Chapter 4

EVOLUTION

      In this section, I wish to give an overview of the evolution of humankind, intelligence, language, and technology.  By introducing this from an evolutionary perspective, it is my hope to show how language and technology are vital to human intelligence and how the three are ultimately intertwined and inseparable from the environment within which they evolve.

      The theory of evolution is credited to Darwin.  While it was simultaneously discovered by Wallace, Darwin published his findings first and the credit went to him.  The theory is as follows: First, a random mutation occurs in the genetic structure of an organism.  This mutation produces a characteristic that is unique to that individual.  Mutations occur within a species frequently, however most of the characteristics acquired through mutation do not survive.  On occasions, however, the special characteristic aids the individual's survival and the characteristic gets passed on to its offspring.  Eventually the characteristic spreads throughout the entire species, and the species evolves.

      At this point I wish to reintroduce the word stressor as a force behind evolution.  When a majority of organisms within a species fall out of equilibrium due to lack of food or a rise in predation (an increase in stressors), one solution is to evolve into a species that is more capable of returning to equilibrium, and thus become more adaptable to the environment.  The lion, commonly referred to as the king of the jungle, is known to lay around most of the day.  There is very little in the environment that disturbs its equilibrium.  With each evolutionary advance, an increase in the number of stressors to the neighboring species also occurs, thus supporting their likelihood of further evolution.

      Darwin (1872) refers to this as "natural selection" or "survival of the fittest."  The "fittest" characteristics and species survive, while the unfit parish.  Margulis and Sagan (1986) point out that at the microcosmic level, evolution more accurately resembles networking and symbiosis rather than competition as Darwin's theory suggests.  In fact, "ten percent of our own dry body weight consists of bacteria, some of which, although they are not congenital parts of our bodies, we can't live without" ( Margulis and Sagan, 1986, p. 19).  The mitochondria is a microorganism with its own DNA that lives in nearly every nucleated cell.  It is responsible for the production of energy that the cell needs to survive.  Without it, every nucleated cell would parish (Margulis and Sagan, 1986).

      Perhaps evolution is symbiotic networking on the microcosmic level, however, on the macrocosmic level, with the play between predator and prey and the competition for food, Survival of the Fittest seems a more accurate description.  Nonetheless, evolution is a dynamic interplay between a species and its environment; an environment that contains both nonliving matter and other species that are also involved in a dynamic interplay with their environment.  The following is a description of the evolutionary process that led to intelligence.

      I define intelligence here as the ability to learn.  While it could be argued (and will be in a later section of this paper) that the evolutionary process itself is a type of learning, I want to limit this discussion of intelligence to the subjective experience of the individual of the species.  Prior to this intelligence, behavior was either random (as in the random mutations that drive evolution) or instinctual (based on unalterable chemical reaction).

      Five elements, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulphur, reacting with a sixth element, carbon, make up 99% of the dry weight in all life (Margulis and Sagan, 1986).  Amino acids and nucleotides that make up the proteins and DNA structures are made of these six elements.  Proteins form to create cells and tissue based on the genetic coding in the DNA of the species.  The genetic code is made up of only four different molecules that can be arranged in infinite variations and create the multitude of life that we witness on the planet.  Margulis and Sagan (1986) compare the genetic code to the common universal language of builders of the Tower of Babel.

      The first life form known to exist on earth is bacteria, dating back as far as four billion years (Margulis and Sagan, 1986).  Early bacteria received energy through photosynthesis of the sun's energy.  Bacteria can divide at a rate of once every twenty minutes.  At this rate, in four days, a single bacteria can produce more individual bacteria than the number of protons physicists estimate to exist in the known universe (Margulis and Sagan, 1986).  At such a rapid rate of division, bacteria can mutate and produce new species very rapidly.  Each new variation of bacteria could improve the suvivability of the previous variation.  Soon the bacteria would be able to survive off of more than just the sun's energy such as raw minerals of the earth.  The bacteria were then able to inhabit more of the planet (Margulis and Sagan, 1986). 

