From: Kenneth Van Oost (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Tue 15 Nov 2005 - 20:39:31 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Taylor
> Sorry but you _must_ leave your very human perspective behind.
> There is no forward planning mode available, even to humans --
> this is (shockingly) a ~memetic thing as clearly our ability to
> imagine/simulate/plan is based only on our experience (direct or
> recombined) and that 'planning' is just a case of rapidly
> iterating a series of 'what if' scenarios generated at random
> (consider 'drawing a blank'). But I digress...
( SNIP)
> In the biosphere generally, there is no planning mechanism.
> Acquired characters are not observed to be passed down by any
> other than physical mechanisms (i.e. there is nothing rigorously
> observed that is not explicable through standard inheritance, be
Hi chris, always a pleasure to hear from ye....
Anyway, greetings to all you guys....
Adding something to the puzzle...
I am reading a book called ' The sarrow of Darwin, about the pain
and consolation of rationalism ', by Jan De Laender, a Belgian writer
and psychologist. A good book !
Darwin himself understood that nature acted as it was its own Great
Selector. According to De Laender ( on pg 276- 278) there are 2
powers for evolution,
1_ the environment, organisms are a kind of reflection of the environ-
ment they live in. We, humans are reflections of gravity: that is why
our body is built around a ferm skeleton; the eye reflects the optic
characteristics of light; the form of the dolphin reflects the hydro-
dynamic characteristics of the sea. By eliminating those characteristics
that do not fit, nature/ the environment model the organisms: it gives
the morphological, anatomical, physiological and behaviourcharac-
teristics that do fit.
Darwin understood that there was no absolute definition out of what
a fit gene consisted. What fits, is determinated by the environment.
2_ the competion between mem(e)bers of the species.
Biologists speak about this in terms of ' Red Queen '- effect.
Members of the same species are " competors ".
Each change, for the better or worse, does imply that other
members of the species must follow to keep up or in the worst
scenario, to alter their behaviour to stay alive.
A lot of evolution- biologists do consider the Red Queen-
effect to be the startingground for human intelligence.
And who was smarter, could mislead, convince and dominate.
Who was less fortunate, could be abused, exploited and ruled.
And so in a way, " genes for having power to think ", were held.
And this was necessary, not the overcome problems in and about
the environment, but to maintain oneself in the mids of the other
members of its own species.
<< But if there is no planning mechanism, and nature " selects '
out the bad genes and keeps the good, WHY are still slow
prey- animals being born !?
If ' speed ' is heritable determinated, and nature selects ' heri-
table fixed speed ', how does she selects heritable fixed slow-
ness and why !?
I once heard that in the early eons of our time, there were no
carnivors around, only herbivors were walking the face of the
earth. They got so big_ a skeleton dug up in South- America
should proove this point_ that they destroyed eventually their
own environment.
" Invented " nature carnivors as a kind of birth- control !?
Regards,
Kenneth
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue 15 Nov 2005 - 21:03:04 GMT