variations in how they are arranged in the organism (perhaps at
several levels of part-whole complexity). </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The whole
is not just the sum of its parts, because the structural causes
depend on one another in various ways to control relevant conditions.
The whole is both spatial and temporal, because the structural causes
are different parts of the complex material structure that goes
through the reproductive cycle (that is, the organism), and they have
their structural effects at various times during the cycle. For the
power of the whole to be maximum, therefore, the structural causes
must be of the right kinds and numbers and they must combined in the
right ways. That means that all the relevant conditions must be
controlled with the fewest and simplest structural effects, for there
is a cost in generating any irreversible structural effect. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">When
holistic power is maximum, the organism does the most with the least.
It is not just the greatest combined power to control relevant
conditions, but such a maximum using the fewest and simplest
structural causes. Such an optimal part-whole relation is like
maximum efficiency, the goal in designing machines. But I will call
it “maximum holistic power,” rather than maximum efficiency,
because I do not want to suggest that there is some overall <i>function
</i>that organisms are serving. The optimum for organisms involves
controlling <i>all </i>relevant conditions that can be controlled by
organisms of its kind, that is, maximum holistic power to control
relevant conditions. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
sum, the natural perfection toward which the gradual evolution of
organisms proceeds is their maximum holistic power to control
relevant conditions. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Every
relevant power evolves as it becomes possible. The powers are the
effects of structural causes that are bundled together as the
organism going through the reproductive cycle, which are usually
identified as traits serving some function. Each kind of structural
cause is shaped to make its effect as powerful as possible in
controlling some relevant condition. Structural causes are added to
the organisms, both new kinds or more of old kinds, as long as they
control some new condition affecting reproduction or some old
condition more effectively. And the structural causes are shaped so
the their effects fit in with the other traits as harmoniously as
possible. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Thus,
assuming that organisms start out simple, uniform and barely able to
complete cycles of reproduction at all, they become more complex,
diverse, and powerful. Eventually, all the structural causes that
could help control conditions that affect the reproduction of
organisms tapping some source of energy will be bundled together
harmoniously in a reproductive cycle. Such gradual evolutionary
change must stop only when there are no changes within the range of
possible random variations that can make them more powerful in
controlling relevant conditions. Though this end may be approached
asymptotically, evolution will be in the direction of bundles of
structural causes whose power, taken together over the whole cycle,
is maximum.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Functional
explanation. </font>Since the gradual evolution of organisms is in
the direction of natural perfection, there is an ontological
definition of “functional,” one that entails the validity of
functional explanations. This implication of spatiomaterialism solves
various philosophical problems about the nature of functions, which
are discussed in <font face="Arial, sans-serif">Epistemological
philosophy of causation</font>. But functions must be mentioned here,
because I will talk about them and use them to explain what evolves.
And though traits of organisms are only one sort of thing that is
functional, if evolution is due to reproductive causation, I will
discuss how they are functional here, since they are the focus of
attention in contemporary biology.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In other
words, there are &quot;ends&quot; built into nature, much as the
teleological view of nature has long supposed. But change does not
occur for the sake of such ends because of final causation, as
Aristotle believed. Instead, such changes are inevitable products of
evolution. They are consequences of the reproductive cycle as an
ontological cause of global regularities. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><b>Functions
as descriptions of traits.</b> The functions of traits are the
relevant conditions that they control. What is bundled together as an
organism going through reproductive cycles are structural causes, and
as organisms change gradually in the direction of natural perfection
(for organisms of their kind), structural causes come to control
conditions that affect their reproduction. Those relevant conditions
are the functions served by the traits of the organism.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
function of a non-reproductive structural effect is to control some
condition that affects the reproduction of the organism of which it
is part, and being functional in that way is what it contributes to
the natural perfection of the organism. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Thus, any
of the objects, events or conditions that are involved in the
structural cause bringing about its non-reproductive structural
effect can be said to be functional and to have the function of
controlling the relevant condition involved, including all the
features of organisms that are identified as its traits. Thus, not
only the heart, but also the beating of the heart, is functional,
because it is part of the structural effect by which energy is
distributed to all parts of the animal body. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">To be
functional is to be good. Since being functional entails controlling
a relevant conditions, it contributes to the natural perfection of
the organism, and that is the definition of “good.” Functionality
is a form of goodness. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><b>Functions
as explanations of traits.</b> Functions are not, however, merely a
way of classifying traits by the relevant condition they control, for
they are also causes of traits and can be used to explain them. The
