The Baboon Congress

Punctuated Equilibrium or Stephen Jay Gould #2

46 Comments

Today’s guest post is from Clyde.

I used to work for a superintendent whom everyone called “Ballpark” because he could not get out a sentence without a sports metaphor. He had a half-dozen uses for the term “ballpark.”

Similarly because of my constant use of science metaphors and science parallels to what we were reading, my students used to wonder if I was an English teacher or a science teacher. At this stage in my life two of my favorite science metaphors, which I had to carefully explain in class, are very useful descriptive terms.

The first is ENTROPY, which is a concept from Newton’s second law of thermodynamics. I bet all baboons know the concept. In pure science, it is much more complicated than as used in my metaphor or common usage. Entropy is the tendency for systems to proceed to disorder, chaos, or randomness. Complex structures will eventually break down to their constituent parts (such as my body). It was an effective way for students to understand “Lord of the Flies.”

Old age is certainly a battle against entropy. A friend of ours says that when she is a senile wreck in a nursing home that she wants someone to tie her knees together every morning before she is put in a wheelchair and rolled out into the common area. A pastor we know has been dealing with a mother and daughter who were both in long-term care, the mother for old age and dementia and the daughter for a degenerative disorder. When the daughter died, every few minutes the mother would find out her daughter had died and grieve freshly all over again, including several times at the funeral.

The other metaphor, PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM, is from S. J. Gould. For a long time the unassailable rule of geology and evolution was that all change occurs at a constant and slow rate. Various scientists in different fields fought this rule for much of the last century and finally won. For instance a region of eastern Washington called the Scablands is now believed to have been created in a few days, not millennia, as if Lake Erie has suddenly decided to empty over Ohio in a three days. A similar but less dramatic event occurred along the Minnesota River valley.

Biological and geological change are now believed to have had long periods of stasis or very slow change and briefer periods of intense change. Of course, “briefer period” can also mean thousands of years or more as opposed to millions of years or more. Gould and a couple of other people developed the term “punctuated equilibrium” to describe this concept, which seems to me more widely applicable. (In its root meaning, “punctuate” means break in or interrupt, as in “puncture.”)

For instance, geo-politcal/social/economic/technological equilibrium was “punctuated” in so many astounding ways in the 1990’s it should have been overwhelming, but we all just kept motoring along. Humans are so very adaptive. I wonder if the punctuation will ever cease.

How much are entropy and punctuated equilibrium metaphors for your life and times?

46 thoughts on “Punctuated Equilibrium or Stephen Jay Gould #2”

  1. damn clydr
    you are hitting where i live. if it weren’t for all the entrophying and punctuated equalibriuming going non in my life i think id be fine.. i ran into an old friend at the twins game the other night and in the hurry to recognize him after not seeing him for 10 or 15 years, i got the name wrong. he introduced his wife to me and gave me her name so i wouldn’t screw it up too. slipping one notch at a time. i used to be so happ i could see stars in the night sky others couldn’t, now i see the sky and need to adjust my glasses to see the moon. i was at the health club yesterday and a guy stopped his workout came over and gave me a big sweaty handshake asked about my business and my travels and while he was familiar looking i have no idea who he is. i hope i don’t wander through the remaning years in a fog with my eyes and my brain and my other faculties going into a mush that leaves me being a cotton ball with shoes.
    the puctuated equalibrium is kicking my ass every day and the punctuating is getting a bit more pointed as we go. i was and have been able to kick the can down the road with the hope of getting to it later for the last couple of years as the world is in its death spiral and i am doing the handle it and move n shuffle to get to the next thing without doing anything more than procrastinating the inevitable. well the inevitable is out there and i do get to deal with it everyday and it is exhausting at times. i wish for a exclamation point to zap the whole deal into never never land and allow me to get back to the business of life instead of all this juxtapostioning , bobbing and weaving, and smoke and mirrors. i have gotten good at it and i can tell the folks i deal with are enjoying the presentation i give to the varaition on a theme i am asking of them and i usually work something out. my kids laugh at the ways and variations i have come up with to circumvent a difficulty or get a n issue dealt with.
    i do get concerned that one of thse punctuated equilibriums will sneak up on me while i am atrophying over in the ignorant bliss of a inattentive moment and it will have dire and irreversible consequences.
    makes me want to picnic a little

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  2. Good morning to all,

    I’ve had to deal a lot with entropy if we are talking about people becoming old and having health problems. I’m not longer young, myself, and have helped my parents and two aunts when their health was failing near the ends of their lives. As for puctuated equilibrium, when was there any equilibrium? Well, let us not be too negative. There are a lot of good things in life.

