(This paper was written in 2005)
When we observe organic evolution, the evolution of species is basically dependent on natural selection. The process of natural selection works by mutations which are random aberrations or additions or deletions in the genetic material of a species, which leads to creation of organisms with new genotypes. The beneficial genotypes are naturally selected and the lethal ones are discarded. As this process repeats, speciation occurs.
Now let’s examine how a child learns about smile. (I actually experimented on my cousin when he was a baby boy) An infant should attain the social smile by the age of 2 months. This may be because of the reason that the facial nerve nuclei which give motor supply to the facial muscles mature by that time. When an infant smiles for the first time, it should not be having any information stored in its mind about how and why to smile. We can notice this by trying to stimulate a neonate. No matter in which ever way we try, a neonate normally doesn’t smile. But as it completes an age of about 3-4 weeks (very often and 1.5 months on an average and 2 months at the most in a normal infant) we can notice the smile. The signal which generates the smile might have originated randomly out of the thought process of the infant (It may also be dependent on the way in which the facial nerve path way gets matured and may also depend upon the facilitation of synaptic transmission). One can explain the former by a simple observation that the infants smile very often in the absence of any stimulus. (The frequency and the intensity of this process may be dependent on the rates of neural activity and the rate of progress of maturation in each infant). When the mother sees that her infant is smiling, she starts cuddling it. Mother’s presence is a pleasant stimulus for the infant. And slowly it learns to respond to the mother’s presence by smile. Certain stimuli like tinkling may not invoke any response in the neonate. (They may simply cry because their mind may not understand what the stimulus is). Even in the earlier days of smiling, the infant may not smile to the sensation of tinkling. But once we start reinforcing the pleasant nature of tinkling, the infant starts smiling for tinkling. As more synaptic connections form, the child starts to smile for all the pleasant stimuli. But as the awareness of social behavior develops, the child starts learning when to and when not to smile.
We can analyze one more example of a child learning about fire. The glowing nature of fire generates curiosity in a child and the child tries to touch and learn about it. The warning of the parent intensifies the curiosity and the child starts to find ways to touch the fire. At last it succeeds overcoming the resistance from the parent by discovering a way to reach the fire. (Some thing like observing the time at which the parent is away from the fire or some kind of manipulation by which it could escape the eyes of the parent). Succeed it does but it learns that the fire burns. And it tries to keep away from the fire from next time.
What interested me the most was the starting point in the above two examples. Randomly at some point of time the infant smiles and that trait eventually becomes a beneficial or comforting one and the infant uses this to get cuddled. In the same way, at some point of time a child’s curiosity grows about the fire. The restraining of the parents increases the curiosity and the child starts finding ways to touch/ learn about fire.
This is very similar to the way in which the genes operate. The random mutations create an odd genotype. The random traits created by the neural process initiate urge to explore new actions and if the new actions result in the comfortable or useful results, the new actions are encouraged and further conditioned by other influences, which ultimately lead to sophisticated human behavior. The urge which was created may be the explanation to the process of “enthusiasm”.
The randomness which I stated may not be the pure randomness either in case of mutations or in case of thought process. It may be the mixture of resultant of many orderly systems by virtue of physical laws operating which we other wise can call chaos. The occurrence of mutations or the urge to explore new things may be the resultant of bifurcation which is the characteristic of chaotic systems as we see in Lorenz’s attractor. The evidence for this argument can be provided by the fact that even though the actions resulting out of human thought process are unpredictable, we can see a trend, if at all we were to look at the over all picture. That’s why I think we can classify people as moderate, fanatic, bipolar etc. Even if we take the case of evolution, there is a general trend in the way speciation occurred. And if we compare the organic evolution and the evolution of higher mental functions, it is impossible to predict what happens next based on a set of criteria. Unless or other wise we have a total initial picture of prevailing forces at the starting point, it is impossible to predict anything in these dynamic systems.
