A series of essays outlining my current book-in-progress, Darwin, Dada, Dalí, Duke, & Devadevàya: Extending the New Synthesis.
Shiva is the Devadevàya, Lord of Lords.
And the Lord of Destruction…
All progress shares certain rules, including biological evolution, social progress, artificial intelligence and human innovation. All of these inform one another.
Follows is a tentative outline, which will undergo constant updates. The current order, titles, and summarized content only lay out a rough overview of the published and upcoming essays.
Publishing Problems and OpenSource Publishing
Both academic publishing and the book industry have severe drawbacks. For 5D, I will publish essays laying out the basic ideas here, and in various academic and social media. The full treatment will appear in the finished book.
Biologists & Public Policy 
Progress can be destructive in the short term, a concept that biologists immediately understand. All progress is evolution, and it conforms to certain patterns of organic evolution. One such biological theory that is of pressing importance today is the ‘bourgeois strategy,’ the drive of the advantaged to maintain their privilege at all costs. These insights demonstrate the need for biologists to become active in many new areas, including public policy.
Ecology, Evolution & Delayed Gratification
All living things make decisions, which generally conform to economic principles. Working together, biologists and economists’ can expand their success in predicting both human and non-human choices.
Biomimicry & The Ideal Free Distribution
Life can produce great complexity by using very simple decisional processes. Humans often provide complex explanations and models for our behavior, when often, simple biological processes are at work.
Biological Evolution, Language Evolution
Language evolves along many of the patterns of organic evolution. Which is an important insight, because the evolution of our language documents the evolution of our thinking.
Character Displacement, Language Replacement
Languages & words compete and change in much the same way that organisms & species do.
Language as Phenotype: Speculative Etymology
What is the connection between the words ‘angle’ and ‘genealogy’ in several unrelated languages? A conjecture. But the central point is that language evolution is a record of our intellectual evolution. In effect, language is the ‘phenotype’, and our ideas are the ‘genotype.’
My first book accompanies your subscription. Contents continued below.
Biological Numbers, Astronomical Numbers
Astronomical numbers are unimaginably huge, but biological numbers are larger by a factor of over a quintillion. The real difference between biology and physics, however, is that biology innovates, it constantly produces things that are unprecedented in the universe. And biological numbers are critical for understanding that process of innovation.
Infinite Monkeys Typing the Human Genome
The universe does not contain sufficient matter and energy to create the primates necessary to randomly type out the complete works of Shakespeare. Random production of the human genome would require numbers unimaginably larger than those needed to type out Shakespeare.
So exactly how were Shakespeare and the human genome produced?
The First Law of Biology: Malthusian Superfecundity
The first law of biology is Darwin’s first postulate: Malthusian superfecundity. Life produces many more offspring than can possibly survive. Most will die, and most of those who do, will be the young. Including children.
The Struggle for Existence: The Lovely Deathscape
Nature is beautiful until you realize it’s all a lovely deathscape. Suffering and struggle are everywhere, and only the trees die of old age.
The Deadliest Animal vs the Best Predator
Without predators, living things can crash and go extinct.
Punctuated Equilibria: The Improbability Drive
Somewhere between the New Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, the theory of Punctuated Equilibria appeared. But to work, it needs an Improbability Drive.
Microevolution, Macroevolution, Small Evolution, Large Evolution
Macroevolution has been described as simply a series of microevolutionary steps. But Punctuated Equilibria and the improbabilities needed to produce truly new genes, requires building beyond Darwinian gradualism.
The Limits of Evolutionary Pressure
Evolutionary pressure works well on the ’emphatic,’ probable, small evolutionary processes of Darwinian gradualism. It won’t work on the ‘innovative’, improbable, large evolutionary processes of Punctuated Equilibria.
Allopatric Speciation, Alloneossic Taxonation
The small evolutionary mechanisms of Darwinian gradualism is effective in producing the breeding barriers necessary for the biological species concept. We can better understand the large evolutionary mechanisms of Punctuated Equilibria, however, by considering niche shifts.
The Too-Large Matrix
How does life solve even larger problems?
Between a Rock and a Soft Space
What is the difference between hard and soft sciences?
Knowledge vs Uncertainty
As progress accelerates, the past becomes less and less useful for predicting the future.
The Last Science
Will biology be the last science?
And more…
Check back for periodic updates.
Picture of Lord Shiva courtesy of Wikipedia.