      As cells mutated they were able to grow more complex, nuclei formed, more complex metabolic pathways were produced, and characteristics like the flagellum evolved, which allowed for mobility.  The first sex occurred in a primitive fashion, according to Margulis and Sagan (1986), when there was a "recombination of genes from more than one source" (p. 85).  In this case, two cells merged into one (quite the opposite of cellular division).  One reason this happens is a lack of food in the environment.  To survive, cellular organisms would ingest each other and become one organism (Margulis and Sagan, 1991).  Sex allows a greater variety of characteristics to be shared and increases the rate of evolution and the chance of survival.  The rate of change in characteristics is superior through recombination compared to that of random mutation alone (Margulis and Sagan, 1986).

      About 1,400 million years ago, cells began to live within communities (Margulis and Sagan, 1986).  This symbiosis increased the possibility of survival.  Cells could perform specialized tasks that would increase mobility and the capturing of food.  In order for this colony of cells to become a single organism the separate DNA of the various cells would have to evolve into one genetic code that creates the whole organism.  My research did not turn up an answer as to how this happens.  It probably has something to do with the recombination of genes within the colony.  This single organism would also need a way to reproduce, since simple cell division would not work for the reproduction of a multicellular organism.  Sex would have had to evolve to what we know it to be today.

      A multicellular organism would need to maintain a balance within the system.  A network of communication would be necessary.  In the human soma, as mentioned earlier, a cancerous cell divides out of control when it ceases to maintain communication with the rest of the organism.  Pert (1990), describes neuropeptides and their receptors, which are found on cells all over the body, as such an information network.  Pert (1990) explains, "the identical molecular components for information flow are conserved throughout evolution" (p. 156). 

      The nerve cell is a specialized cell that can transmit information to other nerve cells very rapidly (Edelman, 1991).  Nerve cells are connected through long arms called axons.  The axons connect to the body of another nerve cell or on one of its many branches called a dendrite through what is called a synapse.  A neurotransmitter crosses the synapse from the axon of one nerve cell to the dendrite of another.  This triggers an electric impulse that shoots across the nerve cell to another axon where a chemical message can be sent to another cell.  Through a long chain of neurons, messages can be sent quickly from one end of an organism to the other (Edelman, 1991).  It is this network of neurons that made up the first nervous systems and, according to a materialist perspective, is what is typically called mind (Dennett, 1991).

      Neurons connect to muscle tissue.  An impulse through the nervous system would trigger movement (behavior) of the muscle tissue.  Instinctual behavior is a set path for impulses along the nervous system.  Learned behavior occurs when the path for impulses varies according to the individual's needs.  It is this learned behavior that I refer to as intelligence.

      A simple example of learning occurs in sea slug called Aplysia.  The aplysia only has about ten thousand nerve cells in its entire body.  When researchers poke it a one point, its gills contract.  This is an instinctual behavior designed to prevent the gills from being torn off by a passing fish (McCrone, 1991).  If the poking is persistent, the gills cease to contract.  Is this learning? Perhaps not, however, if the poking is paired with a flash of light, eventually, the gills would contract to just the flash of light (McCrone, 1991).  This is the same learning discovered by Pavlov which he called conditioned response.

      Bateson (1972) called this kind of learning, proto-learning or learning I.  Deutro-learning, or learning II, is a change in the process of learning I.  The organism learns how to learn and can thus learn quicker or in a different manner in future situations.  The immune system shows evidence of learning I, but not learning II.  If the immune system showed signs of learning II, it would be capable of learning antigens faster or in a more efficient manner with each successive attack.  Learning II occurs in humans and some mammals (Bateson, 1972).

      Learning III is a change in the process of learning II.  Bateson (1972) notes that, "learning III is likely to be difficult and rare even in human beings" (p. 301).  He suggests that learning III is what occurs during psychotherapy or religious conversions when there occurs a "profound reorganization of character" (p. 301).  Zen koans such as the statement, "what is the sound of one hand clapping," are nonsensical statements designed to "trigger enlightenment" as they help Zen students to realize the limits of the thought process, stop their thinking, and "make the student ready for the nonverbal experience of reality" (Capra, 1975, p. 35).  Koan's present what Bateson (1972) calls a double bind, or "unresolvable sequences of experiences" (p. 206).  Double binds can lead to learning III (if not schizophrenia).  More on Learning III will be discussed in a later section.