Here I would like to add my observation on genetic material, DNA. In 1996 I think, I read a news paper clipping stating that the proceedings for human genome project had been started and secret of life will be revealed by the end of the previous millennium. It is 2004 now and I don’t think that we have not achieved any major break through even after decoding 97% of human DNA. The reason for this I think is because of the following reasons-
Most of the DNA in the chromosomes is in the form of “Dark Bands”, which are something like the dark matter of the universe. We don’t know exactly what the function of this non coding genetic material is. There are some theories and none of them seem to be satisfactory.
There should be some thing wrong with the way what ever we understood about the genetic material. It is highly impossible for the existing length of coding DNA to code information precisely at which place a cell has to arise and at what time and what functions it should carry out. There are more than a billion cells in human body and the known length of DNA can’t code for all of them.
I have some explanation to answer the second point. For example if we trace the path of Axillary artery which arises from the brachio-cephalic trunk, to the small arteries innervating the pulp space of fingers, we can observe a fractal. For that matter, if we observe any artery or vein in the body, they are all fractals. The brachial plexus is one more example of a perfect fractal. By these examples we can think that the DNA doesn’t store precise information about each process of development and metabolism but it only stores information regarding the “trend” which the bodily metabolism has to follow. As the development takes place, the trend is followed, which is modulated by the external influences and other factors like availability of nutrition etc. and finally the complex machine of human body results. The two hit theory of diseases, which is evolving now can give an excellent indirect example for this argument. (This is only an idea of mine. I don’t have information to support this view of mine)
Now let’s see the higher mental functions from a different angle. If we observe the pyramidal tract lesions involving the upper and lower motor neurons, we can observe the following things-
The lesions involving the upper motor neurons cause exaggerated reflexes.
The lesions involving the lower motor neurons cause diminished reflexes.
By this simple example, we can say that the nervous system works in a tier fashion. The lower tier works as a general house keeping mechanism and the upper tier regulates and coordinates the functions of the lower tier. If we extrapolate the above observation in to the computers, we can say that there are two operating systems and the lower one being controlled by the upper. The upper operating system collects the information from the lower; the former analyses, classifies and organizes the collected information and at last it orders the lower operating system to function in a particular way.
One more point I want to specify is that the brain and mind are two separate entities which are interdependent. In simple terms the brain is the hard ware and the mind is the soft ware. Just as we can’t localize the operating system in any particular component of a computer when it is functioning, we can’t localize the mind in the nervous system. It is all pervading. We can explain consciousness as the series of inputs the upper operating system is receiving from the lower continuously.
Here I shall elaborate the idea of “Consciousness”. One can’t define exactly what consciousness is. And I just don’t dare to define it with my limited knowledge. It’s a subjective feeling which we all feel. If we apply this consciousness in broad sense, we can observe this in everything around, not only living but also in non living. It sounds strange but I give a simple example. Let’s observe what happens when we pour water on a rough inclined surface. Naturally the water flows down because of gravity. What I am interested in is the particular way the water takes to reach the bottom. As it is a rough surface, there is a lot of resistance and the water takes a tortuous path. Every time the water stream encounters an obstacle, it changes its path, where it has least resistance and it ultimately reaches the bottom of the inclined surface. On can’t predict the way taken by the water just by gravity alone or by the average resistance offered by the rough inclined surface. We have to know the exact position and the quantity of resistance offered by each obstacle. We have to know the angle at which the water was pour and the exact point at which the water touches the surface. By all these we can tell that the path taken by the water is sensitive to initial conditions.
Let’s examine this from a different angle. Who has told the water to take that particular path? Who guided the water to the least resistance direction? Gravity alone can’t be the answer because gravity is the force which asked the water to flow. Its function was to pull the water down and that’s all. Water possessed its inherent inertia because of which it did choose to flow in that particular path. The surface is the one which offered resistance to the flow of water. By all these, what I mean to stress is that the water also possessed a level of consciousness may be in the form of inertia to choose its path. This sounds funny but it does make lot of sense when we extrapolate this to the process of evolution.
