Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id XAA07931 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 24 Jun 2000 23:35:02 +0100 From: "Chris Lofting" <ddiamond@ozemail.com.au> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Darwinism and evolutionary economics Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 18:50:33 +1000 Message-ID: <LPBBICPHCJJBPJGHGMCIAEPBCGAA.ddiamond@ozemail.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <20000623180238.16108.qmail@hotmail.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Paul marsden
> Sent: Saturday, 24 June 2000 4:03
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: RE: Darwinism and evolutionary economics
>
>
> Chris said
>
> >underneath all of our models is a set of invariant concepts combined
> >into a method that has a range that includes a more object oriented,
> >oppositional emphasis (manifest in Darwinism) and a more relational
> >oriented cooperative emphasis (manifest in Lamarck). So this continuum
> >has structure and that general structure is manifest in our particular
> > >models.
>
> Chris, I do not understand you. In what way is the inheritance
> of acquired
> characteristics in genetic information (or indeed in a cultural
> substrate)
> "cooperative" and "object oriented",
read the above again, I link Lamarck and cooperation to relational oriented
NOT object oriented.
I think the 'traditional' perspectives are more:
Darwin - OBJECT ORIENTED, OPPOSITION (or even no awareness of OTHERS and so
each object does its own thing and the interference patterns manifest
'reality' -- this is a generalisation of Feynman's perspective on particle
physics. In this context there is no necessary 'opposition', the opposition
results from the perspective of objects jostling for space -- a bit like
what we see in Brownian motion, there is no 'itent' involved. This can
develop into opposition but that requires a degree of context awareness and
the context is seen as hostile where there is still a very EITHER/XOR
presence.)
Lamarck - RELATIONSHIPS ORIENTED, COOPERATION. Awareness of OTHERS (context
aware). Acquired characteristics perpetuate the text/context relationship
and so maintain a degree of longterm stability in a dynamic system. If we do
not educate our children they become feral in that they develop their own
languages etc etc. In their relationship to the context, without education
they would have to go through all of what the previous generation has gone
through.
Eduction gets around this 'problem' in that whilst fundamental structural
elements are maintained (physical format), the more complex dynamic
relational elements are learnt; thus our creation of metaphors is generally
restricted in that the metaphors themselves are limited in their evolution
through the education process; we insist of going through 'first principles'
as part of the process and so 'ground' the metaphors and avoid too many
interpretations developing within a particular metaphor. (the
metaphor-creating system in our brains, if unbounded, sees meaning
'everywhere' and can overload interpretations, too many differences 'hide'
the sameness).
Emphasising first principles we still use perspectives on reality sourced in
data over 3000 years old and although we have refined these, the basic
formats are still influencial. Paradigm shifts occur when someone steps
outside of the box at a time where the box is (a) very full but (b) not
satisfying our need to know.
The survival of the metaphors means that the children acquire behaviour
characteristics that ensure (a) their personal survival in that we teach
them what to look-out for and so avoid and (b) the species survival is
preserved in that information required for survival is placed in the context
(in the form of stories/facts, memes, contained in books etc) and so each
generation has access to the information of the previous generations. Thus
there develops a *perceived* text/context cooperation (which is what Lamarck
'saw').
I noted in the original post that this perception is sourced in the
PROACTIVE nature of the object with the internalisation of a 'map' of the
context (the education process does this).
The map(s) cover the structure and dynamics of the context and allow for
pre-emptive behaviours, a sensitivity to local contextual changes/behaviours
that enables the local manipulation of that context to accomodate for the
changes( e.g. Earthquake-secure buildings, building dams, diverting rivers,
draining swamps etc If you viewed these things AFTER the event you could
wonder (based on an inability to ask the participants) how it was that the
river seems to be in 'just the right place' to fit in with the
behaviour/requirements of the local fawna)
At this stage of development the object molds the context rather than the
context molding the object (as in initial conditions of a Darwinist
perspective -- the reactive days).
These activities do require some culling every now and then as
technology/science makes new discoveries/inventions; old technologies are
destroyed or upgraded to the 'new, improved' technologies but mythologies
etc act to 'tie' things together, each generation is linked to the previous
by *qualitative* metaphors that are recognised as metaphors for
general/universal patterns of meaning. Thus technologies can change many
times within the lifetime of the individual but the mythologies etc do not.
Religion and 'faith' can also do this in that they are concerned with the
space-inbetween the generations; relational space and so 'Lamarckian'
territory, holism.
