David E. Birren said:
>Can anyone explain how
>evolution works? I'm not talking about the process of mutation and
>natural selection; I'm wondering about why the second law of
>thermodynamics, as Peck expressed it, doesn't seem to operate. What is at
>work and how does it operate? How do natural systems emerge and increase
>in their complexity?
Dave
The West's genius has been in mechanics and how they work. Entropy
is a very interesting idea, but, it is a "mutual agreement" that we
all accept. It is not the universe. It is a product of the
various scientific systems that we use in the moment to help us
create our reality.
Let us consider another, earlier system of thought that sprang not
from success with pulse and momentum but from an organic success
that created 60 to 80% of the vegetable food stuffs of the present
world. This system said that everything was a cycle. It had Four
Directions that it faced and seven levels. This system had a beginning,
a growth, a maturity and a finish. Morning/Spring; Noon/Summer;
Sunset/Autumn; Night/Winter. These cycles were the basis for
learning organizations within (councils) these cultures. They would
consider a problem with seven + one people sitting around a center
doing a process that when finished had contemplated, together the
problem 25,088 times. Consensus was imminent and group learning
was assured. The only thing was that the numbers ran down every
52 years and everything was up in the air about whether it would
continue or dissipate. As the processes that they used had their
life, they did run down and it began to effect the people until
they were all running down, at which point Hernando Cortez arrived
to make sure.
Maybe it all means that we should consider that we can never know
the world accept through the binoculars of our senses and that these
are all limited by our personhood. Acceptance of this means that
we can explore while knowing always that our exploration is an
agreement that we must continually nourish with each other
(complexity). That all of the ideas have their place (even the
idea of "running down") as do we all and that we must find a way
to be with our fullness and not destroy it.
I just read your next discussion of this and so I hope that the
one I put above will add to the various ways of looking at the
same bird sitting on a cactus growing from a rock in the middle
of a lake with a rattlesnake in its mouth. How's that for
complexity?
-- Ray Evans Harrell mcore@soho.ios.com