Why the organisms have to evolve first of all? What is the need for the genetic material to mutate? The complex interaction of physical forces may be the reason for this. One type of force offering resistance to other and the later tries to seek methods to over come the former. This is the simplest explanation one can give. After all what is everything including ourselves are made of? Nothing but the leptons and quarks as the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics puts it, when we go to the basics. By the above discussion, we can say that the consciousness is an omnipresent phenomenon and is the basic force which powers the process of evolution.
Let’s now analyze what is intelligence. Just as the consciousness, intelligence also lacks a precise definition and I don’t dare to define it. But there is a correlation between consciousness and intelligence as we observe. We can say that the consciousness leads to intelligence. This I will make clear in the following discussion.
If we think that humans only possess intelligence, we are wrong obviously by the number of examples we see in nature. Sea turtles swim hundreds of kilometers to nest in their mating season and locate their nesting place to the precision of centimeters. Wild hunting herds of dogs and wolves locate the boundaries of their hunting fields vary precisely by the sense of their smell. Ants have the ability to build multistoried and air conditioned forts. The bee hives are stronger than concrete relatively and the reason being the bucky ball structure. (Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded for the scientist who described this particular structure). The social organization in honey bees is an ideal socialistic one. (Hundreds died for the cause of socialism). By all these facts we can conclude that intelligence is not a “higher mental function” as we call it. We are biased in our observation of intelligence, if we think that intelligence is unique to human race. There are countless examples in nature, which out rate the capability of human intelligence. Even plants are no bar, if you were to take in to consideration the prowess of plants like venous fly trap (here I am referring to their ability to camouflage and the ability to digest insects for amino acids), in adapting to the challenging environment.
These points take us to an interesting place. If we look at a different angle it seems that the process of evolution is not hierarchical. What I mean is that just as the physical processes proceed stochastically in all possible directions, the evolution also progressed in all the possible directions only to be limited or modified by the forces opposing the progression. So we can confidently say that no organism is superior to other in any aspect and the apparent superiority is only an illusion created by the complex interaction of physical forces. By this we can confidently state that intelligence is not unique to human race and it is possessed by every living organism in amounts needed for its physical processes to continue unchecked in all possible directions. I think this may explain what is meant by life. (When the consciousness which is omnipresent evolves to intelligence, then we can say that the particular set of things which possessed it can be said to have life)
I would like to simplify the last point in this way. Let us suppose ‘X’ is a set of physical forces progressing freely in all possible directions. ‘Y’ is another set which is opposing the progression of set X in an environment represented by set ‘Z’. ‘Y’ in fact is a superset which has all X primes. (I mean X like things). As we have already stated X possessed consciousness by virtue of the interaction of it with Y and Z and the progression of set X is modulated by both Y and Z. If by some changes in the configuration of set X, if the set X were to progress in some or all directions in spite of the presence of sets Y and Z, we can say that X has “life” and that quality which led X to take over the opposing forces of Y and Z can be said to be intelligence. I take my argument further based on this assumption. (This is a very simple generalization of the concepts of life and intelligence. In reality there may be many more factors operating which may be unknown to the present science. I made this generalization for the sake of argument on intelligence)
Now we shall examine how and why man possessed the ability to “dominate” the every other form of life and environment. The answer is quite simple if we modify the way we look at ourselves. First we should realize that it is we who are analyzing the situation and we ourselves are the subjects in the situation. Obviously there is every possibility that we may be biased. I think the bias is in our proclamation that we are dominating. If we look at a different angle, we are making ourselves comfortable, which indirectly means that we are bringing about the changes both in ourselves and in the environment so that the set of forces which constitute us can progress freely in all possible directions. It is a natural phenomenon. Now the question comes why the other organisms were unable to “dominate”. The first reason may be that they need not to. (I mean they don’t need to bring drastic changes in themselves and in environment as compared to humans in order to let the forces constituting them to progress in all possible directions). The second reason may be that the changes they bring about in themselves and in environment may not be opposing to humans or may be beneficial to the humans. So the other organisms have already attained a certain kind of balance with the sets ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ so that these don’t need to ‘evolve’ more to let the forces constituting them to progress freely in all possible directions. (And moreover the time period at which we are looking at is very short in evolutionary terms so we can’t say with certainty that the other species don’t evolve any more. Again the total initial picture comes in to action here to make any prediction). The third and most important reason may be that the opposing forces against the evolution of primates might be weak or might have been rendered ineffective by some unknown reasons (here I would like to use the example of extinction of dinosaurs), which ultimately led to the current state.