relevant conditions that must be controlled in order for the organism
to be naturally perfect are in the cards, so to speak, because, as we
have seen, every possible power inevitably becomes actual as it
becomes possible. What it is possible to control depends on the range
of structural causes that are tried out as random variations on the
evolving organisms, and since those structural causes among them that
promote the reproduction of the organism will eventually be naturally
selected, the organism will inevitably acquire all possible
structural causes that control some relevant condition. Thus, the
organism acquires them because they are functional, and the function
can be said to be the cause of the evolution of the trait that serves
them. The function explains, therefore, the existence of the trait in
the organism.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This causal
connection seems puzzling, because the traits are also the efficient
causes of the conditions they control, which are said to be their
functions. The heart causes the circulation of the blood that is said
to be its function. But there is a reverse causal connection in which
the functions cause their traits. The function of circulating the
blood is what causes the heart to evolve. What makes this true is
that the former is a case of structural causes generating a
structural global regularity, whereas the latter is a case of
reproductive causation generating a reproductive global regularity,
namely, the global regularity in which all possible powers
necessarily become actual. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Since
functionality is a form of goodness, it follows that the goodness of
the trait can also be said to be what causes it to evolve. Among the
possible traits, those that are good are naturally selected because
they contribute to the maximum holistic power and, thus, the natural
perfection of the organism. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000">“<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US"><b>Survival
and reproduction.”</b></span></font></font><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">
Finally, if evolution is by reproductive causation, it is misleading
to say that traits &quot;contribute to the organism’s survival and
reproduction.” Though it may not be false to say that traits are
selected for contributing to the organism’s survival and
reproduction, that phrase makes it sound as though traits, and even
survival, are merely means to the end of reproduction. But almost the
opposite is true, if evolution is a global regularity caused
ontologically by the reproductive cycle.</span></font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The end for
which the traits are means is not reproduction, but controlling
relevant conditions. The organism has the traits because they
contribute to maximum holistic power in controlling conditions that
affect its reproduction. The fact that natural selection is <i>made
by success in reproduction </i>means that <i>what </i>is selected is
the <i>whole </i>bundle of causal connections, rather than some
particular trait. And as we have seen, since natural selection is
also <i>caused by reproduction</i>, the bundle is selected <i>for </i>its
power to control <i>all the conditions </i>that affect its
reproduction <i>over a whole reproductive cycle</i>. Any particular
trait is included only because it controls some relevant condition
that would not otherwise be controlled.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Non-reproductive
structural effects have functions, as we have seen, because they
control relevant conditions. The relevant condition they control is
their function. Though reproduction is also a structural effect, it
has no function. Reproduction is merely the <i>cause </i>of
evolutionary change in the direction of natural perfection, including
the maximum holistic power of organisms. Thus, reproduction
determines which conditions it is relevant to control. But that does
not make reproduction the ultimate function of non-reproductive work.
Evolution is not change in the direction of reproduction, but in the
direction of the maximum holistic power of organisms, or their
natural perfection. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In other
words, what is good for the organism is not reproduction, but
controlling conditions that affect reproduction (though the latter
may include some that are more closely related to reproduction, such
as a mating or caring from offspring in the case of animals). When
the organism controls the relevant conditions, reproduction generally
takes care of itself, since it has been part of the reproductive
cycle from the beginning. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>G<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkCR_06" align="right" hspace="5" width="56" height="26" border="0">radual
evolution of the ecology. </b></font></font>Implicit in the gradual
evolution of organisms is the gradual evolution of their combination
in regions of space, or the ecology. If organisms start off simple,
uniform and barely able to complete reproductive cycles, then
reproductive causation will make them not only more complex and
powerful, but also more diverse. The usable energy in any region of
space is not only finite, but takes many different physical forms,
such as various kinds of photons, energy-rich molecules, and other
organisms. Thus, as these organisms specialize in tapping different
sources of energy (or the same sources of energy in different ways),
they <i>radiate </i>into all possible ecological niches, and
evolutionary change in them—and in whatever other organisms may
remain and adapt to them—will be in the direction of their maximum
consumption of free energy, which is the natural perfection of the
ecology. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">At
the ecological level, there is a part-whole relation which can be
optimal in the way that is appropriate in a spatiomaterial world like
ours. The parts are the organisms, or bundles of structural causes
going through reproductive cycles, and the whole is not only how the
organisms are combined spatially in the region, but also how their
reproductive cycles are combined in time over a period that is long
enough to include all and any regular changes in the environment,
such as seasons. The species of organisms that evolve during any
radiation tend to mirror the sources of usable energy in the region.
