[Paleopsych] From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism--Joel

[HowlBloom at aol.com]

I envy you this experience, Val.
 
But you're right.  I suspect it's more than von Holst and Lorenz who  apply 
here.  It's the spirit of the German holistic biologists of the 19th  
Century--including Goethe.  They saw overarching form and its development  from sperm 
and egg or from seed and pollen as one of the key mysteries  of science.
 
On your advice, I just ordered a copy of the translation, published under  
the title: Behind  The Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human  
Knowledge.
 
Warmly--Howard
 
In a message dated 3/29/2005 8:37:18 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
kendulf at shaw.ca writes:

Dear Howard,
 
In reading your commentary I am thrown back to the year I spent at he  
institute of Konrad Lorenz, before he was awarded the Nobel Prize. What you  discuss 
was then subject of very lively attention especially since Lorenz's  
institute was paired with an institute on cybernetics, then run by  Mittelstaedt. 
However, the ideas went back to the great Erich von Holst, who  had investigated 
neural functions. What Hawkins speaks about is the ancient,  but exceedingly 
serviceable concept of pattern matching as perception  and which von Holst 
enriched by the "re-afference principle". Lorenz responded  by publishing in 1973 
what is, in my judgment, his best work, a book on the  natural history of 
cognition, entitled in German "Die Rueckseite des  Spiegels" (The backside of the 
Mirror). I have no idea if it was  translated into English. However, I made 
good use of it and the discussions in  Lorenz's institute to write the second 
chapter of my Life strategies book,  only that I applied it broadly to animal 
behavior, and a lot of human include  (intelligence, creativity - among others). 
I also traced back some of the  older literature. Its absolutely fundamental 
material for an understanding of  the evolution of organismal life strategies, 
let alone higher cognitive  functions. It refers to very ancient processes 
without which life as we know  it could not function. The Wednesday morning 
seminars at Lorenz's  institute were the sharpest intellectually I have ever had 
the pleasure of  attending. Unfortunately, some of that excellence arose from 
the animosity  between the three institutes united at Seewiesen by the Max 
Planck society.  Cheers, Val Geist

----- Original Message ----- 
From:  _HowlBloom at aol.com_ (mailto:HowlBloom at aol.com)  
To: _paleopsych at paleopsych.org_ (mailto:paleopsych at paleopsych.org)  
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2005 11:02  PM
Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] From Eshel--A  Glitch in Genetic-centrism--Joel



 
Joel--What you say below sounds right to me.  If I understand it  rightly,  
time is a recursion of boundary-making, an iteration of a  differentiating and 
aggregating process, a multiplier of the voids spaced  between the nodes of 
isness, and a grower of the clusters between the  voids--as in your cellular 
automata model.  It makes sense.
 
And it fits with the notion that time is the most critical aspect of  
perception, an idea that Jeff Hawkins proposes in On Intelligence, one  of the few 
new-idea-generating books I've read in a long time.   Perception in Hawkin's 
view is a flow, a music.  As in music, we  spot thje sensory world's ur-patterns, 
its repetitive themes and  their variations. 
 
In higher cortical regions, we create invariant representations of a  stream 
of sensations, we sift the themes from of a parade of  sense-impacts, we 
capture the pattern of a surge of  impressions  that follow each other like the 
notes in a melody. Hawkins thinks of  these invariant representations as "Name 
that Tune"-style  song-spotting.  We send the prediction that the name of the  
tune--the invariant representation-- implies back down to the sensory  level of 
the cortex.  If the song title predicts the incoming  stream properly, 
everything is fine.  If the incoming signal-surge no  longer follows the melody 
predicted by the song title, more cortical regions  are forced to rush in and try 
other song titles, other invariant  representations, other names for the 
possible melody.
 
The cosmos is process.  Time is as critical to understanding as  are 
"things".  
 
Perception has to mirror the cosmos to work.  So perception is a  
time-process, a temporal-flow-identifier-and-predictor, a future-projector  that works by 
taking what's past and flipping it forward, sometimes with a  new twist.  
Music is practice for future-projection, for identifying  patterns in the flow.  
New musical styles and new songs are practice  for the novelties that may lay 
around the bend.  Howard
 
In a message dated 3/28/2005 11:07:39 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
isaacsonj at hotmail.com writes:

I  actually think more in terms of an Ur-Process that leads to  Ur-Patterns.
In my view, our cognitive apparatus is comprised of  zillions of those
Ur-Processes, interlocked in certain  ways.   The very elemental  Ur-Process
involves local  recursive discrimination of differences.   Repeat:    LOCAL 
RECURSIVE
DISCRIMINATION OF DIFFERENCES is a key.    Interlocution of many
Ur-Processes yields global Ur-Patterns that are  pervasive in Nature, at all 
scales.
(Biology and genetics are  subsumed under these processes and involve the  
same
patterns.)

Such Ur-Patterns come to our awareness as  "snapshots" during the incessant
flow of the  Ur-Processes.





----------
Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A  Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
History and Global Brain: The  Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 
21st Century
Visiting  Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core 
Faculty  Member, The Graduate  Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder:  International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic 
of  Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The 
 Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American  
Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society,  
Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society,  
International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member:  Youthactivism.org; 
executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.
For  information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:  
www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from 
The Lucifer Principle: A  Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, 
see  www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The  Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big 
Bang to the 21st Century, see  www.howardbloom.net

 
____________________________________
_______________________________________________
paleopsych mailing  list
paleopsych at paleopsych.org
http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych
 
____________________________________
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG  Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.8.4 - Release Date:  3/27/2005



_______________________________________________
paleopsych  mailing  list
paleopsych at paleopsych.org
http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych





----------
Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A  Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
History and Global Brain: The Evolution  of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 
21st Century
Visiting Scholar-Graduate  Psychology Department, New York University; Core 
Faculty Member, The Graduate  Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder:  International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic 
of Evolution  Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The 
Big Bang Tango  Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American 
Association for the  Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, 
Academy of Political  Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International 
Society for Human  Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; 
executive editor -- New  Paradigm book series.
For information on The International Paleopsychology  Project, see: 
www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from 
The Lucifer  Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, 
see  www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of  Mass Mind from the Big 
Bang to the 21st Century, see  www.howardbloom.net

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/paleopsych/attachments/20050330/207a76fe/attachment.html>