A Call To The Humanities To Reclaim Its Concious Self

Shaun: I ask your indulgence,

David, I've been trying to figure out how to respond to learning you're a creationist. When I encounter an anti-darwinist I like to learn why they're anti-darwinist. So far, no two have had similar motivations, and not having found common ground I've no one to share my interest with. In the case of creationists, though, I assume the motivation at root is to preserve conformity with Biblical revelation and their remarks will be configured to achieve that primary concern. However, you don't give that impression. Hence my hesitation.

I therefore ask a favor of you. Would you read an essay I've just written and let me know how you relate to it? I know how tedious it is to be asked to read someone else's writing, particularly upfront, as if it's more important for you to know about me than for me to know anything about you.  But, it feels as if in response to you, I've written a statement of what I think, that would help you identify, and tell me, how your thinking relates to mine. That would make it easier for me to know how to answer your interesting post at LinkedIn.

Without more ado I send the essay, and hit send. Cheers, Shaun.

How to educate future discoverers of evolution

More than two lifetimes ago we made one of the greatest discoveries of all time--we'd evolved. We  weren't exceptional because we'd been created specially by God, instead we were just one more animal species. In fact, because we'd been formed by the same process as all other species we had no right to think of ourselves as exceptional at all.  We had no right to claim for ourselves any capabilities beyond those that, in a couple of billion years, could evolve out of non-living matter. 

When I first learned this, in my mid teens, I was awestruck! The process of evolution was capable to creating such amazing creatures as ourselves. What must that process be like?

I still think I was right to be awestruck. After all, this discovery was new. The possibility of evolution may have been raised before but no one had been able to prove it true. Now, though, the proof for it was convincing--fossils showed living species weren't created each one from scratch, each one appeared where the species most like it already lived. They seemed to spawn each other, forming strings of species like twigs on a tree. Trace that process back and it was hard to argue against all living species having originally branched off from a single trunk.

We had a new origin story, surely destined to be the basis for a new tradition of culture and philosophy, I thought. After all, most of our existing traditions had grown out of one or another origin story; either we'd been created by a God who loved us and gave us powers we'd need to worship him appropriately, or we were cycling through successive lifetimes in a quest for release from earthly existence, or we were pure matter acted on by nothing more than physical and chemical processes. Each of those origin stories imposed on us its own set of assumption about who and what we were, that we'd then turn into traditions through which we found meaning. Now we were abruptly faced with embracing, in place of those, an entirely new origin story.

Yet discovering we evolved has had little impact? Why? I believe, because it's soon. I've come to believe the great pioneer days of forging meaning out of having evolved lie ahead. Quite far ahead: I like to think today's young people will be the grandparents of those who forge those new traditions. One or two of them will become the most famous humans who ever lived, for laying the foundations of a new human nature endowing all future generations with capabilities far beyond those of any prior age, identified through study of the process of evolution and found  to be responsible for its vast creativity.

How should we train young people for them to become in due course the mentors of those future creators of the greatest hinge of history?

If the past is any guide, those future pioneers won't be scientists. Few of the original pioneers of evolutionary theory in the 19th century were scientists, they were physicians, writers, and gentlemen of leisure. It fell to those who came later to turn the insights of those pioneers into systems you could do science with and to create terminology you could use to communicate the results of your experiments. Once those systems arose, however, they seemed to inhibit the kind of speculation through which the original pioneers arrived at their insights. Sciences can be manufactured as needed, scientists can be trained, it's fruitful speculation we should train our potential pioneers for.

Again, if we turn to the past for guidance, the key is study of nature itself, informed but without preconceptions. And being able to dissociate information from the assumptions bound to be embedded in it.

Maybe, if we're to train them, we should prepare by learning how, ourselves.

I arrived at this train of thought from reading an account of the work of the scientists who laid the foundations for modern evolutionary theory a lifetime ago. Their attention seemed focused almost entirely on the implications of each others theories, nature being of interest mainly for providing instances that either supported or contradicted one anothers' theories. I was struck by the absence of an agreed-upon list of the phenomena that needed to be accounted for. I think we can lay a foundation for future speculation about evolution by coming up with such a list ourselves.

Here's my list to start the project off, in the form of questions:

What does the cell's almost-perfect system of DNA repair say about the role of DNA in evolution?

How did dreaming evolve, what did it evolve out of, and how did it or does it now contribute to evolving?