      There are two other types of learning mentioned by Bateson, learning zero and learning IV.  Learning zero is where no learning occurs within the individual.  This would occur in a species that behaves purely instinctively.  Learning IV is a change in the process of learning III.  Bateson (1972) says it "probably does not occur in any adult living organism on this earth" (p. 293).  Learning IV and its possible relationship with learning zero will be discussed again in a later section of this paper.

      As the evolutionary process continued, sensory organs developed to receive information that would help the organism survive.  The different sensory organs gave rise to the channels of perception mentioned earlier.  Through these channels of perception stressors are received that aid the organism in action that increases its survival.  The brain evolved to become the central processing center for the nervous system (which includes sensory organs).  The fish was the first organism with a spinal cord to enclose and protect the nervous system (Russell, 1989).

      Eventually species evolved to breath air and walk on land.  Reptiles and then mammals appeared.  Humans evolved from a species of primate that took to the trees.  This primate evolved hands that allowed it to grasp and swing from branches.  Eventually it came out of the trees, walked upright and became the ancestor of modern humans (McCrone, 1991).

      Two types of reproductive strategies have evolved that assist survival, r type and K type (McCrone, 1991).  The r type involves giving birth to many offspring with little or no parental care.  The offspring are left to fend for themselves.  Many parish and a few survive.  The K type involves having very few offspring and longer periods of parental care.  K type strategy requires greater social organization and greater intelligence.  The longer periods of care also allow for the formation of greater intelligence.  The human species is a K type breeder (McCrone, 1991).  Greater social organization requires better communication between the individuals within the community and thus sets the stage for the evolution of language.

      Darwin (1872) writes of the origin of language, "I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own distinctive cries, aided by signs and gestures" (p. 463).  Sound provided two purposes for early humans, to produce a stress on another, thus producing a certain response in the other, and to release emotional tension.

      McCrone (1991) suggests, "the simplest [language] is the alarm call--the instinctive or wired-in reaction to danger that automatically alerts the whole group. . . . Alarm calls are both automatically triggered and automatically understood" (p. 145).  To tie this back to the concept of a stressor, the automatic call becomes a stressor that disturbs the equilibrium of the group producing some action, such as running.  Through action, equilibrium is restored.

      According to McCrone (1991), some cries are instinctive cries "where an animal gives vent to its inner feelings" (p. 146).  In such a case, the cry would be the result of a stressor and the cry itself restores equilibrium.  The receiver of such a cry, in contrast to the automatic response, may not understand the reason for the cry and require "a certain intelligence" to interpret it.  Eventually this could evolve to the ability to purposefully send calls to trigger intentional and learned responses in the receiver.  Learning to refine various sounds to invoke specific responses led to intricate language (McCrone, 1991).

      A third function that sound serves in modern humans is to smooth emotional tension due to a build up of stressors.  Recall the saying, "music calms the savage beast"? Here, the individual finds equilibrium within the field of sound.

      In studying ancient tools, anthropologist Montagu (as cited in Trotter, 1975) argues that speech must have originated in the process of making tools.  Jaynes (1976) disagrees with this.  He shows how tool making can evolve without language.  In fact, he suggests that language could hinder the process of transmission of ideas through imitation.  Jaynes (1976) argues "that it is almost impossible to describe chipping flints into choppers in language" (p. 130).  He goes on saying that language developed when tribes were forced into nomadic life styles by drastic changes in the climate during the ice ages.  Language helped early humans to adapt to a variety of living conditions.

      Jaynes (1976) writes, "the first real elements of speech were the final sounds of intentional calls differentiating in intensity" (p. 132).  The varying intensity evolved into modifiers.  The modifiers could then be separated from the calls they modify and then modify actions.  Tools making could then be refined with words such as "sharper" (Jaynes, 1976).  By refining tool making the quality of life and survivability that tools provided would increase.