Here I think it is appropriate, if I try to explain one of the loop holes of the theory of organic evolution. One important argument against theory of organic evolution is that how the evolution could have occurred so fast. It is very easy to answer if we consider the fact that any prediction in dynamic systems is highly sensitive to total set of initial conditions. So if we consider the complex interaction of forces as the evolution progressed, the speed of the evolution is not at all ‘abnormal’. One very simple example is this- no matter how hard we try, we can’t bring about any changes in a normal human being who has access to all basic amenities. The moment we put same in a dark cell and we bring about psychological pressure, within a month we can render him insane. When such a drastic change is possible within such a short time, it is possible for the evolution to progress at a good speed considering the factors like physical forces, predation etc. and as I have already stated we just can’t predict anything, if we don’t have a total picture. So we just can’t state that evolution proceeds only through point mutations. The jumping gene hypothesis by Barbara, a Nobel laureate had already proved that the mutations can be brought about by a many number of ways. So I think I am right if we look at the evolution as a complex interaction of sets of physical forces trying to expand in all possible directions.
By all these arguments I conclude that the Intelligence developed just like organic evolution. In fact it progressed hand in hand with it or I can even say that the intelligence provided the drive for organic evolution. Let’s now see how we can extend the above concepts to create the so called “Artificial Intelligence”
The computing speed is developing a very rapid race. Computers have actually become a part of our lives. So much of our daily work is not possible with out computers. In spite of so much of development from the times of vacuum transistor based, room sized computers with a computing power just more than a hand held calculator, to the modern hand-helds and wearables; nobody can dare to say that the computers possessed intelligence or they are superior to any of the living organism. Neither in the near future they will! Even an E. Coli a small coli form bacteria can mutate over the time to counter obnoxious environment, where as even the so called super computer crashes if it were fed bad or unformatted data.
The reason for this is very simple, if we were to compare the life and the computers. Based on the previous discussion, intelligence is an inherent property of life. We examine how intelligence develops, the physical forces constituting set X bring about a configurational change in set Y or Z or also in X which leads to their free expansion in all possible directions. If we look in to computers, what happens is that every new version of a program or a soft ware is loaded with additional algorithms so that it can tackle a more number of or a more number of variants of a particular problem. The fundamental difference is that in life, this ability to integrate new ‘algorithms’ is inherent. By the process of ‘random’ changes in the genetic material which we call mutations lead to a more competent gene pool or by ‘random’ choices which lead to new actions resulting in a more adaptive behavior. The previous two processes are nothing but the creation and integration of new algorithms in to the system. What is happening in case of computers is that the process of creation and integration of new algorithms is in the hands of humans, by which, it should be sensible to think that the computers are just an extensions or reflections of human intelligence. If computers were to possess intelligence, they should possess the ability make random choices, which I call dumbness. (In strictest sense a random choice is a dumb one because it is not based on any logic). So just intelligence is not enough to mimic life… you need dumbness too.
Let’s see how the so called dumbness is not so dumb! Some days back, I was making a power point presentation for one of my seminar. For the slide transition, I selected the option, random slide transition. Then I wanted to know if at all the transitions are really random. I started noting down the transitions. Interesting thing is that the transition was random for small number of attempts. But when I tried for a very large number of attempts in a single presentation, the same random sequence, which operated first, cycled again. Then I started searching literature on net to find if there is any algorithm which produces an infinite number of random choices. I was amazed to know that scientists make use of natural random phenomenon like the bouncing of the ping pong balls and radio active decay to achieve randomization.
