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<DIV>
<DIV>I envy you this experience, Val.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>On your advice, I just ordered a copy of the translation, published under
the title: <SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><STRONG>Behind
The Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human
Knowledge</STRONG>.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Warmly--Howard</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 3/29/2005 8:37:18 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
kendulf@shaw.ca writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV>Dear Howard,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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 <U>pattern matching</U> 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 "<EM>Die Rueckseite des
Spiegels</EM>" (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</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com
href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com">HowlBloom@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org
href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">paleopsych@paleopsych.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, March 28, 2005 11:02
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Paleopsych] From Eshel--A
Glitch in Genetic-centrism--Joel</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The cosmos is process. Time is as critical to understanding as
are "things". </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 3/28/2005 11:07:39 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
isaacsonj@hotmail.com writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>I
actually think more in terms of an Ur-Process that leads to
Ur-Patterns.<BR>In my view, our cognitive apparatus is comprised of
zillions of those<BR>Ur-Processes, interlocked in certain
ways. The very elemental Ur-Process<BR>involves local
recursive discrimination of differences. Repeat:
LOCAL <BR>RECURSIVE<BR>DISCRIMINATION OF DIFFERENCES is a key.
Interlocution of many<BR>Ur-Processes yields global Ur-Patterns that are
pervasive in Nature, at all <BR>scales.<BR>(Biology and genetics are
subsumed under these processes and involve the
<BR>same<BR>patterns.)<BR><BR>Such Ur-Patterns come to our awareness as
"snapshots" during the incessant<BR>flow of the
Ur-Processes.<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>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<BR>Visiting
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty
Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>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.<BR>For
information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:
www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The
Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT>
<P>
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3/27/2005<BR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>paleopsych
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<DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>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<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate
Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>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.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology
Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of
Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>