This is the fourth entry on Edward Wilson's "Consilience", the first is Edward O. Wilson: Consilience, the second Edward Wilson and Truth in Science, the third Edward Wilson and Reductionism.
-It has previously been shown how Edward Wilson plans to find a unified theory. Through trust in science, empirical reductionism and synthesis, we can find the given natural algorithms and use them to determine how large and complex systems fundamentally operate. Now, we will delve into the actual science that he thinks is necessary to reach such discoveries.
Definitions:
Epigenetic Rules - "As recognized in biology, epigenetic rules comprise the full range of inherited regularities of development in anatomy, physiology, cognition, and behavior. They are the algorithms of growth and differentiation that create a fully functioning organism."
Prepared Learning - All animals and humans are innately prepared to learn certain behaviors, while being predisposed to avoid others.
- Wilson takes a very interesting and rational method into getting to the root of unified knowledge: before we can try to understand the world and universe around us in a truth-finding way, we must first completely understand our own mind and how it functions within the world.
"Belief in the intrinsic unity of knowledge...rides ultimately on the hypothesis that every mental process has a physical grounding and is consistent with the natural sciences. The mind is supremely important to the consilience program...Everything that we know and can ever know about existence is created there."
-So the first step on the journey to consilience is through understanding the human being and its place.
To understand a complex social system, or any system, we can't start here
But must first come to fully understand this phenomenon:
-This is very similar to Martin Heidegger's proposed journey to the heart of Being. Heidegger believed that there was a Being in Time, like the essence of the world at any particular given time in history. But he thought the only way to come to understand that Being was through its ambassador, the Human Being. So, in this respect, Heidegger and Wilson are taking the same path, understanding fully where we are coming from as a pathway into understanding of the greater goal.
Necessary Steps Towards Consilience
1. The first step in this journey is to disregard any sort of Cartesian Dualism, the idea attributed to Descartes that the mind and the body are in two separate realms. There is no mind floating somewhere in or near you, the mind is a function of your material body.
"Virtually all contemporary scientists and philosophers expert on the subject agree that the mind, which compromises consciousness and rational process, is the brain at work."
(Thus, whatever meaning you think is implied in this picture is most probably wrong)
2. We must have the Positivist trust that science can bring us outside of the cage that our subjective mind seemingly thrusts upon us by nature of our existence. That is, we must believe that discoveries in science are not just discoveries in science in a human mind, but can overcome that limitation.
"The intellectual thrust of modern science and its significance for the consilient world view can be summarized as follows. In the ultimate sense our brain and sensory system evolved as a biological apparatus to preserve and multiply human genes. But they enable us to navigate only through the tiny segment of the physical world whose mastery serves that primal need. Instrumental science has removed that handicap."
So our primal need to survive supplied us with sensory apparatus that could pick up this color spectrum. But through instrumental science, we were able to step outside our own limitations of the colors we can see, and know that there are colors (waves of light) that we can't see but know to exist.
3. Fill the gaps in our understanding. "Complexity theory needs more empirical information. Biology can supply it." Once we can think of an organism as an advanced machine, we only need to perform more and more experiments to find the way it works. More and more discoveries are being made each day.
The Brain and Consciousness
-The brain is thought to be a key to understanding how and why humans function the way they do. It is also one of the last and most difficult problems to be solved by biologists. When Cartesian Dualism was destroyed, along with it went the idea that consciousness was somehow held outside the material of the brain.
The command ship of the brain and the thoughts commanded by it are not free-floating, immaterial ideas. They are grounded in the biology of the brain. So the fact that a man has a small Johnson and therefore needs a Hummer (yes, pun intended) cannot be separated, the want of a Hummer isn't an isolated idea in our mysterious consciousness, but founded in our brain, connected to our body.
-Wilson explains evolutionarily why the brain is shaped how it is and why it functions the way it does. For reasons of protection and easier information passing, a sphere or sphere-like object is ideal. To maximize information passing, the living cells should be string-shaped and be able to receive impulses from other cells, then send out their own signals along cable-like extensions of their bodies.
-Wilson uses an example of a squid to explain the actual material phenomenon of the brain. "Visualize the entire nerve cell as a miniature squid. From its body sprouts a cluster of tentacles (the dendrites). One tentacle (the axon) is much longer than the others, and from its tip it sprouts more tentacles. The message is received on the body and short tentacles of the squid and travels the long tentacle to other squids. The brain comprises the equivalent of one hundred billion squids linked together."