Then I started asking my friends to count random numbers. When I eliminated the bias (due to the way people learnt counting numbers… i.e. 123456789…. Etc. all the test subjects were able to achieve real randomization)
One day in one of my bed side class in the hospital, a professor of mine told me that when no etiology is established, the Travelers diarrhea is to be treated empirically for Giardia infection. What struck my mind was if I build a computer which has an algorithm to manage various diseases and if the computer encounters same type of problem i.e. no test or sign reveled the etiology, how will it resort to empirical treatment?
In a simple way, if I tell you something in a language which you don’t know and I ask you to tell me if what ever I told you is right or wrong, how will you judge; supposing you don’t have any other choice other than answering and you have only two choices to make i.e. right or wrong… may be you will answer based on your random choice. (Let’s say you did inky, pinky, ponky… and you got your random choice) how can we describe this type of ability. Arbitrarily I call it dumbness. (As having knowledge about something is intelligence… in this case the judgment was given with out having knowledge… hence I named it dumbness)
I simulated the same kind of situation in a computer by putting scratches on a CD and I tried to run. The computer became irresponsive. (This happens almost daily to all of us. When a computer hangs… most of the time, it’s due to the reason that computer is unable to understand what it has been dealing with and it is unable to make a decision as it doesn’t possess an algorithm to tackle what it doesn’t understand)
My point of view is that we have been making computers intelligent… but we forgot to teach them dumbness!! What I mean is that if we incorporate the ability to make a random choice for passing judgment on things not understood and feeding back the results of the judgment made, in to the memory; based on which new algorithms are created to encounter the new situations… would lead to evolution of computers on their own at some point of time.
I think the above logic can explain the higher mental functions of humans… i.e. the emotions. [What I feel is that emotions are the random choices made for a particular situation, which in turn are modified by the past experiences… I did some experiments on the psyche of some of my friends and I came to this conclusion. Hope is the best example to explain this. Even though ‘hope’ always has the shades of previous experiences, we tend to resort to it when all the logic fails to asses the outcome of a process. And most of the time the choices generated by hope factor reveal avenues to success. Based on the assumption that intelligence is absolute logic, ‘hope’ which is the key to many a success fails to fall under this definition, in which case it is dumb! So success is achieved not only by intelligence, but also by dumbness.
1. All invertebrates have poorly developed eyes or compound eyes, but all the vertebrates have eyes very similar to our own, with one exception. If we consider the highest form of animal, we usually say, “Here we are!”, but if we take a less prejudiced point of view and restrict ourselves to the invertebrates, so that we cannot include ourselves, and ask what is the highest invertebrate animal, most zoologists agree that the octopus is the highest animal! It is very interesting that, besides the development of its brain and its reactions so on, which are rather good for an invertebrate, it has also developed, independently, a different eye. It is not a compound eye or an eye spot but it has a cornea, it has lids, it has an iris, it has a lens, it has two regions of water, it has a retina behind. It is essentially same as the eye of the vertebrates! It is a remarkable example of coincidence in evolution where the nature has twice discovered the same solution to a problem, with one single improvement. In octopus it also turns out, amazingly, that the retina is a piece of the brain that has come out in the same way in its embryonic development as it is true for vertebrates, but the interesting thing which is different is that the cells which are sensitive to light are on the inside, and the cells which do the calculation are in back of them, rather than “inside out”, as in our eye. So we see at last, that there is no good reason for its being “inside out”, as in our eye (The rods and cones are in the deepest layer the ten layers of the retina above which are the other cells which form an inter connecting network which process the information and relay the visual information to brain through optic nerve). So we see, at least, that there is no good reason for its being inside out. The other time nature tried it, she got it straightened out!
