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Old 12-10-2008, 07:25 AM   #177
Voitokas
 
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Re: The continued Evolution of Aikido

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Ok, take what you said in the 2nd paragraph that is what I am saying as a whole about Evolution, i.e. "everything from gravity to electricity, to bloodletting, to hygiene preventing disease, etc." Evolution is becoming a catch-all term.

Bruce Lee had a philosophy that was rejecting the rigid and focusing on flexibly and, fitting, adapting, to the situation at hand. I don't see this as Evolution, but rather innovation and divergance from the popular accepted philosophy. Thus, a variation of fighting- nothing new.
What I think that GeneC was implying (correct me if I'm wrong GeneC) was that Bruce Lee changed MA, and that that change made his system one that survived and flourished and become an ancestor to today's MMA. So that is evolution. A change that results in a different level of fitness in the world. The change doesn't have to be in response to the environment (that would be Lamarckian); nor do temporally progressive changes have to go in the same direction (a longer beak might make available a cushier niche in the food chain, but too long a beak might see that bird species hungry again); nor, strictly speaking, does it have to be genetic (e.g. environmental bottlenecks, population genetics, migration, etc.).

So if a person's style of aikido was passed on to other generations (and that's how it works, right? Some aikido shidoin now are students of students of students of O-sensei. And it probably starts before you even hang out a shingle - I know that my aikido is informed by the people I work with in class and at seminars), then aikido can be said to be evolving.

I am not an expert