Evolution follows a similar
strategy. Compare the front wheels of the latest model with those of an
old vintage car or horse-cart -- they are based on the same principles.
Compare the anatomy of the fore-limbs of reptiles, birds, whales and
man -- they show the same structural design of bones, muscles, nerves
and blood-vessels and are accordingly called 'homologous' organs.
The functions of legs, wings, flippers and arms are so different that one
would expect them to have quite different designs. Yet they are merely
modifications, strategic adaptations of an already existing structure --
the forelimb of the common reptilian ancestor. Once Nature has taken out
a patent on a vital component or process, she sticks to it with amazing
tenacity: the organ or device has become a stable evolutionary holon.
It is as if she felt compelled to provide unity in variety. Geoffroy
de St Hilaire, one of the pioneers of modern biology, wrote in 1818:
'Vertebrates are built upon one uniform plan -- e.g., the forelimb may be
modified for running, climbing, swimming, or flying, yet the arrangement
of the bones remains the same.' [18] That basic arrangement is part
of the invariant evolutionary canon . Its utilization for swimming or
flying is a matter of evolutionary strategy .
This principle holds all along the line, through all the levels of the
evolutionary hierarchy down to the organelles inside the cell, and the DNA
chains in the chromosomes. The same standard models of organelles function
in the cells of mice and men; the same ratchet-device using a contractile
protein serves the motion of amoeba and of the concert-pianist's fingers;
the same four chemical molecules constitute the basic alphabet in which
heredity is encoded throughout the animal and plant kingdoms -- only
the words and phrases formed by them are different for each creature.
If evolution could only create novelties by starting each time afresh
from the 'primeval soup', the four thousand million years of the earth's
history would not have been long enough to produce even an amoeba.
In a much quoted paper on hierarchic structures, H. G. Simon concluded:
'Complex systems will evolve from simple systems much more rapidly if
there are stable intermediate forms than if there are not. The resulting
complex forms in the former case will be hierarchic. We have only to turn
the argument around to explain the observed predominance of hierarchies
among the complex systems Nature presents to us. Among possible complex
forms, hierarchies are the ones that have the time to evolve.' [19]
We do not know what forms of life exist on other planets, but we can safely
assume that wherever there is life, it is hierarchically organized.
11
Neglect of the hierarchic concept, and the failure to make a categorical
distinction between rules and strategies of behaviour, has caused
much confusion in academic psychology.* Since its primary concern for
the last fifty years was the study of rats in confined spaces ('Skinner
boxes'), this failure is hardly surprising. Yet to any spectator of a
game of football or chess it is at once obvious that each player obeys
rules which determine what he can do, and uses his strategic skills to
decide what he will do. In other words, the code defines the rules of
the game, strategy decides the course of the game . The examples cited in
the previous section indicate that this categorical distinction between
rules and strategies is universally applicable to innate and acquired
skills, to the hierarchies which make for social coherence, as well as
to the hierarchies of becoming.
* It is interesting to note the intense reluctance of academic
psychologists -- even those who have outgrown the cruder forms of
behaviourist S-R theory -- to come to grips with reality. Thus
Professor G. Miller writes in an article on psycholinguistics:
'As psychologists have learnt to appreciate the complexities of
language, the
strategy. Compare the front wheels of the latest model with those of an
old vintage car or horse-cart -- they are based on the same principles.
Compare the anatomy of the fore-limbs of reptiles, birds, whales and
man -- they show the same structural design of bones, muscles, nerves
and blood-vessels and are accordingly called 'homologous' organs.
The functions of legs, wings, flippers and arms are so different that one
would expect them to have quite different designs. Yet they are merely
modifications, strategic adaptations of an already existing structure --
the forelimb of the common reptilian ancestor. Once Nature has taken out
a patent on a vital component or process, she sticks to it with amazing
tenacity: the organ or device has become a stable evolutionary holon.
It is as if she felt compelled to provide unity in variety. Geoffroy
de St Hilaire, one of the pioneers of modern biology, wrote in 1818:
'Vertebrates are built upon one uniform plan -- e.g., the forelimb may be
modified for running, climbing, swimming, or flying, yet the arrangement
of the bones remains the same.' [18] That basic arrangement is part
of the invariant evolutionary canon . Its utilization for swimming or
flying is a matter of evolutionary strategy .
This principle holds all along the line, through all the levels of the
evolutionary hierarchy down to the organelles inside the cell, and the DNA
chains in the chromosomes. The same standard models of organelles function
in the cells of mice and men; the same ratchet-device using a contractile
protein serves the motion of amoeba and of the concert-pianist's fingers;
the same four chemical molecules constitute the basic alphabet in which
heredity is encoded throughout the animal and plant kingdoms -- only
the words and phrases formed by them are different for each creature.
If evolution could only create novelties by starting each time afresh
from the 'primeval soup', the four thousand million years of the earth's
history would not have been long enough to produce even an amoeba.
In a much quoted paper on hierarchic structures, H. G. Simon concluded:
'Complex systems will evolve from simple systems much more rapidly if
there are stable intermediate forms than if there are not. The resulting
complex forms in the former case will be hierarchic. We have only to turn
the argument around to explain the observed predominance of hierarchies
among the complex systems Nature presents to us. Among possible complex
forms, hierarchies are the ones that have the time to evolve.' [19]
We do not know what forms of life exist on other planets, but we can safely
assume that wherever there is life, it is hierarchically organized.
11
Neglect of the hierarchic concept, and the failure to make a categorical
distinction between rules and strategies of behaviour, has caused
much confusion in academic psychology.* Since its primary concern for
the last fifty years was the study of rats in confined spaces ('Skinner
boxes'), this failure is hardly surprising. Yet to any spectator of a
game of football or chess it is at once obvious that each player obeys
rules which determine what he can do, and uses his strategic skills to
decide what he will do. In other words, the code defines the rules of
the game, strategy decides the course of the game . The examples cited in
the previous section indicate that this categorical distinction between
rules and strategies is universally applicable to innate and acquired
skills, to the hierarchies which make for social coherence, as well as
to the hierarchies of becoming.
* It is interesting to note the intense reluctance of academic
psychologists -- even those who have outgrown the cruder forms of
behaviourist S-R theory -- to come to grips with reality. Thus
Professor G. Miller writes in an article on psycholinguistics:
'As psychologists have learnt to appreciate the complexities of
language, the
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