...is ´evolution´ just a fuzzword?

...Does cartesian logic accurately represent reality?

 

During extensive IQ tests, children below 5 years of age were found to be 98% 'genius', as in possession of true divergent thinking skills. Once they reached 8 years of age, the percentage of divergent thinking was 30, and once they were over 25 years of age, this ratio was reduced to 2%.

To live within western culture at the start of the 21st century is to experience a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, it is sophisticated and pushes ‘forward’, with philosophy and science as ‘enquiry tools’ at its forefront. On the other hand is the cultural detachment from perceptions that such intellectual tools should help to attain.

The way sand and water particles rearrange themselves in patterns when vibrating to certain frequencies is clearly a system, formed by the pattern that encloses the particles within it: seemingly individuated particules form geometric patterns and rearrange themselves into an observable form, a ‘pattern’, a system, an ecology. Particles behave as though they belong to a greater vibrational ecology than their own individuated existence. This is a scientifically measurable phenomenon, studied by the science of cymatics. It is the subject of ongoing research, as technology increasingly allows for the detailed study of the behaviour of molecules when exposed to changing frequencies. 

In recent years, the science of physics has also proven the properties of cross-scale self-similarity, also called fractals. Similar to the ‘russian-doll’ situation,where the outer doll contains self-similar, smaller dolls, fractal behaviour implies that systems display recurring patterns at smaller or larger scales. This is used when describing the structure of snowflakes and when describing ‘partly random or chaotic phenomena’ such as crystal growth and galaxy formation.

In a similar way to which sand molecules arrange themselves in orderly patterns reacting to audio frequencies, it is observable how cultural systems tend to arrange themselves in ‘cohesive’ ways which seem somewhat orderly and respond to patterns of organization. Hierarchy, policing, governance systems, urban organization, linguistic systems, social classes, occupations, calendars, are all systems of observable organization. There are, also, as Raymond Williams points out in Culture [1983], actual‘tangible’ works that stem from culture, such as art. Pierre Teilhard De Chardin described this as part of the Noosphere in The Phenomenon Of Man [1955] the ‘atmosphere of the productions of mind’, where human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere, emerging as a sort of ‘shell’, enclosing the planet: an ecology within an ecology.

A resonance within a vibration.

“I think religion has done great damage to ecology. A human being has a soul and is therefore deemed different to the rest of ‘creation’ - at least this is what you’re taught if you, like me, were brought up under the Christian tradition. You are a ‘superior’ being thanks to your body-soul duality, which has placed humans above the idea of being integrated in an ecosystem - within which we are actually just ‘one more’ element, and in fact, the most intrusive element. …And I think that, consequently, whenever you bring up ecology, the culture’s subconscious mutters: “people first!” …As long as there are grave economical and political problems -which there always are- they take precedent over preoccupations for a greater ecology. …When, actually, we should probably consider it as a whole: the problems that stem from the same system are related. Quite possibly, there are people dying of hunger because we are trashing the planet. Quite possibly, these are connected” - Risto Mejide, 2012, ‘What: About the Future’ interview'.

As Cambridge, Oxford and Trinity College lecturer Raymond Williams points out in Culture, the word ‘culture’ applied to human deeds derives from the observation of bacterial behaviour, given its ‘clogging’ into overarching systems of ecologies within a lab petri dish, and as also related to the cultivation of crops.
This very metaphor reveals human culture’s ability to recognize and reflect on the existence of fractal patterns, metaphorically revealing an ´as above, so below´ natural behaviour of systems belonging to different scales of other systems, arranged into smaller or bigger –including the unfathomable by human intellect- ecologies.

Information is so called because it defines systems that display form-ation and therefore display perceivable patterns, from which in-form-ation can be extracted. 

As Alfred North Whitehead stated in Process And Reality [1929], intelligence can be defined as the acquisition of pattern as such. 

There is an all-permeating presence of patterned arrangements in the observable world: nature’s cyclical behaviour, the formation of hurricanes, the ‘pi’ ratio present in petal and leave formation and arrangements, the molecular arrangement of ‘pure’ water molecules, the sequence of prime numbers, the fibonacci sequence, etc.

All of these phenomena abide the ‘constant’ of patterns within patterns, or fractality.
...Aesthetically apprehensible order.