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  3. Before I hit the bike, but I am not going to check on the catfish, here’s a fine piece of Gould trivia, which seems more fitting for today’s topic: he once voiced himself on The Simpsons.

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  4. I have noticed punctuated equilibrium in the garden when peas that were no where near being ripe one day were almost too mature to harvest the next. Something occurs in the night that is rapid but invisible. I think the garden is always headed toward entropy as things mature and then wither. Daughter has had a week of punctuated equilibrium since starting her first job. She is suddenly so much more responsible and self-assured.

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  5. I actually have some good memories related to helping people near the end of their lives and I am glad I was able to provide help. I became much better aquainted with my aunts when visiting them in their old age. I learned that my parents were very devoted to each other. My Dad had a lot of bad health problems at the end of his life and stood up under all of them with dignity. Also, my Dad would not put up with the failure of nursing homes and other care faciltites to provide good service and did what he could to let them know they should do better. He was not abusive, but he did make an effort to point out some of the things they were doing that weren’t right.

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  6. Greetings! I think our finances are a perfect case of punctuated equilibrium — ever since we got married. We’d be going along OK for a while — then, oops! — job loss. Recover for a while — then, oops — new baby. Recover for a while, then scudoosh — Jim goes into clinical depression. Struggle for a long time — doh! — another baby. Recover for a while — another baby. All is well for a while — shaboom — an influx of cash from my parents’ deaths. Catch up, buy necessary stuff, have an actual vacation, buy other stuff — then whammo — the Great Recession. Double job loss, bankruptcy, foreclosure and now …. equilibrium going on an upward trend. It’s an exciting ride for sure and I don’t know what’s going to happen week to week!

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    1. entropy not atrophy, a different breakdown.. too funny. entropy is getting me without my even having to point it out. speaking of entropy did you watch the republican debate last night. chris wallace is such a piece of work. newt nailed him but in the process let it be known that there need not be any newt or chris fans out there. michele is reading her cue cards well and gets rousing applause from them iowans. yessir she won’t be raising them taxes no way no how and pawlenty looks like an eagle scout p there trying to be impressive as cole,,the head of the godfathers pizza shows us that heck anyone can run for president if he has money and enough nerve to make a fool of himself. dueling mormans was an interesting twist with a nazi and ron paul to round out the entropy before the gov of texas and sarah palin enter to remove all doubt of collapsing into chaos
      the only thing they agree on is that obamas not got this country on the right course and we need to work together in this great nation to get back to here we belong. gop wants to work together, right…

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      1. Thanks for the update on the GOP debate, tim. Good thing I didn’t watch it — I would have given myself an aneurysm and an ulcer watching that bunch.

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    2. Same here, Joanne, but maybe a little easier ride in my case. That is a lot of ups and downs. With all those ups and downs it seems there are nearly as many punctures as there is equilibrium or there is no equilibrium with so many ups and downs. I guess it is best to look on it as an exciting ride.

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  7. My career trajectory is a case of punctuated equilibrium–long stretches of stasis with occasional advancement. One line of evolution had to be abandoned as maladaptive and allowed to go extinct, while my skills mutated to suit the new environment. Global weather conditions threatened its survival, but moderating climates have allowed it further development…Okay, that’s enough of that. My brain has adapted to require more than one cup of coffee to womanhandle a metaphor any further!

