Theos-Talk Archives (August 2002 Message tt00301)

Significance:

Time and again we come across confusion in the SD when
Blavatsky uses terms to describe complex phenomena
simply. Cranston (1994) mentions that Blavatsky needed
to find terms that Western minds knew in order to
explain concepts that had absolutely no analogue in
the West. Hence we get dogmatic fools such as Brigitte
Muehlegger who cannot see the sentence for what it
really means. I believe one such term to be higher
beings or higher intelligences. On the surface this
implies some omniscient character holding the strings
to our evolution and the evolution of all entities
that are in existence. Yet, if we were to interpret a
higher being or a higher intellect as one that has
reached a more advanced evolutionary state relative to
the ones around it then sense starts to appear.
Hubbell (2001), in the before quote states: “The
existence of rule breakers establishes a new, higher
fitness criterion for all other species in the
community, which then come under strong selection for
life-history adjustments that increase their fitness
to match the rule breaker.” One of the assumptions of
Hubbell’s theory is that it applies to organisms in a
particular trophic level, or ecological guild.
Therefore, the rule breaker establishes a new paradigm
for those organisms which are relative to it in that
trophic level. Thus, we can confidently interpret a
synthesis of Blavatsky and Hubbell to mean that a
higher being (rule-breaker) establishes a new fitness
criteria (new evolutionary state) for those that are
relative to it to achieve. Analogies of this
phenomenon abound and I would like to draw one from
another of my favourite past-times: cricket. In the
early 1990s international cricket teams used to
approach the one-day version of the game in a similar
fashion to the five-day version. However, along came
Sri Lanka with a new strategy: namely smashing the
bowling attack early while there was space in the
out-field, contrary to the traditional method of
getting one’s eye in early. The effect was phenomenal.
The lowly ranked and much disrespected Sri Lankan team
overnight became a cricketing sensation, flogging the
established teams left-right and centre. Within a
short period of time ALL of the international teams
had adopted the strategy of the Sri Lankans. Hence we
have a higher being (Sri Lanka) guiding its lowly
cousins (the international cricketing community) to a
new and higher “evolutionary” state. 

Something else significant is also implied through a
synthesis of Blavatsky and Hubbell. I mentioned before
that Hubbell’s theory applies to a particular trophic
level. How did Hubbell (presumably) arrive at this
conclusion?: through adopting ideas that had been
formulated in population genetics. That’s right, as
above so below. The unified neutral theory adopts
terms and assumptions from population genetics that
allow it to work so accurately. In population genetics
we have selection for genes as well as genetic drift;
in community ecology for have selection for organisms
as well as ecological drift. The same forces that are
operating on genes are the same forces that are
operating on ecological communities. Here is the
fractal nature of the universe manifesting itself once
again.


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