andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> But just because something
> doesn' have an evolutionary function doesn't mean that
> it isn't real or even valuable. Gould and other anti-
> Panglossian adaptationists have a term called
> "spandrels," derived from something architectural that
> is nonstructural,
If you put an arc inside a rectangle, you get some left over space in the corners. Nothng there. But if people go on constructing such buildings, someone sooner or later candecide to put something in one of thse corters (or spandrels). Now something that was merely inherited as a result of other purposes and functions has a unique function of its own, but that function had nothing whatever to do with its origins.
The world, including the political/social worlds, is undoubtedly filled with spandrels, fulfilling functions which were utterly unknown to, not part of, the processes that brought about their existence.
Carrol