If we're not exceptional in experiencing consciousness, where else in nature could it exist? What could it evolve out of? What kind of process must be involved in conscious experience evolving?

Foals seem to enter the world already equipped to engage in several gaits such as walking, jumping and running , to navigate a world of gravity, solid ground, and solid objects at various distances, and to recognize objects such as other horses. What kinds of patterns of connection must already be built into it, and what kind of process must it take to generate those patterns during gestation? How can such information be stored in genes and read out of them to generate tissues embodying those patterns of connection?

A baby whale, by swimming, very effectively stirs its own tissues. How then is symmetry and proportion maintained over distances of up to 100 feet in whales as they grow?

Swarms of birds and fish many yards across seem to move as one. How is their synchronized movement coordinated? What signal is capable of traveling across such swarms at speeds of hundreds of feet a second, hundreds of miles an hour? How else could such signals be employed in living processes?

What does an evolved creature choosing to become a scientist say about evolution?

How did reading this list make you feel? I expect a lay person to feel nothing more than mild interest; yes, these are the kinds of questions a reasonably informed human being is likely to ask. But I expect scientists to feel frustrated; "these are not the kinds of questions you ask about evolution. Here, I'll tell you what the right kinds of questions are..."

If I'm right, this tendency of scientists and their supporters to limit speculation to only what can be expressed in terms of existing theories is  a major barrier to preparing young people for the next great revolution in evolutionary science.  I suggest those entrusted with the education of pioneers in that revolution discipline themselves to shed any assumptions they may have about how you should talk about what it means we evolved.

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"How did dreaming evolve, what did it evolve out of, and how did it or does it now contribute to evolving?"

Most likely forms of dreaming gradually evolved along with levels of consciousness; it's straightforward enough to test the brainwave activity of various animals as they sleep. Given the indications that some form of dreaming is fairly widespread, it probably has some survival value, but for now we can't rule out that it is simply a harmless side-effect of consciousness."

"If we're not exceptional in experiencing consciousness, where else in nature could it exist? What could it evolve out of? What kind of process must be involved in conscious experience evolving?"

Consciousness is probably a corollary of the evolution of certain forms of intelligence, and appears to be possessed to some extent by several other animals, such as the great apes, whales, and probably other mammals and even some birds. Again, as an evolutionary development, there is probably no clear line dividing some level of intelligent awareness and what we might be tempted to call "true consciousness."

"Foals seem to enter the world already equipped to engage in several gaits such as walking, jumping and running , to navigate a world of gravity, solid ground, and solid objects at various distances, and to recognize objects such as other horses. What kinds of patterns of connection must already be built into it, and what kind of process must it take to generate those patterns during gestation? How can such information be stored in genes and read out of them to generate tissues embodying those patterns of connection?"

All of this is simply a matter of studying cerebral organization down to the cellular or possibly molecular level, along with genetic and epigenetic factors.

"A baby whale, by swimming, very effectively stirs its own tissues. How then is symmetry and proportion maintained over distances of up to 100 feet in whales as they grow?"

The symmetry and proportion is encoded in the genes. I'm not sure what you mean by "stirs its own tissues." The cells of its bones and even soft parts all maintain the same positions relative to each other. Besides, as whales evolved in the water, hydrodynamic effects probably contribute to maintaining symmetry and proportion.

"Swarms of birds and fish many yards across seem to move as one. How is their synchronized movement coordinated? What signal is capable of traveling across such swarms at speeds of hundreds of feet a second, hundreds of miles an hour? How else could such signals be employed in living processes?"

It seems that you are unaware of research in to this area and computer simulations demonstrating that a few mental rules (or reflexes) in each individual can produce this group behavior and there are no signals and there is nothing especially mysterious about the behavior, or that requires anything more than the electrochemical activity of nerves and neurons.

"What does an evolved creature choosing to become a scientist say about evolution?"

Whatever he or she wants to say about it! but seriously, "becoming a scientist" is merely the latest manifestation of the curiousity that evolved and emerged from the activity of the brain we consider intellince, and continues to have value for survival and reproduction.

Oh, one last thing. Please find attached a thought-experiment I wrote (the zzizzm experiment) imagining a situation in which evolution is not in question, but the idea that "there is something more" is challenged. I didn't come up with this sort of thing whole cloth; I'd read Vonnegut's _Galapagos_ and possibly haven't offered anything new, but only made certain things more explicit.