2. Now let’s look at the compound eye of the horseshoe crab, which is made of around a thousand ommatidia. These ommatidia are very simple ones which have a light receiving mechanism at one end and the nerve fiber sensing the perception running out from the other end. Each nerve fiber has got connections with the surrounding ones although this network is not as dense as it is in humans and this gives us a chance to study a simpler example.
When we analyze the results of the experiments which have been done by putting fine electrodes into the optic nerve of the horseshoe crab, and shining light on only one of the ommatidia, which is easy to do with lenses. If we turn a light on at some instant t0, and measure the electric pulses that come out, we find out that there is a slight delay and then a rapid series of electrical discharges which gradually slow down to a uniform rate and when light goes out, the discharge stops. Now it is very interesting that if, while our amplifier is connected to the same nerve fiber, we shine light on a different ommatidium nothing happens; no signal.
Now we do another experiment; we shine the light on the original ommatidium and get the same response, but if we now turn light on another nearby as well, the pulses are interrupted briefly and then run at a much lower rate. The rate of one is inhibited by the impulses which are coming out of the other! In other words, each nerve fiber carries information from one ommatidium, but the amount that it carries is inhibited by the signals from the others. So, for example, if the whole eye is more or less uniformly illuminated, the information coming from any one ommatidia will be relatively weak, because it is inhibited by so many. In fact the inhibition is additive- if we shine light on several nearby ommatidia the inhibition is very great. The inhibition is greater when the ommatidia are closer, and if the ommatidia are far enough away from one another, inhibition is practically zero. So it is additive and depends on the distance; here is a first example of information from different parts of the eye being combined in the eye it self. We can see perhaps, if we think about it awhile, that it is a device to enhance contrast at the edges of objects, because if a part of the scene is light and a part is black, then the ommatidia in the lighted area give impulses that are inhibited by all the other light in the neighborhood, but there are not as many of the, since some are black; the net signal is therefore stronger. The crab will see an enhancement of the contour. For a creature which lives in the bed of water bodies, it is sensible to figure out that the sense of differentiating contour is most important than anything for its survival considering the amount of light available in that atmosphere.
3. Like a film camera, a camcorder "sees" the world through lenses. In a film camera, the lenses serve to focus the light from a scene onto film treated with chemicals that have a controlled reaction to light. In this way, camera film records the scene in front of it: It picks up greater amounts of light from brighter parts of the scene, and lower amounts of light from darker parts of the scene. The lens in a camcorder also serves to focus light, but instead of focusing it onto film, it shines the light onto a small semiconductor image sensor. This sensor, a charge-coupled device (CCD), measures light with a half-inch (about 1 cm) panel of 300,000 to 500,000 tiny light-sensitive diodes called photosites. Each photosite measures the amount of light (photons) that hits a particular point, and translates this information into electrons (electrical charges): A brighter image is represented by a higher electrical charge, and a darker image is represented by a lower electrical charge. Just as an artist sketches a scene by contrasting dark areas with light areas, a CCD creates a video picture by recording light intensity. During playback, this information directs the intensity of a television's electron beam as it passes over the screen. It is like numerous ommatidia collecting visual information. What is interesting is that when the light intensity is low, the micro processor in the camcorder alters the amount of electric charge sensed by each diode in such way that the gradient of charge increases between the lighter and darker areas exactly in the same way as does the ommatidia of the crab, to increase the contrast of the image which we discussed previously!
4. One more striking example which illustrates how the modern technology mimics the nature is the observation related to the vision of the frog. There are five types of responses coinciding with the five types of optic nerve fibers of the frog. They are- sustained edge detection, convex edge detection, changing contrast detection, dimming detection, darkness detection. The physiology of these responses is reflected in the mechanism of working of gadgets like motion detectors, auto focusing mechanism of digital cameras, contrast enhancement in CCD based devices, picture enhancers of TV sets and automatic switching devices for head lights or street lights respectively. It is surprising that the modern technology unknowingly imitated the nature to a great level with little modifications.