As each species becomes more efficient and approaches the maximum
holistic power for organisms of its kind, reproductive causation is
also making their combination in the region optimal, but in a
different way from the organisms. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
effect of the whole combination of organisms that is being maximized
is the consumption of free (or usable) energy to fuel cycles of
reproduction. Any unused free energy is an ecological niche to be
occupied, if traits being tried out by random variations on any
existing organism enable it to tap the energy as fuel for its
reproductive cycles, for that overcomes the scarcity due to
population growth. Thus, all <i>possible </i>ways of tapping usable
energy come to be included in the ecology. And organisms are combined
in the most efficient quantities, since the finite amount of usable
energy is what stops population growth and causes natural selection
in each species. The maximum may be approached only asymptotically,
but as reproductive causation maximizes the power of the organisms
over their whole reproductive cycle, evolutionary change at the
ecological level is in the direction of appropriating more and more
the usable energy in the region to fuel reproductive cycles, making
the ecology as a whole maximally powerful in the way that is
appropriate to a spatiomaterial world like ours.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Evolution
by reproductive causation is change in the direction of natural
perfection for both the individual organisms and their ecology.
Indeed, it is only because the organisms have maximum holistic power
that the ecology does the most with the least. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Natural
perfection at the level of the ecology is using <i>as much </i>of the
available free energy as possible to fuel the reproductive cycles of
maximally efficient organisms of many varieties. But it does so by
combining the simplest and fewest organisms—simplest because
maximum holistic power at the level of individual organisms is using
<i>as little </i>usable energy as possible to exert the greatest
power to control all the conditions that affect its reproduction, and
fewest because there are no more organisms than the supply of usable
energy will support. Thus, these two forms of natural perfection are
opposite sides of the same optimum: using the most energy to maximum
effect. In other words, gradual evolution is change in the direction
of a “compound” natural perfection, because the optimum for the
ecology is a whole made up of parts that are, themselves, optimal as
organisms. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">This
kind of perfection is rightly called &quot;natural,&quot; because it
makes the most of the basic nature of what exists in a spatiomaterial
world like ours. The only possible way of making the most of space
and matter in time is using free energy to control what happens in
the world. At the end of gradual evolution, not only does the ecology
consume as much of the free energy available to control conditions in
the world as possible, but also all the conditions in the world that
can be controlled by them are controlled (because the organisms are
as powerful as possible for organisms of their kind and they use as
little free energy as required for that maximum). </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
natural perfection of the ecology has the same implications for
organisms that its member the natural perfection of the organism has
for its traits. Just as the organism's traits are functional because
they control some relevant condition, so organisms in the ecology are
functional because they consume some of the available free energy.
And since to be functional is to be good, organisms are also good
because they consume the free energy in some form or way. That is
what the organism is good for, as far as the natural perfection of
ecology is concerned.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The analogy
among kinds of natural perfection suggest a further step. There is,
as I suggested earlier, another kind of natural perfection about
gradual evolution, namely, the way in which reproductive causation
brings about the natural perfection of the organism and the ecology.
Each phase of the process of gradual change in that direction makes a
necessary contribution to their existence at the end, and since that
is also an optimal part-whole relation, each phase can also be said
to have such a function and to be good for contributing to the
perfection of the whole in that way. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">Finally,
if natural selection is caused by reproduction, change in the
direction of this compound natural perfection is inevitable, for it
does not depend on externally caused changes in the environment. To
be sure, evolutionary change itself may be seen as a change in the
environment. As organisms become more powerful, traits that random
variations have been trying out all along but were neutral or even
harmful may suddenly become useful in promoting reproduction because
of how they work together with other traits that have been acquired
in the meantime. Or traits that first evolved to control one
condition may come to control others. And evolutionary change in one
species may change the effects of the traits of other species,
requiring them to adapt or become extinct. But if such changes in the
effects of traits are environmental changes, they are not caused
externally. They come from the increasing power of the evolving
organisms in whatever environment they all inhabit and, thus, are
internal to evolution by reproductive causation, like scarcity due to
population growth.</span></font></font></font></p>
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