Ever forward moves the arrow of time, and in its causal wake, possibility becomes actualized. Call these possibilities guesses. A guess may turn out to be right if it results in success, or wrong if it leads to failure. Some guesses succeed, some don’t.
Evolution produces natural guesses. When a frog is born, nature has unconsciously guessed, as would be put in words, “this frog can succeed.” If it does–if the guess proves right–it reproduces and its offspring are new guesses. Via growth and reproduction, evolution rolls guessing into an ordering principle. The guesses are random but possibility is constrained by the starting conditions, by what is available this iteration, that is, the successful guesses of yesterday. Guessing is how you get iterative creativity, a creative process rather than a one-off event, using past outcomes as raw material.
This guessing is blind; there is no design or intent behind it. The energies coursing through the physical world evoked it. Evolution is just a powered mechanism, constructed physical causality that emerged for no particular purpose. Solar energy hitting the surface of Earth found physical expression in an complex form, but nothing intended it. It just started happening given what was possible. Evolution is a natural machine that forces rocks into hawks using sunlight and water. Why? Since it’s not the product of reason, the question can have no answer. The beginning was unplanned and the end is free of goal. It simply does what it does.
But now, things are different. with the advent of reason, there is a new form of guessing. A person makes guesses, but not the same way evolution does. Evolution has to roll the dice every time to determine success or failure. Every guess has to be acted upon in order for it to be a guess. No so with people. People can make guesses based on information rather than brute actualized fact. If there’s a sign warning of rockslides in the area, a person can change their plans and take a different route. A worm on the same route, not planning its journey or knowing of any danger, continues on heedlessly and gets flattened. The worm makes for a bad guess, but the person made a good one. The person saw two possibilities and actualized one of them; the worm saw neither, and actualized just its one. This is such a powerful advantage that it ultimately led to human empire, of humanity having monopolistic dominion over Earth, just as once dinosaurs did, and even before that, plants.
The rise synthetic biology makes my point more concretely. Here artificial selection–reason’s answer to natural selection–is elevated from the realm of rose gardening to something to be heralded as godlike power. Blind evolution is joined by designed evolution. Purpose and intent enter the biological arena, and now our guesses can begin to stand shoulder to shoulder with those made naturally. And then blast past them, for they are more highly ordered. (That’s not to say the guesses are infallible or even good! It’s just that they can be informed.)
This is the irony of evolution. We evolved naturally, equipped with a power that allows a single species–just us!–to run a parallel guessing game, but with different rules. The relation between these games is difficult for me to tease open, and it seems each contains the other. But whatever the relation is, it is clear a natural revolution of incredible significance is in progress; a natural Titanomachy. Or so it seems to me. A revolution from evolution. This dwarfs the ragtag battles between one tribe and another as breathlessly reported on CNN. We’re in the middle of a natural struggle of far greater importance, and I wonder if anyone really notices?
So the introduction of reason is new kind of guessing about the future, a new process born of evolution, that is, produced by the world itself, evolution’s nursery and theater. The world is making better guesses now, ones that are more likely to be right than before. (And through education, one that gets increasingly accurate.) One guessing process culminated in a new guessing process, the first based on do-or-die, the other based in objective and intent. Because purposeless guessing can be a massive waste of energy, as it turns out. The cosmos conserves guessing, and reason produces tighter results.
That is what having a mind gives. Reason is the guess-filter. It allows for much more success than just throwing darts. I aim for the bulleye, and in doing so, skip all the pointless throws across the room. I narrow down to what I think are the best guesses and actualized only the most promising. So do we all, every day. It’s amazing.
nature, philosophy
