Innovation and Speciation (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, May 01, 2011, 11:55 (4954 days ago)

Matt has drawn our attention to an article on the subject of bees and consciousness, which David regards as "a lot of yuck".-MATT: Approached holistically, it makes much sense that a hive of bees' activity corresponds to that of a single organism. The general idea is that a complex pattern emerges from many simpler elements--to understand bees, you need to understand the whole, not just the individual workers. Ant colonies are also considered "Superorganisms." I'm actually kinda shocked you seem revolted at the idea...-I think we should forget about consciousness, because no human can get inside a bee's head and say whether or not a bee is aware of itself and aware of its awareness. Instead, let's talk about intelligence, and link the discussion to that of speciation. It would, I think, be absurd to argue that the intricate organization of bee and ant societies does not reveal a form of intelligence. In exactly the same way, whole areas of our body consist of cells that combine to form organs with their own specific functions. They act intelligently, and yet quite independently of our own consciousness. My suggestion earlier was that maybe this process might be applied to innovation ... i.e. that cells combine to create new organisms. Innovation is essential to speciation. -TONY (under Rapid evolution or epigenetics?): Except that we have no clear examples of a single celled organism, or group there of, communicating with each other and deciding to form together to become a multi-cellular organism... and on and on. Yes, this accounts for variety, no, it does not account for speciation.-DAVID: Nothing proves speciation is a result of chance, in fact, we have no idea how it occurs.-But we do have species, and we do have multicellular organisms, and we know that these organisms behave intelligently. There has to be a mechanism that leads to innovation, and if I may slightly adapt Lynn Margulis' statement that "consciousness is a property of all living cells" and substitute "intelligence", we have a scenario in which innovation is NOT the result of chance but of deliberate communication (see Tony's comment below). Just as a few genius termites decided to build a mound (innovation), a few genius cells may have decided to build an eye, a leg, a wing.
 
TONY: If they are 'programmed' to remain bacteria, then evolution between species, and in particular from vastly less complicated to vastly more complicated would not occur. What I find even more intriguing is the method of their communication, which directly ties one of the four basic forces directly to life, i.e. Electromagnetism.-If you follow my suggestion (I dare not call it a theory), bacteria will remain bacteria, but the geniuses who have communicated to form a new combination will go their own way. And if the new combination proves to be efficient (natural selection), it will propagate and continue as it is, and then a new set of genius cells will come up with another new idea, thus branching out into a new species. Just as epigenetics enables a species to remain the same, innovative genetics (as opposed to random mutations) would enable it to change. This would account for the evolutionary bush. In other words, each innovation is the result of individual cells intelligently combining to form a new community, and each new community results in a new species. A theist can still argue that the mechanisms, the "intelligence", the ability to replicate, adapt (epigenetics), communicate, innovate, are far too complex to have assembled themselves by chance. (Whether a UI already had humans in mind is another question.) An atheist will, of course, still have faith in chance. The idea doesn't settle the God question, but since nobody knows how speciation occurs, it's surely worth considering.