5. My argument becomes far more interesting if we extrapolate the observation ‘1’ to the others. We can say that nature is rediscovering its own solutions to same problems. I mean, if we assume that my hypothesis is true and evolution is ever progressing (stochastic expansion of physical forces in every possible direction leading to dynamic interactions creating clusters, to conserve energy…) and if we annul our prejudice of we making something happen and agree that nature (super set ‘Z’ constituting all the physical forces) is doing its job quietly, it is very much rational why this coincidence (technology mimicking nature exactly) should take place!
6. This discussion affirms another argument that ‘dumbness’ is important to mimic human intelligence, as if we are to imitate something, what we create should have more or less everything what we are trying to imitate has, may be in a different configuration! Assuming that the organic evolution is the standard bearer for the development of psyche, the randomness, which runs the machinery through mutations, should be the key to intelligence. And randomness is ‘dumb’ because it is not based on logic. Even if we view randomness of mutations which is a resultant of so many physical forces acting in different directions so that a definitive logic can’t be derived and which is very sensitive to initial conditions, we are viewing at a non linear system where only a trend can be observed but the future cant be predicted without having the total initial picture. In the same way, psyche is a non linear system as it is developed from the same fundamental structure. That is why we see fractals in the structure and function of every life form.
7. The feed back phenomenon which I mentioned at the beginning is a reflection of NOT gate of Boolean logic and it is the fundamental gate of any electronic circuit. Hence it is obvious why the discovery of the diode (realizes NOT gate) was the starting point in the development of modern technology. When we observe physiology of any organ system, it fundamentally works by feed back systems or the biological switches. One more example of technology mimicking nature!
8. By all these examples we can understand that we have already materialized all the basic machinery needed to mimic human psyche. We should be implementing wrong methodology to integrate all the available ‘stuff’ otherwise which we should have been successful. This might be the resultant of the way we learned about brain by slicing it or by trying to find out which region is active when some function is being carried out. This should be wrong if we see my own experience of learning how computer works. I never had any formal training. I started experimenting with my computer and I applied a little commonsense to analyze every response I got for every particular maneuver. The maneuver selection was initially random and I started organizing bits and pieces of data to realize some particular function. This process again generated some more random information which I memorized and it came to my help when I am stuck with something. As the time passed, this information also helped me to understand the hard ware and now I am in a position to assemble any sort of configuration and I am also familiar with most of the routinely used software. In the same way if we were to understand the psyche, we should try to understand the psychological phenomenon. So it is sensible to establish logic for emotions and behavior than to slice up brain. We can’t understand how brain works by slicing it as we interrupt the delicate neural network and we can’t systematically open it as we don’t even know where the screws are! So interpreting the logic behind various psychological phenomenon should be the holistic way of learning human intelligence.
9. Plants and animals evolve in response to their environment and to threats such as predators, disease, and competing species. Artificial life, developed primarily by Chris Langton at the University of Michigan in the 1980s, allows data to evolve within a computer simulation. As in evolution, data that have the strongest set of attributes thrive, while incomplete or lesser data die. A practical application of artificial life would be to model the long-term growth of a business. A fledgling company could be allowed to evolve in the confines of a computerized simulation of the marketplace. Weaknesses in the company's plans would become evident when certain factors are introduced into the business model, similar to disease or predators in the real world. Changes could subsequently be made to the basic structure of the business model to help strengthen the business's resistance to these outside factors. As a result, better business plans could be developed without risk.
10. It is ostensible that the process of understanding psyche involves various fields of science and philosophy and we make no apologies for making these excursions in to other fields, because the separation of fields is merely a human convenience, and an unnatural thing. Nature is not interested in our separations, and many of the interesting phenomena bridge the gaps between fields; to put it in the words of Feynman. What seemed to be an utterly philosophical derivation has turned in to a pretty provable one with the observations on visual perception. I am supremely confident that my hypothesis can become a ‘theory of everything’ of biology, if it is given right exposure and treatment. And I feel that the randomness should be the key to make this happen.
Conclusions:-
Consciousness is omnipresent.