In general the evolutionary process starts off in 'traditional' Darwinian
terms with a degree of self-autonomy and so no context dependencies (and
more so a perception of a degree of conflict with the context and so the
'survival of the fittest'). The transition from reactive to proactive leads
to an increasing of context dependencies by storing information in that
context for later generations (as well as making things easier for one's own
generation). This storage thus requires the 'cooperation' of the context to
ensure that the stores are safe. This perception is, outside of human 1-to-1
interactions, an illusion in that the active search and discovery for 'safe
places' (where 'safe' is determined by the object) if perceived from the
'outside' can be interpreted as if the context ACTIVELY cooperated with the
object by supplying a set of 'safe' places, the object just had to 'find'
the particular ones it wanted (or else the context supplies the raw
materials to be able to create 'safe' places)!
I think you can see how easy it is to interpret things from a Lamarckian
perspective if you lack precision in analysis. The Lamarckian perspective
is, to me, an example of secondary thinking where the 'space inbetween the
dots' is considered more important, this is relational space and favours a
holist perspective rather than a reductionist perspective. The holist
perspective is valid as a SECONDARY analytical method and can cause problems
if used as a PRIMARY analytical method. The value of holism is manifest in
Darwin's use of these SECONDARY methods, based on DIFFERENCE, to 'discover'
the concepts of evolutionary theory that are PRIMARY in that
laws/principles/rules emphasise SAMENESS.
These rules/principles then become part of the filtering process used in
primary thinking to determine 'correct' from 'incorrect', thus different
expressions have 'behind' them laws/principles such that identification at
the expression level is aided by knowledge of the influences of the
laws/principles; these generals are BEHIND the expression and aid in
'boxing' the expression. Randomness is where an expression is perceived as
'out of context'.
Reductionism seeks sameness in that it seeks to determine what is BEHIND
expression, it seeks common structural patterns. Holism seeks sameness but
BETWEEN expressions and so a more cooperative perspective is looked for, it
seeks common relational patterns; Lamarck saw difference (trees with high
branching, giraffes) and zoomed-in on the space-in-between, the
relationships, Darwin saw finches and seeked the rule (sameness) that
allowed for their expression to be different within a sameness context
(finches in general).
Darwinism has a bias to internal operations of a lifeform (species).
Darwinism is sourced within a general species (e.g. finches) and then
zooms-in on the variations and the common (SAMENESS) rules that allow for
the development of the variations and from that 'new' species.
These rules are then applied to other general species to reveal a general
pattern at work that is still sourced WITHIN each species. Thus a bias to
genetics and self-containment and an attraction to explaining DIFFERENCE as
a variation on SAMENESS. Thus SAMENESS is fundamental.
Lamarck has a bias to external operations of a lifeform, the
space-inbetween-species. In this context, for Lamarck there is no
'difference' of expressions or more so the expressions of the individuals
(the 'dots') is not considered, it is the relationships between the 'dots'
and as such the 'dots' need not be related in any structural way. This
approach takes DIFFERENCE as fundamental and SAMENESS comes out of the
relationships. The point here is that you cannot have difference without an
initial form to compare with, an archetype, and for me this is in the form
of the neurological/psychological distinctions of objects and relationships.
All of experience is the mapping of the infinite number of expressions to
these archetypes. And I think it is noteworthy that the neurology, once it
determines sameness, habituates such that the neurology is biased to seeing
DIFFERENT *expressions*. Holism accepts the differences without looking
under the hood, it is more into the relationships of say Ford to General
Motors or car to road or car to a person's personality! Reductionism looks
under the hood of all cars to discover the common 'rules/principles' and the
source of the variations, there is an attraction to 'purity' and so
sameness; cross-species interactions are verboten (or difficult. Horse +
donkey = mule and the result is sterile) to enble the retention (survival)
of fundamental structures and so SAMENESS.
Reflecting on the tendency to store information in the context, from a
social perspective we see a cycle where the more we put into the context so
the more dependent we make us on the context to the degree where the context
determines who we are! We are back in initial Darwinist territory where we
are reactive and where the increase in context determining who we are
'grates' on our personal drive for identity that can lead to conflict with
the context. (sounds like adolescence :-))
So we have a loop (or more so a spiral) of reactive-to-proctive-to-reactive
...... The timespan of this loop is determined by the scale we are looking at;
from a social perspective it is generations, from genetic perspective it is
thousands, millions of years but there is a log scale involved manifest in
our own development shown by comparing the last 100 years to the previous
1000 and that to the previous 10000 etc etc
Lamarck looked at the loop but at the proactive areas and 'started' there.
