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ANNOTATION:
There are problems with the term "fitness".
By choosing the term "fitness" to denote your concept of survivability is problematical on a number of levels. For one thing, it implies a value-judgement: that which is "fit" is also somehow "good". This is a big leap from the concept of selection, which i neutral - neither good or bad.
Another problem: what about disruptive systems such as volcanoes, earthquakes, floods and so forth? What about death? Is "fitness" an appropriate term here too?
The fundamental problem is one of context and point-of-view. The "fitness" of a system, or system-component, is entirely dependent on the circumstances. If the criteria for "fitness" are selectability and survivability, then the whole philosophy becomes colored by the subjective opinion that stable systems are preferable to unstable or disruptive ones. This is a human viewpoint and it is not supported by any evidence. On the contrary, the dynamics of complexity demand disruption and destruction as necessary phases in all open systems, especially living ones.
Author: John Abbe (johnca[ at ]ourpla.net)
Date: Jan 29, 2002REPLY: No morality, but not enough about creation
'choosing the term "fitness" to denote your concept of survivability is problematical .... it implies a value-judgement: that which is "fit" is also somehow "good"'
I do not see this implied anywhere in the original article (it would help if you quoted what you got that sense from). What has continued to exist or be created is a matter of history. What is likely to exist or be created in the future is a matter of speculation. Putting a moral cast on the universe's apparent "preferences" is optional.
Fitness (as defined in the original article) is simply the measure of something's abundance over a long period -- through persistence and/or on-going creation. Although the original article includes both of those at the outset, it seems to lose all interest in the latter by the end:
'In summary, a system will be selected if: 1) its parts "fit together", i.e. form an intrinsically stable whole, 2) the whole "fits" its environment, i.e. it can resist external perturbations and profit from external resources to (re)produce.'
This is all about persistence, and nothing about creation. Volcanoes, like snowflakes, are a good example of this sort of fitness, because their continued presence has little to do with the nature of the volcano itself, and much to do with the relative abundance of magma and the dynamics of the crust creating cracks allowing it to get to the surface.
Context is a useful idea in understanding such systems. But the fact that volcanoes are "disruptive" to some other systems is no particular problem -- most if not all systems form a part of the context in which other systems' fitness will be demonstrated (or not).
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