Intelligence is a property of life.
When consciousness matures to intelligence, it leads to life.
The process of organic evolution and evolution of intelligence run hand in hand and in fact, evolution of intelligence is the driving force for organic evolution.
Dumbness is the driving force for evolution of intelligence.
We are biased by classifying intelligence as the higher mental function.
No organism is superior to another. It is all a matter of free progression of physical forces.
The evolution of man is a vectorial sum of operating physical forces.
Every thing is a part of nature including man. So man can never say that he can conquer nature. The whole confusion about understanding intelligence lies in the argument of superiority of human kind which is attributable to the way science was developed. Our science developed from the concept of measurement which means comparison. For comparison one needs at least two different things. There by we started differentiating everything based on our convenience, which is unnatural as in the reality everything is made of the same fundamental particles i.e. the leptons and quarks. More over the configuration of any object is not constant as everything is in a state of dynamic equilibrium when we look at the sub atomic or deeper level. And any type of measurement can not yield correct results as shown by the uncertainty principle.
For example if I am a primitive human being and I don’t know any thing about anything and I am not even genetically conditioned; how do I understand anything? I am given an object… say… a glass… I think I will start seeing at and I look at my self. I notice that there is a difference. Then I call that property color and I say that glass is in a different color than I. As I see more colors, I start naming them... white, black etc. It is something like a game which is being played in front of me. I don’t know the rules and I don’t know who is playing. I only see that there are 64 blocks in two colors and 31 objects which are moving on those 64 blocks. I observe the movement of the objects and I try to make laws on their movement. Every time my law fails I create a new law which will fore tell the movement of the objects. Even after making laws for each and every object, my laws fail at times. Then I finally understand that I am also an object and I am also moving on the blocks and I finally understand that this is the game of Chess. So unless we have a holistic view of the locus standi, we are bound to make wrong predictions. As we get the bigger picture, our predictions go wrong and we modify previous laws. Shall we call it evolution of science running hand in hand with psychological evolution?!!
So by all these arguments we can say that the basic problem is with our understanding. Let’s stop understanding and start “over standing”. I mean let us look at an angle which covers all the aspects of the problem (the holistic view) instead of separating everything based on our convenience. Nature does not make distinctions like physics, chemistry etc. All it knows is to follow its own nature!!
Nothing is predictable in dynamic systems with out taking in to account the total initial picture in to account. This very well applies to biological systems as they are nothing but a complex interaction of physical forces.
Drawbacks:-
My whole argument is based on theory of organic evolution. So the loop holes of that theory are inherent in my argument.
I don’t have a material evidence to corroborate my argument.
Probable solutions:-
The loop holes of theory of organic evolution may be corrected by the argument that the evolution of intelligence runs hand in hand with organic evolution. This actually opens up solutions to various unanswered questions.
As already stated we may be wrong at the way we understood things.
We don’t have the actual picture of total initial conditions.
References:
- The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
- Lectures on Physics by Feynman (Vol. 1,2,3)
- Basic Physics by Resnick & Halliday
- Ancient Wisdom, Science and Health By B.M.Hegde
- Evolution by Rooth Moore
- Essential Paediatrics by O.P.Ghai
- Illustrated Reviews of Biochemistry by Pamela & Richard
- Review of Medical Physiology by William.F.Ganong
- Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking By Barbara Bates
- Theory of Intelligence by Edgar Escultura
- Theory of Learning by Edgar Escultura
- Infinite Counter Examples to Fermat’s Last Theorem by Edgar Escultura
- Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine
- Text Book of Physiology by Guyton
- Physiology by Samson Rite
- North American Clinics of Neurology
- Automata Theory by Harvey P Newquist
- Neural Networks by Ojvind Bernander
- Grey’s Text Book of Anatomy
- Review of Pharmacology by Rang, Ritter & Dale
- Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra
- “Journal of Cognitive Science Society”
- www.howstuffworks.com
- “Science”
- “Nature”
- “British Medical Journal”
