Edited by author 03-16-2001 12:11 AM
This mini-essay arose in response to Steve Yost's "Specialization and Cooperation"[1] and "Deep Thoughts"[2] note which I found via Dan Kalikow's "Web Epiphanies" topic[3].
I also find the evolution of new levels of intelligence intriguing. It usually seems a little too mystical to really get much of a grip on, so I don't have much to say on the topic. However, I have a few references I think might be useful for those interested in the subject.
Marshall Savage, in his book "The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps", provides some inspirational thoughts about mankind's destiny along these lines. The beginning of the book is a hard engineering tour-de-force outlining an strategy allowing humanity to gracefully exit the cradle of our birth. The last few chapters have a longer range philosophical aspect. Towards the end of the "Solaria" chapter he says:
"To form a collective entity of a higher order, a minimum threshold must be exceeded. For individual sub-units the critical threshold appears to be around 100 billion:
- A hundred billion atoms can organize to form an individual cell.
- A hundred billion cells can organize to form an individual brain.
- A hundred billion human minds can organize to form... Something Wonderful!"
He references Peter Russell, "The Global Brain: Speculations on the Evolutionary Leap to Planetary Consciousness", 1983, for the 10^11 number. I haven't tracked down this book(?) but it might be worth it. I certainly enjoyed Savage's book and heartily recommend it.
More recently I read Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine" which advances memes as replicators which compete for human mental resources and so evolve through selection. The presence of a second set of replicators which sometimes work with, and sometimes in opposition to, the genes, provides a new interpretation of several of humanity's unusual features, such as language, brain size, and a host of cultural oddities. Historically, memes and genes have been transmitted together along vertical, family lines and usually worked to similar purposes. However, with modern means of communication, meme transmission is more and more horizontal and so the "interests" of memes and genes will increasingly diverge. In this context, it seems that viewing memes as evolving replicators, provides a concrete (I use the term in a relative sense) example of what a higher order evolutionary process, alluded to by Savage, might look like.
Another theme of Savage is the greening of the galaxy as life spreads to fill the void. He views our highest destiny as being a vehicle for that diaspora. This connects with the Freeman Dyson quote about the universe being in some way congenial to life. I've previously lauded Stuart Kauffman's "At Home in the Universe" which argues for a certain structure in complexity which is necessary to allow natural selection to work at all. Along these lines, but at a much more fundamental level is Lee Smolin's "The Life of the Cosmos". Smolin suggests that universes themselves under went a selection process which favored those whose properties lead to the formation of copious black holes. Such conditions also favor complexity on all levels.
Another fascinating book is Robert Wright's "Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny". Wright argues that non-zero sum interactions can be found at the basis of all organizations. Because mutually beneficial exchanges depend upon a certain economy of scale and lead to increasing specialization and complexity they provide a sort of arrow "guiding" natural selection. These non-zero sum games are a sort of binding energy holding together increasingly complex organisms all the way from cells to today's global economy.
While all these ideas are a long way from a coherent theory of life, the universe and everything, they do at least suggest that such a story may someday be worked out.
Ted Anderson
[1]
http://www.quicktopic.com/blurcircle?SpecializationAndCooperation[2]
http://www.quicktopic.com/blurcircle?DeepThoughts[3]
http://www.quicktopic.com/6/H/6ErdMcPjrMTDn
