Re: Life's complexity: self-organization, evolution or both?
- From: John Harshman <jharshman.diespamdie@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:06:31 GMT
dkomo wrote:
In Roger Lewin's _Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos_, at the end of
Chapter 7 "Complexity and the Reality of Progress", there is a paragraph
that nicely summarizes the differences between two major paradigms --
that of evolution and that of complex systems theory:
"The pure Spencerian view of the world, therefore, is that increased
complexity is an inevitable manifestation of the system and is driven by
the internal dynamics of complex systems: heterogeneity from from
homogeneity, order out of chaos. The pure Darwinian view is that
complexity is built solely by natural selection, a blind, nondirectional
force; and there is no inevitable rise in complexity. The new science
of Complexity combines elements of both: internal and external forces
apply, and increased complexity is to be expected as a fundamental
property of complex dynamical systems. A fundamental property of
complex adaptive systems is the counterintuitive crystallization of
order -- order for free, in Stu Kauffman's terms -- upon which selection
may act. Such systems may, through selection, bring themselves to the
edge of chaos, a constant process of coevolution, a constant adaptation.
Part of the lure of the edge of chaos is an optimization of
computational ability, whether the system is a cellular automaton or a
biological species evolving with others as part of a complex ecological
community. At the edge of chaos, bigger brains are built."
Does this mean that very few species ever find themselves on the edge of
chaos? Because only a few lineages have ever built bigger brains. It
would seem to me that if there were some universal principle acting
here, it would be acting everywhere. That's what universal means. So, if
big brains get built as a pure consequence of self-organization, why
don't all animals have big brains? Why, for that matter, don't plants
and fungi have them?
"Is human consciousness to be found there, too?"
What does he mean, "too"?
.
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