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Cognition of Evolution: Can Causal Explanation Overrule Cognition? (Riedl, 1996)

Evolution and Cognition 1996, Vol. 2, No. 2

Rupert Riedl

JLJ - Rupert Riedl is known for an untranslated German work (1982) where he claims that evolution is a product of chance and necessity. What of his English works can we find of value?

Rieldl's history of the developing concepts involved in cognition and evolution suggest that scientific ideas themselves evolve in a striking parallel to the evolution of species. The developing ideas themselves (correct or incorrect) represent variation, and are consequently selected by the acceptance or rejection of the scientific community.

p.88 Can cognition be substituted by explanation? How would this be possible? What could be explained without being known?!

p.88 This investigation will be enabled by the recognition of unconscious forms of problem solving... Evolutionary Epistemology... has shown that an unconsciously acting mental capacity to recognize and solve simple, but life-supporting problems - a product of genetic learning and adaptation - is inherited.

p.92 experimentation is firmly supported wherever power might be gained. Cognition, in contrast, scarcely interferes with nature.

p.92-93 Surveying... one finds that the path of cognition, at one time taken as a miracle, lost the interest of scientists, whereas the path of explanation became attractive.

p.97 Remarkably enough... the challenge posed by the problem of cognition was not met in the next century, during which the system of cognition continued to be substituted by explanation. The situation would not draw our attention if the interest in evolution had faded away.

p.102 Wallace... took selection by the environment as a straightforward and sufficient explanation for the phenomena of evolution.

p.105 Popper... in his first Darwin Lecture (1977) he refines his standpoint... that natural selection is a tautology, but one with enormous explanatory power... The solution he offers is that "not all phenomena of evolution are explained by natural selection alone" (p.145)... he is absolutely right. [JLJ - nature is simply the arena from which the slow passage of time produces more advanced species. It takes a mind to 'select' - so nature itself cannot select - it instead allows the individuals to select among themselves - a process that perhaps only operates 'naturally' to produce a better version of itself. 'Things' exist in nature that compete among themselves to produce more 'things'. This process - which has no on or off button, simply 'operates'. We, the living, exist, because we can trace our origins back to the beginnings of life itself, in an unbroken chain. Nature 'produces' competition-refined versions of ever-more-complex creatures, by hosting the competitions.]