      Jaynes (1976) suggests that words allow people to remember what they are doing by repeating over and over in their minds what it was they were doing.  Without words, "a Middle Pleistocene man would forget what he was doing" (p. 134).  The next logical step, Jaynes (1976) argues, is the naming of things or the invention of nouns.  McCrone (1991) writes that by naming things, people could begin to share their memories: "If a chimp wanted to tell you about a boat, it would have to drag you within sight of the vessel and start stabbing its finger at it.  A human just has to say the word and the listener's mind provides the rest" (p. 155).

      Names were created as "a carry-over of nouns into names for individual persons" (Jaynes, 1976, p. 136).  This naming of persons intensifies the relationship.  Shortly thereafter would come the word "I" as people learned to name themselves (Jaynes, 1976).

      Jaynes (1976) shows that in early writing, such as The lliad and The Old Testament, there is no evidence of the word "I" or consciousness.  (I'd like to point out that many authors seem to use the words consciousness and self-awareness interchangeably.  It is my belief that they are two separate things.  Consciousness is awareness.  Self-awareness is awareness of ones self defined by sensory input and ego boundaries.  This is a discussion for another paper.  For now, when an author doesn't make such a distinction, I will.)  Evidence of self-awareness does occur in later writing such as the Odyssey and The New Testament.  Jaynes (1976) concludes that early humanity was not conscious (self-aware).  He argues that consciousness (self-awareness) occurred during the second millennium B.C.  when great disasters took place that forced people out of their habitual ways of existence.  By becoming conscious (self-aware), an individual could internalize one's self and play out scenarios within their imaginations, thus learning ways to increase their survival.  When social order broke down due to environmental crisis or an invasion, consciousness (self-awareness) became necessary for survival (Jaynes, 1976).

      According to Jaynes's theory (1976), earlier humans lived primarily as automations according to rules that were passed down through a hierarchy by those closer to the "gods."  Jaynes's theory is highly controversial as it challenges much of history.  Some say that he "is a dilettante who ranges over many fields in which he lacks expertise, picking and choosing facts that can be woven into his wooly hypothesis" (Keen, 1977. p. 67).  Nonetheless, self-awareness must have evolved at some point, possibly related to the word "I."  Self-awareness gave individuals control over their own actions (Jaynes, 1976).

      There are some negative aspects of self-awareness.  Fromm (1968) writes, "the price man pays for consciousness is insecurity" (p. 62).  Along with the ability to control one's own actions comes the insecurity of never knowing if one's actions will result in failure.  Loneliness can occur; with self-awareness also comes awareness of the separation from other.  Fromm (1968) goes on to say that humans need "to have a frame of orientation which permits [us] to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for consistent action" in order to counteract the insecurity and loneliness (p. 63).  Without this we will tend to go insane.  This frame of orientation is called a paradigm.

      The term paradigm came from the Greek word paradeigma which means pattern.  It was originally used to mean "a conceptual framework shared by a community of scientists and providing them with model problems and solutions" (Capra, 1988, p. 22).  Eventually it spread to outside the scientific community and took on a very broad meaning.  Capra (1988) refers to paradigm as, "the totality of thoughts, perceptions, and values that form a particular vision of reality, a vision that is the basis of the way a society organizes itself" (p. 22).

      Using Capra's definition, I'd like to suggest that if an individual is viewed as a society of the microorganisms, cells, and tissues that make up its structure, then the thoughts, perceptions, and values that form the individual's particular vision of reality through which they organize theirself can also be considered a paradigm specific to that individual alone.  If a species as a whole is viewed as a society then the thoughts, perceptions, and values that form the vision of reality specific to that species could be considered a paradigm even if those thoughts, perceptions, and values are instinctively determined.  In summary, we have an instinctual model of reality (paradigm), an individual paradigm, and a social paradigm.  This is similar to Freud's id, ego, and superego.

