Symbols of Evolution
Symbols of Evolution Symbols of Evolution
Two billion years ago two prokaryotes bumped into each other and formed the first multi-cellular organism. 65 million years ago an asteroid hit the earth and dinosaurs became extinct. Three days ago, in your notebook, you drew a mess of squiggles which to you represented Jackson Pollock 's painting, Number 1, 1948. You wrote the word entropy on the upper left hand corner of the page. On the bottom right hand side you wrote, Creativity is based on randomness and chance.
This paper will not try to determine why the dinosaurs became extinct or what caused two prokaryotes to form the first multi-cellular organism. Instead, it will ask you that which is, perhaps, a more difficult question: Why did you write what you wrote in your notebook?
If human recorded history only represents 10,000 years of a universe which has been evolving for 15 billion years, then does a question pertaining to such relatively recent human practices as writing and artwork matter? Yes! These symbol making processes matter because of what they can tell us about our identity and our place in the evolutionary process. This essay will explore the notion that human identity is based almost entirely on representing life symbolically, and grapple with the idea that we exist because of the symbols which we create. It will then go on to explore how symbol-making resembles the biological process of evolution in the way it prizes and incites both messiness and reproduction. Finally it will synthesize these two ideas: symbol-making tied to human identity and symbol-making resembling the biological process of evolution in order to provide a backbone for the idea that humans might evolve in such a way that the cultural transfer of information could take place as a part of the process of biological evolution.
Reason I:
Because after all the discussion, something was still missing. It 'd be difficult for me to tell you exactly what, because we
Two billion years ago two prokaryotes bumped into each other and formed the first multi-cellular organism. 65 million years ago an asteroid hit the earth and dinosaurs became extinct. Three days ago, in your notebook, you drew a mess of squiggles which to you represented Jackson Pollock 's painting, Number 1, 1948. You wrote the word entropy on the upper left hand corner of the page. On the bottom right hand side you wrote, Creativity is based on randomness and chance.
This paper will not try to determine why the dinosaurs became extinct or what caused two prokaryotes to form the first multi-cellular organism. Instead, it will ask you that which is, perhaps, a more difficult question: Why did you write what you wrote in your notebook?
If human recorded history only represents 10,000 years of a universe which has been evolving for 15 billion years, then does a question pertaining to such relatively recent human practices as writing and artwork matter? Yes! These symbol making processes matter because of what they can tell us about our identity and our place in the evolutionary process. This essay will explore the notion that human identity is based almost entirely on representing life symbolically, and grapple with the idea that we exist because of the symbols which we create. It will then go on to explore how symbol-making resembles the biological process of evolution in the way it prizes and incites both messiness and reproduction. Finally it will synthesize these two ideas: symbol-making tied to human identity and symbol-making resembling the biological process of evolution in order to provide a backbone for the idea that humans might evolve in such a way that the cultural transfer of information could take place as a part of the process of biological evolution.
Reason I:
Because after all the discussion, something was still missing. It 'd be difficult for me to tell you exactly what, because we
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