FOREWORD

 

French version

 

Before delivering his research object on the Web, the author wished to inform his visitors about a certain number of aspects which concern the author, his research methods and the results that he proposes.

The author - His university course is short, his autodidact course counts several decades; his heterodoxe step does not conform to dominant orthodoxy; his solitary search is integrated into no team; he does not belong to any institutional structure (University, C.N.R.S., specialized institute, etc...) and does not depend on anybody; his search is free of constraint except that of the facts rigorous respect and the rejection of any speculative assumption nonfounded on facts; he does not publish his work in a specialized review but on the Web; no referee decides his search publication; he subjects to the only scientific community judgement, as a whole, the probabilistic model which he proposes.

Search methods - In arts (painting, sculpture, music...), technology (data-processing, electronic, telephony, Internet...), in all human activity spheres, the evolution or the revolution is permanent. Knowledge cannot escape from it. Neither in the content, nor in the form.

The work presented here corresponds neither to a monograph, nor to a specialized subject targeted analysis. The pointed search for a structure, for a precise process, constitutes a fertile way of knowledge. This way is of a rather analytical nature. It is not the single possible way. If knowledge proceeds by discipline, this knowledge object, the universe or nature, itself is unified, unresolved of continuity, with levels or scales separated by considerable magnitude orders, going from quarks and gluons to the immense galaxies groupings.

The author searchs has as an aim at problematic biological evolution and, more precisely, an attempt at handing-over in question of the darwinian natural selection current quasi " dogma ". This handing-over in question is based, initially, on the theoretical rejection of the roles, functions, biological utilities concepts. Thus, the organs and their functions concept underlies an utility, an objective and, ultimately, a finality: the eye "is shown", the ear "to hear". These concepts are therefore impressed, historically, of an anthropocentric finalism that a rigorous scientific objectivity cannot accept. The author search is synthetic and multi-field and concerns, by the things of nature, fields as various as biochemistry, paleoanthropology, the paleontology of the vertebrates and invertebrates, paleomicrobiology, etc... The author is not Pic de la Mirandole. He cannot claim to have a perfect command of the knowledge of the numerous fields implied by his work object. He thus had to pay a price: 1) the quoted references are, either of first hand information, or of synthesis articles (the quoted authors are, in general, well-known specialists); 2) approximations, sometimes exceeded information or even errors are inevitable. The author hopes and thinks that these gaps, of a secondary nature, do not affect the credibility of his whole work. It is utopian to claim to have, simultaneously, a perfect knowledge of the tree and the forest.

The results - If the author could profit from a total freedom in his search orientation, he was subjected to the gold rule of knowledge, the strict observation of the facts. He proposes an interpretative model of well-known facts, a model which leads to other facts, well-known or new. The model suggested by the author is a post-darwinian biological evolution model. This model excludes any finalist interpretation, utilititarian and anthropocentric of the biological concepts. The author does not challenge the natural selection and darwinism but integrates them in his model, and substitutes a new, probabilistic significance of the S.T.E. assets (Synthetic Theory of the Evolution).

If the genome and the genetics are the impossible way to circumvent of the biological evolution, the probabilistic model does not endorse the " whole genetic " reductionnism (Atlan 1999). The probabilistic model proposes a macroscopic environmental origin, external, preponderant, to the biological evolution, which relates firstly the macro and the megaevolution and which passes, inevitably, by a genome internal probabilistic modification.

This probabilistic significance is in phase with the contemporary search dominant interpretation which privileges a nature probabilistic design. This probabilistic design has nothing to do with the chance understood like contingency. On the opposite side, the probability is constraining, when it is strong, i.e. when an event production chances are high. The probability is more powerful than an independant causal series determinism whose meeting is contingent and unforeseeable (Cournot 1843).

 

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