RE: Christianity is heading for a full allegorization
January 20, 2022 at 4:28 pm
(This post was last modified: January 20, 2022 at 4:34 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(January 20, 2022 at 4:19 pm)polymath257 Wrote: Well, one of the reasons biological entities have 'goals' is that they are programmed for survival. That means they have to evaluate information from the environment and determine how it relates to survival (and reproduction). That is where meaning ultimately comes from initially, I think.What I think is super cool..is that we can see biology working it's way "up" to that, and it sure as hell seems heritable. Some early (and some still extant) behaviors were produced by a photoreceptor hard wired to motors. The photoreceptor is excited and that energy fires the motor. Positively brilliant in a universe full of stars. The would probably work just as well in space as it does in our oceans. Everything always thrusting towards the nearest detectable light source. Dead reckoning, no programming required.
Then we see signal inversion layered on top - so that instead of always moving towards a light, it moves away from anything blocking light. Now you have a way to hunt for food and evade predation.
Entie clades that develope specilized tissue for these sorts of arrangements, and more and more and more of it, until you end up with nerves, and then a central system, and so on and so forth until you have us. Effectively, astronauts in our own little windowless eva suits - using the same sorts of setups to create a picture of not only our external world, which we navigate - but also of our internal world, which we rely on to accomplish that task.
Plants do it one better with simpler apparatus. Their growth hormone is photophobic. No moving parts, masters of organic chemistry. Apparently, they never had any particular use for going down the route we went - and things like a costly and irreplaceable organ isn't great for immobile whatsits, anyway. Can't run away to keep from losing a chunk - so you poison them or reward their predators instead - effectively modifying some other creatures behavior (even entire species).
It gets even weirdier. Jellyfish that are nothing -but- nerves attached to a jet propulsion system.
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