Talking with the Professor...

Hi, I thought this would make an interesting post particularly with Darwin Day coming up:

Hi T,

I really enjoyed our discussion. I'm always up for exploring ideas along these lines. If nothing else, I find it very thought provoking.

There were a couple of things you mentioned that I wanted to just respond to and each are a whole trajectory of discussion, which I should add, I wouldn't pretend be able to contain in a brief essay, or even ever.

The first is the idea that mankind is no longer subject to the Darwinian (or neo-Darwinian) evolution. It's clear that language, self consciousness (which is expressed as conceptualisation of objects and governing principles or laws/patterns), the society we can build using these capacities and the caring of the weak that this enables and the capacity for techological develoment, with transport, does mean that natural selection by exterior factors (disease and predation) is no longer a significant influence on the gene frequencies in the population. Other factors defined by society, that regulate fecundity may influence gene frequencies however. One then has to look at the heritability of characteristics that may be selected in reproductive patterns to cause a directional shift in gene frequencies in human populations before any kind of selection based evolution can operate.

Of course, natural selection has been a factor in earlier history of the human species; selecting characteristics like skin colour to prevent damage from solar radiation towards the tropics and selecting reduced pigmentation in Northern latitudes.

Otherwise it is language groups and their abilities to cooperate and organise that has clearly been the most important factor in selecting groups or clans that have survived. And this has been about group selection. Some kinship selection has operated but as society has developed and the "kin" group has expanded to become race or nation the influence of selection that may operate only on the individual (the mechanism for selection of genes in neo-Darwinian evolution) has been negated.

The way we think effects many things. It is our capacity to think that gives us the ability to break the tyranny of natural selection. But now we are left with the tyranny of the way we think and its effects on physiology and development. If the way we think effects gene expression, then we must learn to think or even "not think" to enable the organic mechanisms of our bodies to operate, develop, grow and "self organise," naturally without hinderance from ghosts of fear and anxiety and the stress we then suffer. This is essentially what mindfulness is all about. And this is also what philsophy is all about. As Wittgenstien said: "It is about letting the fly out of the bottle."

There is an even bigger question here: Can we train our minds to do more than allow the organism to do more than be naturally healthy? Can we train our minds to train our genes to express characteristics that are "super human?" Or even "super genetic?"

From a systems view we can see that genes are part of a complex set of interactions in cells that enable cells to grow and self repair. Cells are selecting pieces of information from the chromosome library. This information is manipulated by other organelles and in complex biochemical pathways. And this is all regulated by membranes. The master membrane is the cell membrane itself. Communities of cells behave in response to their environment and via epigenetic management of gene expression adapt. Ontogeny proceeds as cellular adaptation is inherited via cell lines. Out of this complexity arises organ structure and cooperation between these specialised communities of cells (organs) enable the organism to behave and so survive. And so we come to the "magic gene" that is the "cause" of consciousness?

And so to the second point: Was there mathematics before man? Does a gene program a sunflower to express the fibonacci series? Or does growth based on simple iterations only have a limited number of options defined by the deep structure of the universe? What is the cause of consciousness? is it a gene or is it, like mathematical principles, built into the deep structure of the universe? One thing is for sure; mathematics is only comprehensible in consciousness.

Best wishes,

M

Norbu