Aesthetics -as an apprehensible phenomena- should provide information about the plausability and impeccability of any system and/or idea, and aesthetics are definitely apprehensible within ideological, social and/or cultural systems.

When only logic and analysis are applied to a situation, with no space left to chance, no evolution occurs, as stated by Darwin. This just shows how slippery regular reality actually is, despite all of our intellectual endeavours and abstract systems of rationalization. ...The greater ecology of which we are part of does not respond to, nor function through, human reason and logic.
For instance, western industrial systems of agriculture have chosen to narrow biodiversity into 9 main cultivation crops, ignoring previously present biodiversity, in favour of for-profit, yield-rich, industrial concepts of cultivation. And this is, obviously, out of kilter with what is advisable towards the greater biological ecosystem that human culture is part of.
 

So, does our cartesian logic accurately, aesthetically, represent reality?

..Because if this is the case, the 'progress' and 'civilisation´ western societies simbolise should have brought us to a different 21st century status quo than the perpetual threat of imminent international war, xenophobia, racism, publicly justified corruption, social programming as executed by mass-media, and cut-throat financial and economic markets.

....We should, pershaps, stop collectively feeling so self-fulfilled with our civilised assumptions, and should rather start proving that evolution has enabled us to generate perceivable motion towards better socio-cultural spaces.

Dr Lara Boyd - Repeat those behaviours that are healthy for your brain.

As Dr Boyd states during her TED presentation, learning -evolving- is about doing the work that the brain / mind requires, and this requires practice and engagement in order to avoid repeated and undesirable patterns of behaviour... because the opposite of aesthetic is an-aesthetic - to be dormant, unaware, asleep, sedated, as explained below (5min 51secs) by british linguist Sir Ken Robinson, PHD.

"Life is not a linear or mechanistic phenomena, it is organic, and human success depends on synergistic relations with the environment"
 "Our view of intelligence is exceedingly narrow"
 (Sir Ken Robinson)



Evolution implies change, at whichever rate of adaptation may be necessary, in order to change undesirable circumstances as related to one´s environment.

"The problem with human beings is not that we aim too high and fail...
The problem with humans is that we aim too low, and succeed".
(Michelangelo)



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(Clip 1) Cymatics, from Greek: κῦμα, meaning "wave", is a subset of modal vibrational phenomena. The term was coined by Hans Jenny (1904-1972), a Swiss follower of the philosophical school known as anthroposophy. Typically the surface of a plate, diaphragm or membrane is vibrated, and regions of maximum and minimum displacement are made visible in a thin coating of particles, paste or liquid. Different patterns emerge in the excitatory medium depending on the geometry of the plate and the driving frequency.

(Clip2) Franciscus Bernardus Maria "Frans" de Waal, PhD, is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler professor of Primate Behavior at the Emory University psychology department in Atlanta, Georgia, and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and author of numerous books including Chimpanzee Politics and Our Inner Ape. His research centers on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequity aversion, and food-sharing. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

(Clip 3) Dr. Lara Boyd is the Canada Research Chair in Neurobiology of Motor Learning, a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Career Investigator, a Peter Wall Scholar, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, at the University of British Columbia.  She is a Neuroscientist and Physical Therapist. 

Dr. Boyd directs the Brain Behaviour Lab at the University of British Columbia, which performs research designed to advance theoretical conceptualizations of how brain function relates to behaviour during learning. She is an expert in neuroimaging and neurophysiology, and uses a variety of cutting edge technology in her research. 

(Clip 4) Sir Kenneth Robinson, PhD, is a British author, speaker and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education and arts bodies. He was Director of the Arts in Schools Project (1985–89) and Professor of Arts Education at the University of Warwick (1989–2001), and is now Professor Emeritus at the same institution. In 2003 he was knighted for services to art. Originally from a working class Liverpool family, Robinson now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.

Robinson contracted polio at age four. He attended Margaret Beavan Special School due to the physical effects of polio then Liverpool Collegiate School (1961–1963), Wade Deacon Grammar School, Cheshire (1963–1968). He then studied English and drama (BEd) at Bretton Hall College of Education (1968–1972) and completed a PhD in 1981 at the University of London, researching drama and theatre in education.