The
Evolution of Knowledge
by
Kenny A. Chaffin
All Rights
Reserved © 2012 Kenny A. Chaffin
It's only words,
and words are all
I have to take your heart away.
I have to take your heart away.
- Bee Gees
There
are no Individuals
You may think of yourself as a
separate and unique individual organism but you rely on many other organisms
and certainly your environment to exist. You rely on the bacteria in your gut
to digest your food; you rely on the mitochondria in your cells to produce the
energy needed for life itself, and to fuel movement, growth and metabolism. At
a more fundamental level you rely on your environment; the oxygen in the air,
water from the Earth to exist. And much of the environment you rely on is
produced by other organisms and their processes. At another level you rely on everything
that has gone before you. Because you are here, because you are alive, you are
a survivor. Your body, your abilities, your resistance to disease, your very existence
itself is a result of your genetic heritage. You survived; your parents and their
parents survived all the way back to the single celled organisms of the ancient
Earth and even prior to that to the primitive DNA/RNA and their precursors of
living organisms.
Not only that, but the pieces and
parts of your body are constantly changing and being replaced. Cells die and
are replaced by new ones, hair falls out and other hair grows to replace it.
With a few exceptions (neurons being one) most of the cells in your body are
replaced every ten years or so. At any given moment your body is only a
snapshot in time that is constantly changing.
The you that is here now is not the same you that was here 10 years ago
or even 10 minutes ago. It’s not that life is in a constant state of
flux but that life is a constant state of flux.
Yeah,
so?
Just as your body is composed of a collection of
cells and precursors and loose confederations of living things, so is your
mind, your consciousness. You may feel as though you are an individual,
separate and unique to all others and in a sense you are, but just as your body
is separate and different from other human individuals while still being composed
of and reliant on other living organisms, so is your mind. It too is comprised of and relies on both
internal and external information, sensory input from the environment, memories,
collaboration of ideas and thoughts. And not just in the same manner as your
physical body, but truly in exactly
the same manner. Your self, your mind, your consciousness is a collection of
interrelated information, memories, sensory input, and knowledge of self and
environment that is a single entity yet constantly changing within and as part
of its environment.
And?
So if our biology and our minds work
in the same manner, even though with different piece-parts is that where the
similarity ends or is there more? Oh, there’s
more, definitely more. Part of this may be evident. Our DNA which is the key to
all living organisms is itself nothing more than a sequence of information used
to store, manage and drive biological growth, evolution, and procreation. So
certainly in this manner information in the form of DNA sequences is used for
biological purposes. The information and knowledge stored in and used by our
minds is of course is a bit different and is used in a different manner, but
certainly with the same goal in mind -- survival of the individual and the
species.
The
Structure of Knowledge
Memes, bits, words, books,
theories, history, information – all these things make up knowledge, that
unseen, non-corporeal (in some cases) collection of information, data,
memories, books and more that we think of as knowledge. Knowledge itself is a
spectrum of information, information that is structured at various and multiple
levels, something like this writing itself which is composed of many
piece-parts at various levels – a title, headings, paragraphs, sentences,
words, letters all combining in an attempt to convey knowledge to the reader.
This concept of knowledge as a loose confederation of information, memories,
senses, and even other knowledge makes defining it difficult -- a bit like
catching a greased pig, but allows us to better examine it.
Non-sequiturs
Confusion, roadblocks, false leads
and non-sequiturs come from a number of the areas listed in the previous
section, but the two biggest that have thrown the proverbial monkey wrench in
the search for knowledge are Richard Dawkins’ memes and Claude Shannon’s information
science.
Dawkins’ meme concept was brilliant
at the time and while it still has usefulness what has happened is that its proponents
have constrained the field by mimicking genetic concepts a bit too strictly. Genes
and DNA are well defined physical objects that are reasonably well understood. Memes on the other hand are non-physical,
very loosely defined and difficult to specify precisely. This makes the meme concept much more
unwieldy and difficult to work with in the same manner as genetics and has put
many on the wrong track in searching for a scientific means of understanding
information and knowledge.