-Once the nature of the brain is found, the algorithms of human behavior can be more precisely defined. Finding the way the individual brain works is necessary to determine how human systems function.
Sociobiology
-Perhaps the most interesting and controversial of his ideas is on the effect that genes and human culture have on each other. They both affect each other necessarily, and though people tend to want to distance genetics from culture as much as possible, it is becoming more and more clear that our genetic makeup predisposes us towards certain cultural patterns. Hopefully it is clear from his own words:
"Genes prescribe epigenetic rules, which are the regularities of sensory perception and mental development that animate and channel the acquisition of culture.
Culture helps to determine which of the prescribing genes survive and multiply from one generation to the next.
Successful new genes alter the epigenetic rules of populations.
The altered epigenetic rules change the direction and effectiveness of the channels of cultural acquisition."
-Inherent in this statement is the idea of Prepared Learning (defined above). Our genes make us more likely to accept certain cultural elements more and some less.
So this parent, no matter how straight he becomes later, has genes that make him more likely to believe in "counter-cultural" ideals, make him more likely to go against the grain, make him more likely to use drugs without feeling shame, make him think that cooperative living is the right way, and so forth. Because, at the time, that cultural path made it very easy to procreate, his genes that prescribed a lean towards certain cultural aspects were passed along to his off-spring:
Now his off-spring happens to show the same cultural habits. He might wear a hippie dress when that is not accepted practice; he too may go against the grain; he too might use drugs thoughtlessly; and he too might get laid easier (despite bad looks) because of this cultural preference.
Think about it, which cultural phenomenon is more likely to promote the passing on of preferential genes?
Dudes at rock shows with blue shirts?
Or guys whose Prepared Learning pushes them towards incessant gaming? (I have a feeling the gamer will get most of his "pleasure" from the same console that provides his gaming) And what type of offspring will they probably have? Though this is also a great example of how culture is fickle and can't be predicted so easily. For this gamer could grow up to make a shit-ton of money, and money can equal hot women (and multiple women) and his seed might get passed to more ladies than our friend in the blue shirt.
-It is in this way that our genes and culture affect each other. There is a give and take of what we are programmed to prefer and what is culturally proficient at the time. It is not that people evolve as quickly as what this may imply, but rather that changes in culture, like changes in environment, have effects on human beings and their reproduction; and likewise, our genes, which incline us towards certain ways, can affect culture and the environment.
"Culture is created by the communal mind, and each mind in turn is the product of the genetically structured human brain. Genes and culture are therefore inseverably linked. But the linkage is flexible, to a degree still mostly unmeasured...The mind grows from birth to death by absorbing parts of the existing culture available to it, with selections guided through epigenetic rules inherited by the individual brain."
To Unified Theory
-So now that we have seen how the brain works and how it affects our behavior and interacts with culture, how do we bring that to the Ionian Enchantment? The answer is that Wilson doesn't fully know because the gaps have not all been filled yet. But generally, once we can understand how the human experience functions, then our role is established and we can take that hugely problematic variable out of the question marks that run ramped through the Unified Theory.
"The human condition is the most important frontier of the natural sciences. Conversely, the material world exposed by the natural sciences is the most important frontier of the social sciences and humanities. The consilience argument can be distilled as follows: The two frontiers are the same."
-Exposing how our brain works and how human systems work is not a different journey from determining how the natural systems function. They are the same process and interlocking journeys. Our unified algorithms for complex systems will necessarily include human involvement in that world.
So how does this happen?
It seems one possible explanation of this phenomenon is that first this happened,
People in this cultural sub-group found it easy to make love. Once they grew up, got a suit and had kids, those kids were more likely to have the same epigenetic tendencies that their parents had.
Once these guys came around, those kids were attracted to the lifestyle and cultural experience that the band and their shows promoted. Not every kid from hippie parents became just like them, culture is strong enough to not make genes determinate, but they were Prepared for such cultural phenomenon more than others.
-If we could determine the specific epigenetic codes that made such a cultural preference, then find out how strong and prevalent in the offspring it is, then find an algorithm that explains groups of like-minded fanatics gathering from x distances, with y amount of communication within the group, and z liklihood of mating with other Phish fans, or something like that, it might be possible to find the True explanation of this system
And using the same techniques within physics and biology, maybe determining the correct algorithms for the growth of specific species and synthesizing, this system
And hopefully, this one