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  9. I live with a 7-year-old – the last 7 years have been battling the entropy of kid stuff all over the house and punctuated equilibrium of growth and development. The development bit especially can get kinda crazy – it’s quieted down some, but we can often predict when Daughter is going through what we have come to call “mental growth spurts”: she has a week or two where she doesn’t sleep well, has very active dreams, sometimes sleep walks, then about week after that all of a sudden is able to do things or understand things that had been difficult or frustrating just days earlier. This could be anything: walking, reading, problem solving, a new drawing skill, you name it. It’s like a regular growth spurt, but generally her pants are still long enough after one of the mental spurts…

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  10. I think entropy might be unavoidable. A quick glance at this year’s political debates seems to support my theory.

    While my work life has had a bit of punctuation, I have to say that it has mostly been equilibrium – this past July was definitely one of the punctures. (BTW, I just got my first post-shutdown, partial paycheck today – Yippee! I can pay my bills again!) I gave up on my romantic life a long time ago though. It was all punctures without ever achieving equilibrium at any point EVER. It’s no use going around as punctured and deflated as Swiss cheese.

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  11. I am fascinated by the sudden explosions of science, creativity, technology, political thinking, etc. that have happened at various points and times. How did the renaissance come to be, how did so much genius appear at once in one area and the another? How did American with only a very few million people produce all that genius, right when it was needed ion the 18the century? Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Madison, Monroe, Paine, etc.The annus mirabilis.
    And how do dark periods appear in same way. The annus horribilis.
    My favorite comedies are based on a sense of entropy bubbling up erupting into the show/story/skit, as if only the Marx Brothers and Monty Python really sense the chaos. Remember nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

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    1. Last week walking through Sam’s Club I saw “Green Acres” season one for six bucks. I have been watching it, a couple each night. Very Marx Brotherish. Oliver is trying so hard to make structure and order on his broken down farm and everybody around him is just sort of floating along going with the flow, finding some meaning and order in the chaos instead of trying to reshape it into their own visions. He farms in his three-piece lawyer suits, trying to get advice from a county agent who cannot follow one thought for six words.

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      2. Clyde – you manage to find profundity and meaning in old “Green Acres” episodes — that’s just freakin’ genius. I envy your ability to see such grandeur in the simplest of things; whether on your bike rides in nature, with your wife or grandkids or being a preacher.

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    3. The amazing advancements can also be used to make some very big punctuations in our equilibrium which we should be careful to avoid. You what I’m talking about. Things like what the people in Japan are facing right now.

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  12. Just call me SJG Exhibit A. Something comes along to perforate my equanimity with discouraging regularity, and anyone who doubts the concept of entropy is welcome to look at my kitchen cabinets and the contents of the refrigerator. Nobody expects the Spinach Decomposition.

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    4. Linda – you come up with the damnedest things! Each time I see you at BBC or at Guthrie, you seem like such a sweet, quiet soul — and then your nimble wit comes up with a doozy! Both you and Clyde made me laugh this morning. I don’t watch Monty Python much, so it took me a while to get Clyde’s reference to Spanish Inquisition. You guys are the best!

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  13. I am a chronic neatener/organizer and I try to do the “a place for everything and everything in its place” thing. But I am CONSTANTLY amazed at how quickly leaving just a couple of things undone starts to create chaos. My desk piles up in no time, The kitchen looks like someone just cooked a 12 course meal, and yesterday it was fine. And the growing things out the back door – where does it stop? I may have to start looking at chaos as another form of beauty.

    I’ll have to think about punctuated equilibrium for a while – what comes quickly to mind is how fast my mom grew to like the idea of moving up here after the first month of “dragging her feet”.

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    1. Speaking of the kitchen; Kelly and I did dishes one night. The next morning we both had a glass of OJ. When I got home from work that afternoon there were FIFTEEN dirty glasses in the sink. How does that happen??

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  14. My wife is finally waking up, so I am going to help her and then go on a mission or two.
    I sort of took you all into what Dale in an email about these guest blogs called “the carnival going on in [my] mind.”
    Sorry about that, Chief.

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  15. I was always partial to The Scrambler. As fate would have it, the carnival that goes on in my mind is heavy on the scrambling.

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