For reference - change

[trixtah]

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
        --Charles Darwin

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.
        --H. G. Wells

Now, the interesting thing about Darwin's theory is that some more recent thought (and I can't remember who) has asserted that it isn't adaptabiliy per se that means that an organism is more likely to survive a particular environment. Some believe that due to natural change/mutation, some organisms just happen to end up better adapted for a particular environment, while the others that have changed in the wrong direction end up dying out.

I have no idea of the current status of the debate on how evolution works, but it's interesting food for thought - in the non-evolutionary sense, do we "pre-adapt" and fortuitously end up suiting a particular environment, and/or seek out environments that are better suited to us (if they are available), or are we chucked in it and have to adapt or die?

In the microcosmic sense, I think it's a bit of both... but adapting-on-the-fly is the weaker aspect. There is only so much change we can cope with at once. We have also built up various degrees of capability due to our innate qualities, and also the learned ones. So, of course, our lives consist of constantly adapting on the fly - most of the situations we encounter are novel in some way, even the routine ones. We aren't robots who can only deal with pre-programmed responses. Matters of degree, I suppose.

Comments

[marygriggs.livejournal.com]

As a change manager, I like the questions you raised. What pushes evolution fascinates me. Serendipitously, I came across this article today where others link species survival to altruism.

Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness that Counts (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=kindness-emotions-psychology)

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Yes, I really like theories that discuss altruism as a selection mechanism. It's certainly given rise to our societies and culture... and to great things like yoghurt and beer, from a fungus or bacterium's point of view, heh.