i’m not convinced the muscle fibers taking the place of another is really competition. i’m thinking here of a president and vice president. if the president is injured, of course the vice president will take their place, but you couldn’t say the vice president was “competing” with the president the whole time (at least, in a functional polity or organism).
i also think the argument that apoptosis is cellular competition is partial. after apoptosis, the dead cells components are repackaged and reused by other cells around them. there’s another metaphor in which the collective decides that the resource allocation in the form of a particular cell isn’t beneficial to the collective, so the “losing” cell cooperates and returns its resources to others. it’s not like a cell dies, it’s that the relationship between the cell’s components change. it reminds me of a romantic relationship where both parties decide their energies are better spent elsewhere, so the relationship structure goes through apoptosis and the time and energy of the people are redistributed to other relationships or projects. you still wouldn’t say the couple was “competing” the entire time
i think i agree with your main point that things only look like competition from one level of organization, depending on what we arbitrarily define as a natural unit. if you go up a level, (say from cell to tissue, or from individual to community), things start to look more like cooperation. similarly, destruction from one level looks like creative reallocation when you go up a level of organization
Darwin's notions of adaptation and mutation and natural selection have indeed illuminated many biological processes. The field of immunotherapy is recognizing the many ways cancer cell mutations provide an advantage in competing against innate immunity, and then engineers T-cell variants that can bypass those defenses. A never ending battle!
i’m not convinced the muscle fibers taking the place of another is really competition. i’m thinking here of a president and vice president. if the president is injured, of course the vice president will take their place, but you couldn’t say the vice president was “competing” with the president the whole time (at least, in a functional polity or organism).
i also think the argument that apoptosis is cellular competition is partial. after apoptosis, the dead cells components are repackaged and reused by other cells around them. there’s another metaphor in which the collective decides that the resource allocation in the form of a particular cell isn’t beneficial to the collective, so the “losing” cell cooperates and returns its resources to others. it’s not like a cell dies, it’s that the relationship between the cell’s components change. it reminds me of a romantic relationship where both parties decide their energies are better spent elsewhere, so the relationship structure goes through apoptosis and the time and energy of the people are redistributed to other relationships or projects. you still wouldn’t say the couple was “competing” the entire time
i think i agree with your main point that things only look like competition from one level of organization, depending on what we arbitrarily define as a natural unit. if you go up a level, (say from cell to tissue, or from individual to community), things start to look more like cooperation. similarly, destruction from one level looks like creative reallocation when you go up a level of organization
Darwin's notions of adaptation and mutation and natural selection have indeed illuminated many biological processes. The field of immunotherapy is recognizing the many ways cancer cell mutations provide an advantage in competing against innate immunity, and then engineers T-cell variants that can bypass those defenses. A never ending battle!
!! this reminds me of this vid from Alan Watts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYHp8LwBUzo