What if I were to imagine that Darwin's insights into the process of evolution were universal? Here, I'm talking here about "everywhere in the universe" kind of universal, similar to the expectations we have about most Physics and Chemistry. Are there similar "Laws of Evolution"? And how would these laws manifest themselves in alternative life forms across the universe?
The idea is to begin to imagine the process of life form development, independent of any particular environment in which it develops. This thought experiment is to explore what are certainly other life forms in the universe which will be radically different from the human species (or any other life form on Earth), but which share the result of something we call "intelligent" life forms.
Here are some thoughts and wanderings...
Imagine the evolutionary process in these terms:
Life develops in response to its environment, with advantage going to life forms that exploit characteristics of their environment.
Lets imagine that for our purposes, "life" starts out as a "successful" response to its environment (a Markov state space transition where there is no memory beyond the current state). This definition applies to chemical reactions and other physical forces, and in my opinion, describes the vast majority of the universe. "Choice" is based on evaluation/resolution of the perceived current state of environment. To use, this "choice" is not a choice, but rather "determined." At this point, "time" and "space" exist only as parameters available to later life forms. [I make this note for further later consideration: WARNING! This does not mean the system is not "intelligent," since the current state space can be relatively unique, and might embody the information of past state spaces (a Jacob's ladder comes to mind, where the electric current shows some "intention" by climbing the poles) or a river's course as the result of a remembered millions of years of erosion. These "intelligent" forms have no conception of time itself, only the present instant.]
Life develops along two axes: (1) life that increases its perspective (observing more of its environment) and (2) life that remembers more past states. These two axes are life responding to time and space, embodying and exploiting these characteristics of its environment. These two axes become embedded in the very fiber of life's existence.
Life and Space
Life increases its perspective by increasing its ability to observe more characteristics of the environment. IMPORTANT: Note how these abilities are dependent on the characteristics of the environment in which the life form exists. The perspectives developed tend to reflect the more easily (aka more likely, or more realistically, more "satisficing") environmental characteristics that improve the life form's chances of survival in that particular environment. So things like "range of electromagnetic radiation perceived" will vary according to the presence and usefulness of particular electromagnetic radiation. Hence, human eyes are sensitive to a band of light, known as "visible light," while other life forms have different senses around on this environmental characteristic.
Development along this axis, of observing differences in the state spaces of the environment, takes two paths: (1) along the development of "the senses", which feed information back to the individual life form; and (2) the development of communication pathways between different individual life forms. For humans, our environment has led to sharing information through genes and later, memes. For plants, there is the fascinating subterranean world of roots and fungi.
An interesting hypothesis: If a life form develops multiple senses, there is also the potential path of development of interactions and coordination between the senses. Are these the origins of what we experience as emotion, the common language of our senses?
Life and Time
The second fundamental pathway of development for life forms is around time, which is manifested through the increased capacity for memory, allowing observation of differences in the environment state at different points in time.
Increased memory facilitates the development of associative memory (remembering) and the specialization of predictive memory (imagination).
As life forms receive more information from the environment, and process that information across time and space, the life forms that develop strong associative memory open their door to the development of responses, favoring those that contribute to the life form's survival.
The life forms that develop strong predictive memory (imagination) become capable of the additional responses, those that anticipate the environment's next state, allowing the life form more options to increase its chances of survival.
Additional Thoughts to Explore
- What intelligent life forms might develop without the benefit associative or predictive memory? For example, in what ways is the Earth alive? In what ways is the Earth intelligent? Isn't DNA an example of a chemical process with a historical memory that spans two billion years? DNA has been very successful at survival (a la Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene!
- What intelligent life forms might develop without the benefit of predictive memory? Would these life forms "be" without any "attachment" to the past (not using the past to predict the future), living in their senses without suffering [i.e. Buddhism]?
- Where does the human species explore alternative forms of intelligence that might become less dependent on our particular environment [Earth], and more open to seeing the universe in different ways, ways invisible to humans without an understanding of our own ancestral genetic choices and limitations?
- What is the destiny of the human species beyond Earth? Is there value to visiting other environments, other planets? Would we gain more perspective on our understanding of the universe and our place in it?
- How do we best exploit our own ability to pass information (memes) from one human to another, across time and space? How do we benefit from sharing our perspectives? What is the value of diversity and recognition that each of us has our own perspective? Is there value to an open mind when everyone else shares a different perspective?
- What is the role of Philosophy in the bigger picture of the human species? Is it merely the sum of the individual benefits? Or is there something Philosophy can say about our species that will help us survive the realm of individualism? Isn't the question that we are now facing, as we change the Earth's ecology, "How best to contribute to the survival of the species?" Or more broadly,, "How best to contribute to the survival of the planet?"
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