A lot of tea, plus a lot of time on my hands, led to thinking some thoughts which I wanted to write down.
Evolution is one of those things I think about at times like these. It's fertile ground for my imagination. I have Theories, so to speak--even though I'm not a trained biologist. Take that for what you will.
Without further preamble--and true to the name of the blog--here is the raw matter, without any thought toward cleaning it up.
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complexity
understanding
the body
circulation
anatomy
representation
organisms
natural phenomena
thought
creation
science
ideas
language
building blocks
The head and its relationship with the body
Many things are concentrated in the head.
It is a center of importance, and thus a center of expenditure.
Consider the different expenditures in the head.
We have circulation of blood, delivering oxygen.
We have blood sugar, used especially by this concentration of nervous tissue.
We have a heightened complexity of chemical modulation.
We have an increase in heat being radiated.
We have a concentration of functions--senses, gastronomy, communication, control.
There are fundamental principles of "headedness" we can identify, and use in the understanding of other phenomena.
We do this intuitively, but perhaps we can do it with greater order and premeditation.
Our minds, our lives, the organisms that we are...have been molded by time and nature, to function in this way, and other ways. They will function these ways no matter what, as they have done since primordial times. They will continue to function this way until we become...altered...in some deep way, which we cannot presently fathom.
What has changed, though, in more recent times, is that we have formed new tools with which to operate. These tools have a functional genesis, which we partly understand. But their application is not limited to the functional element that drove their formation.
Indeed, this is the way of evolution, as we are understanding in ever greater detail. The heuristic of functional adaptation is a reasonable approximation, up to a point, but it does not truly represent the mechanism at play in the development of organisms and other systems. We can apprehend this fact, when we consdier the development of systems from first principles.
"Accidental usage" is a key ingredient to evolution. It is a step beyond the basic cycle of mutation and natural selection. Though the basic cycle is accurate, as a model, it is incomplete.
Let me pause, and put a marker here. I will delve into evolution, temporarily--but come back with the result, to further explore our cognitive evolution in the present day.
Instead of saying that a function is a channel for the evolution of a morphological trait, let us instead say that, for a given morphological state, there are an array of functions, each of which can potentially be served with a certain level of efficacy.
In a classic example--the eye--the arrayed functions are only slightly distinct. Different modes of vision--allowing various degrees of directionality, focus, sensitivity, etc--all fall under the heading of vision.
Even those mutations that confer benefits in certain situations likely also confer disadvantages in others. This drives behavioral changes, to seek out the newly adventageous situations.
This illustrates a new layer of "accident" in the process. Mutation is the first accident; the next is the combination of environmental circumstances that may allow the mutation to express its benefit.
We also might think about the kinds of robustness, or resiliency, that accompany each layer of accident, allowing it to occur without an unbearable burden of detriment.
For the first-layer accident: traits of the organism on various levels, that allow it to survive a significant mutation without being crippled. This could include a fault-tolerant structure; and a flexibility in behavior, to work with various bodily compromises.
For the second-layer accident: traits of the organism that allow it to cope with environmental changes. This could include the behavioral tendency to seek new ground; and the flexibility to survive on different kinds of ground.
Moving back toward the cognitive discussion: evolutionary steps in brain development have a broader array of functional potential than in eye development. (Though that can hardly be surprising, as the brain is a bigger and more complex organ than the eye.)
