Innovation and Speciation (Evolution)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, May 04, 2011, 13:21 (4951 days ago) @ dhw


> I used this only as an analogy. At some point, bees gathered into a community and invented a new architecture and a new social system. THAT was the act of creativity. The analogy is with cells at some point gathering into a community and inventing a new organ, a new species. Once established, the species remains as it is, adapting to change or being destroyed by it. However, in due course, a set of cells comes up with another invention, and this in turn leads to another species. If evolution happened, it can only have happened in this way, through innovation. All I'm suggesting is an alternative theory to that of random or God-given mutations: namely, mutations created by the intelligence of the cells themselves. The process is the same ... only the driving force is different (chance, God, innate intelligence).
> --It is the use of invented here that I have a problem with. As I stated previously there is a difference between adaptation, innovation and invention, it is small, but critical. I see the hive structure of bees as more likely an adaptation to a very simple problem. You have several hundred males born for every female. If that were to happen in the human population, the result would be much the same as it is for bees. Each female would have a harem of men and would be treated like a queen for the price of staying pregnant pretty much her entire life in order to keep the species alive. -In some species of bees the problem is artificially generated, as female bees will kill eggs they know to contain more females, or kill them as they are born. This is possibly an innovation that was done because of the success the bees mentioned above. Thrive by imitation of a successful system. This is common throughout nature.--> TONY: All of this is to simply define the limitations of intelligence as opposed to self-aware consciousness.
> 
> I have tried to make that distinction, but only because self-awareness is an added complication that will divert us from the main thrust of my suggestion. Single cells communicate and show signs of intelligent behavior. That is enough to give us a mechanism for innovation as well as adaptation. (But of course it tells us nothing about the origin of the mechanism, which is a different question.)-I wasn't trying to hint in my post at the origins of the mechanism. I was simply trying to establish the framework for my point of view. Part of that framework is the cutoff between intelligence and self-awareness as it also implies the divide between innovation and invention(abstract creativity).