Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
"Higher" life forms, far from being the logical or necessary emergence from life as it existed in the first billion years or so, were in fact highly unlikely. That we find ourselves here is the result of innumerable contingencies, none of which had a high probability.
^^^^ CB: I think you run afoul of Hegel's ideas: 1) that everything changes; and 2) that "what is actual is rational; what's rational is actual
" (especially from the standpoint of the Owl of Minerva as it takes flight, smile i.e.hindsight.) (Not to mention the rerunning the tape of history idea violates the principle that time runs in one direction: time travel is impossible)
I know of one example (based on an essay by Gould) that contradicts your idea above. The first life forms reproduced by cloning. Sexual reproduction arose, as hypothesized by Gould, because it produces greater variety in offspring thereby increasing the chances that at least one line of offspring will adapt to changes in the environment. This is logical. In fact, on Darwin's logic it would have been predictable at the time of the first life forms, that life forms different than the first life forms would arise, because the greater variety of life forms the more likely some would adapt successfully
to whatever changes arose in the environment. So, if the first life forms were "lower", the prediction would be that "higher" (i.e. different than "lower") species would arise at some point, as the environment changed. And another thing we know from Hegal: everything changes.
In fact, since everything changes if the first life forms were "lower", then it is logical, rational, that there would be "higher" (different from "lower")
life forms later.