Darwin looked at the reactive areas and 'started' there. Darwin picked-up on
the 'beginnings' of the process whereas Lamarck viewed things where feedback
processes were 'high'; he came in at the 'middle/end' of the play. His
viewpoint is at least socially valid but only within a well developed and so
feedback oriented, context aware, dynamic system. Stephen Hall's (?)
reflections on the immune system, a highly dynamic but well developed system
shows the Lamarckian perspective at work. (This does not mean that there is
no Darwin sourced method of explanation of this but more so that the
Lamarckian terminologies used to describe these processes seem to be more
'suitable'. When you cross the 'line' on the evolution dimension from
reactive to proactive so it is easier to describe what is happening by
introducing a teleological componant, intent. This is purely to help in the
descriptions but becomes a problem when taken too literally.)
The Darwin/Lamarck perspectives reflect the two dominant ways in which our
brains analyse reality and due to their entanglements any identifications of
these perspectives will (a) instigate disputes and (b) stay around for
'ever' unless we 'go beyond' the dichotomies by analysing the structure of
the methods, by recognition of HOW are brains work and so how these
apparently 'different' perspectives can arise. Thus the reductionist
(Darwin)/holist (Lamarck) viewpoints, although seen as initially
oppositional and so 'seperate' are metaphors overlayed on the A/~A format
within a universe of discourse, in this case evolution theory.
Repeatedly apply the A/~A to itself and eventually you get a continuum that
ties the elements together and then forms into a torus, A/~A, once seemingly
poles apart, become linked and so a perception of 'cooperation'. Note that
there is the assumption that the recursion 'expands' the dichotomy. It
doesnt, you are in fact CONTRACTING, moving from a general to a particular,
you are always bounded by the A and the ~A but qualitatively they become
less important. The recursion forces emergence from the MIDDLE of the
original dichotomy and moves you from fundamentalist EITHER/OR level to a
relativist BOTH/AND level where you get into probabilities etc
If you develop Lamarckian theory enough you will 'get into' Darwinian
concepts but expressed in words that 'fit' the format of the original
context-setting fundamentals of 'Lamarckianism'. Same thing for Darwin in
that eventually you will 'get into' Lamarckian concepts but expressed in
words that 'fit' the Darwinian fundamentals.
To remove the Darwin/Lamarck dichotomy you need to discover the common
ground behind them and so change perspective, you join the elements of the
dichotomy and in the process make the whole universe of discourse 'clearer'.
This is possible by analysing the neurology/psychology linked to the use of
dichotomies in categorisation.
and more specifically in
> what way is it
> more so than a darwinian process of differential reproduction in
> which units
> of selection participate in the modification of the environment to make
> their own reocurrence more likely?
>
I think I have answered this above in that the differential reproduction is
a way of describing the proactive side of the evolution 'dimension'. Lamarck
saw 'cooperation' at work but this is a product of the 'tight' entanglement
of object (units) with context such that the feedback processing, due to
internal mapping of contextual behaviours and so a shift from reactive to
proactive behaviour, allows for a perception of 'intent' all round.
At the human social level where BOTH sides have the ability to create the
maps you DO see intentional cooperation in that relationships can start off
hesitently as we 'build' maps of the other and once these are done so
dove-tailing emerges where the two can act as if one. This said, more than
often you find one side of the relationship manifesting 'Darwinian'
perspectives (objects, self-containment) and the other manifesting
'Lamarckian' perspectives (relationships, others-containment) where the
expression of the group (couple) is the entanglement of these perspectives.
From an individual perspective, once you build general maps of others, for
example by the ability to differentiate persona characteristics (generals),
using the MBTI etc) so this improves your ability to cooperate at the level
of the particular but can also reduce your sensitivity to differences in
that the general acts to box and so all is assumed to 'fit' in the box. The
box acts as a GUIDE only, you get problems when it CONTROLS behaviours.
Overall, we are seeing the same processes at the personal relationships
level as we see in the general evolutionary level since the
reactive-proactive development oriented dichotomy, combined with the
objects/relationships structural dichotomy, is fundamental and applies at
the universal, cultural, and individual levels -- same general patterns at
all scales.
best,
Chris.
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