Shannon’s information science is
nothing of the sort. It is actually communication science. It focuses on reliably
transferring coded messages from one point to another point. Now certainly this
is important and much of significance has come from it. It even defined the
‘bit’ which is used extensively in computer science and digital communications
systems. The problem is that it has
distracted and derailed the true search and research into information and
knowledge. Over and over significant work has been waved aside with the claim
that Shannon’s information science already explained all that when in fact the
only thing it explained was how to reliably communicate that information from
point A to point B.
The
Evolution of Knowledge
The process whereby knowledge is
created and maintained does not work similarly to biological evolution; it works
EXACTLY THE SAME, but in a less tangible medium. Knowledge evolves, it changes,
it adapts to its environment and it survives or dies just like a biological
organism. If particular facets of knowledge become outdated and non-applicable,
they are discarded, lost and/or replaced. In biological evolution if a better
elbow joint appears due to random mutation that works better for climbing trees
or gathering berries then it eventually supplants the previous joint because it
increases the odds of survival and is passed on to the individual’s descendants.
In knowledge evolution if a hunter-gatherer finds a better way to track or trap
prey and passes that knowledge along it will survive because it has increased
the hunter-gatherer’s odds of survival. If a theory of gravity appears that is
better suited to its environment, then it replaces the previous theory of
gravity. This is exactly what science and the scientific method provide and is one
aspect of the evolution of knowledge. Galileo’s work with gravity was replaced
by Newton’s work which was in turn replaced by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Each was a change, an enhancement, a
replacement for what came before. In a manner of speaking Galileo and Newton’s
theories are fossils in the evolutionary trail of knowledge known as the theory
of gravity. It should also be clear that knowledge is not something exclusive
to the human mind but something independent of it. This is evident in bodies of
knowledge such as the body of scientific knowledge, the amassed history of
civilization, or mathematics which exist independent of the human mind.
Not only does knowledge evolve in
the same manner as biological organisms, but by the same mechanisms. Knowledge
evolves by mutating and changing and then surviving or dying in its
environment. At any given time there may be thousands or millions of potentially
competing memes, thoughts, ideas or suggestions in the world, some may be
random thoughts thrown out in newspaper op-ed articles, some may be bills
introduced into congress, and some may be novels or stories or poems. At some
point some of these may come into competition for survival such as in
congressional debates, in the public media or in scientific journals. When they
do, one may survive while another fails, or both could potentially continue to
exist. A book of poetry may be published while another is rejected or possibly
both are published. Two competing pieces of knowledge could certainly co-exist as
in the biological world where different types of wings, feet, limbs or other
characteristics co-exist at any given time.
Just as there are many types of
organisms that have evolved to meet a variety of environmental conditions,
there are many types of knowledge that have evolved in a variety of
environments. Some knowledge passes through the crucible of the scientific
method other knowledge is evaluated in the light of history, experience, or
evidence. Still other knowledge may survive strictly by force of will and may
or may not survive long term evolutionary pressures, in the same manner as
certain biological mutations may survive and be passed on but appear to have no
survival value themselves. Those biological mutations may eventually disappear
or they may at some point prove to be an evolutionary advantage in a new or
changed environment. These same evolutionary mechanisms apply to knowledge and
if we begin to examine and study it within that framework we will be much better
positioned to further our understanding of knowledge in a scientific sense.
References,
links, additional information:
Evolution,
Genes, Memes:
Information:
Mind/Consciousness:
Knowledge:
Other:
Your
Body is Younger than you Think:
Evolutionary
Psychology:
About the Author
Kenny A. Chaffin writes
poetry, fiction and nonfiction and has published poems and fiction in Vision Magazine, The Bay Review, Caney
River Reader, WritersHood, Star*Line, MiPo, Melange and Ad Astra and
has published nonfiction in The
Writer, The Electron, Writers Journal and Today’s Family. He grew up in
southern Oklahoma and now lives in Denver, CO where he works hard to make
enough of a living to support two cats, numerous wild birds and a bevy of
squirrels. His poetry collections No
Longer Dressed in Black, The
Poet of Utah Park, The Joy of Science, A Fleeting Existence, a collection of science essays How do we Know, and a memoir of growing up on an Oklahoma farm - Growing
Up Stories are all available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B007S3SMY8. He
may be contacted through his website at http://www.kacweb.com.