Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA27680 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 2 Dec 2001 12:29:50 GMT Message-ID: <001e01c17b2d$1219a5a0$189ebed4@default> From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <200112020503.fB253KM28278@sherri.harvard.edu> Subject: Re: circular logic Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 13:29:29 +0100 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 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: Wade T. Smith <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
> To make some remark upon your 'should've' comments- lamarckianism (or
> neo-lamarckianism, don't matter much) marches from the 'need'
> perspective- as if it isn't so much an accidental process, this
> evolution, but somehow forced by some collective will- the cold starting
> to come in requiring the need for warmer woolens, and the tribe somehow
> selecting (the females selecting to mate, perhaps, with hairier, furrier
> males) for thicker coats. Or something.... At any rate, there is somehow
> a goal in lamarckianism, and, so far, nothing about evolution admits of
> goals.
> If all neo-lamarckianism is is the application of design criteria to
> future generations, we will be there soon enough with life, and we were
> always there with artefacts.
Hi Wade,
Well, well,... friend,
Just to comment yours,
The goal in Lamarckism, the need for warmer woolens, the need for longer
necks, is IMO a complete misunderstanding.
We ought to be alive, we must survive as an organism in order to act as the
proper working- hosts to allow memes to propagate.
The need for them to survive is far more greater than their desire to do so.
Desire is ' included ' in need but has not such a strong ' meaning' to it as
need as such does.
The need is not expressed into what is found in Lamarckism ( use- disuse),
like the giraffe- example, but you have to concentrate yourself upon
Lamarckism as a more neurobiological substrate, not as more as a bodily
level.
Lamarckism IMO, has nothing to do with bodily supposed changes, not in
the short term anyway.
Lamarckian processes are the start for a possible bodily change, not having
longer arms/ hairier man or longer necks, but to have changed behavior_
another way to move/ (re)act, sit...
The change is the way we express the behavior, not the behavior itself.
The change is like you mention, the application of design on another level
of complexity.
Lamarckism has to do with the brain and which kind of connections are made
there. The result of such processes are changed behaviors, changed appli-
cations of design, changed ways we use artefacts or changed ways we design
artefacts.
And to conclude,
The famous giraffe- example of Lamarck is also a misunderstanding,
Devillers and Chaline, Théorie de l'évolution, Paris, 1989 write, in a kind
of circular logic, if the ancestors of the giraffe did got indeed a shorter
neck
they had to be bigger in general than the giraffes of today. They too did
reach (for) the leaves at the top of the tree.
What in a sense dismisses any explanation as for Darwin as for Lamarck.
The thing is, according to Devillers and Chaline, that not only the neck,
but
also the frontlegs of the animals were getting longer. The result of both
processes, forced upon them by the environment, is that the giraffe, without
standing up on its backlegs can now reach a hight of six meters ( 20 feet).
All is due to habits. And the habit, more likely the need, of reaching for
the
highest leaves resulted in changes.
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