      Two paradigms with no link or apparent link between them are called mutually exclusive paradigms (Nelson, 1986).  When two mutually exclusive paradigms come into contact, there is tension (stress) as the two paradigms compete for mind-space.  Here is the link between language and stress.  Language creates self-awareness and insecurity; these two create the desire for a frame of orientation known as a paradigm.  Paradigms can be molded by language and shared with others through language.  Mutually exclusive paradigms create stress.  Examples of some commonly percieved mutually exclusive paradigms are, Christianity's creationism versus Darwin's theory of evolution, Cartesianism versus quantum physics and Einstein's theory of relativity, and capitalism versus communism.

      Here I hope to give an understanding of how learning and language can create the mind-body split.  The following story illustrates that learning occurs by imitating elders and/or peers:

A well-documented case of how skill can be started and then spread is that of a monkey troop in the snowy north of Japan.  Tourists would throw slices of raw potato on the sandy ground for the monkeys, who had to brush the dirt off the potato before eating it.  One female--a monkey "genius"-- discovered that by scooping up a handful of potato and sand and dunking it into the near-by sea, she could wash the sand away.  Before long this potato washing had spread to the young monkeys in the troop who had noticed what she was doing, the older monkeys did not pay attention and never learned the trick.  (McCrone, 1991, p. 42)

Learning from elders and peers, combined with the problem associated with self awareness set the stage for a mind-body split.  It is likely that an individual, with their insecurity accrued through self-awareness, will turn to an elder or peers for guidance.  If this elder uses language in such a way that objectifys the other and commands their behavior (third-person perception and communication), it could draw the individual away from their internal experiences.  The stressors associated with insecurity and desire to learn from elders will distract from reacting to the stressors of fulfilling the body's need to return to equilibrium.  Disease may set in.

      Language, according to Pinkler (1994), evolves.  He gives the example of the word orange that evolved from the Spanish word, noranjo.  In using this word in sentence structures, "a noranjo" eventually became "an oranjo."  He refers to this as word boundaries.  He states that, "All speech is illusion.... We simply hallucinate word boundaries when we reach the edge of a stretch of sound that matches some entry in our mental dictionary" (Pinkler, 1994, p. 159-160).  This can allow speech to evolve as word boundaries change, words take on new meaning, and are interchanged in sentence structure.  At some point in the history of humanity, words like you and should evolved into one sentence structure and created a third-person perspective.  A further interesting study could be investigating when certain diseases where first recorded and the language of the culture at the time.

      To advance my discussion on evolution, I'd like to introduce a relatively new concept, that of a meme.  The word meme was coined by Dawkins (as cited in Dennett, 1991) to mean a small unit of cultural transmission.  He coined it to sound like gene, a small unit of biological transmission that is the driving force behind evolution.  Memes, like genes, are subjected to the same laws of evolution, survival of the fittest, and reproduction.  However, memes reproduce by being being passed from one mind to the next.  The fittest memes will survive, evolve, and provide a foundation for society and for future memes to evolve (Dennett, 1991).

      Examples of memes are, an escape route a potential prey uses to escape from a predator.  This meme will survive if it is successful and if it gets passed to another.  Language is a meme.  Pinkler (1994) argues that the biological base for language is instinctual; the actual language an individual speaks is learned (passed from one mind to the next).  Human-made fire is a meme; so is the wheel, a stone tool, agriculture, and walls that enclose and protect a city.  Mathematics is a meme, as is Darwin's theory of evolution, and Beethoven's fifth symphony.  The Cartesian paradigm is a meme and so too is quantum physics.  The written word, the telephone, the personal computer, and the internet are all memes.  This paper is no more than a composite of memes that I have collected from the minds of others through the written word.  In my mind, I synthesized and recombined the memes, and through the written word, I share them with you.

      The significance of memes is that they shape our culture, behavior and beliefs.  They shape our paradigms.  Paradigms in turn, are memes.  Memes as well as paradigms can be mutually exclusive.  Mutually exclusive memes that appear within the same mind space will lead to confusion within the individual as a "contrary" is created in the information that person lives by.  Mental disorders such as schizophrenia, are the result of this (Bateson, 1972).

      Some memes are designed to assist in the transportation of memes from one mind to the next.  The layout of the keys on my keyboard is an example of such a meme.  I call these, memes-to-help-transmit-memes.  They are the subject of the following section of this paper.

REFERENCES

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