He imagined a world in which organisms battled for supremacy and only the fittest survived.
But new research identifies the availability of “living space”, rather than competition, as being of key importance for evolution.
Findings question the old adage of “nature red in tooth and claw”.
Hm. I am not an expert on evolution, but it seems that BBC was able to fit in three misconceptions in three sentences. (From their article Space is the Final Frontier for Evolution.)
Evolution does have to do with fit – a fit between the organism and the environment. A fit in terms of what is asked for by the environment, what works, and what offers a higher chance for survival and the survival of offspring.
The idea that time itself could cease to be in billions of years – and everything will grind to a halt – has been proposed by Professor José Senovilla, Marc Mars and Raül Vera of the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, and University of Salamanca, Spain. The corollary to this radical end to time itself is an alternative explanation for “dark energy” – the mysterious antigravitational force that has been suggested to explain a cosmic phenomenon that has baffled scientists…..
“We do not say that the expansion of the universe itself is an illusion,” he explains. “What we say it may be an illusion is the acceleration of this expansion – that is, the possibility that the expansion is, and has been, increasing its rate.”
If time gradually slows “but we naively kept using our equations to derive the changes of the expansion with respect of ‘a standard flow of time’, then the simple models that we have constructed in our paper show that an “effective accelerated rate of the expansion” takes place.”
I have a fondness for perspectives that stir up mainstream views, whether it is mainstream within a group or “mainstream” for me. Dark energy reminds us that for all we have learned about the universe, especially over the last century or so, there is still much more we don’t understand even when it comes to the basics such as the “laws” and “constants” of the universe. It may be that gravity operates differently from what we currently assume, or that time is not as constant as we think. There will always be more to learn and discover, some of which will turn our most basic and cherished assumptions on its head.
Again, this is very simple, and in many ways obvious. We know this. It is part of our culture.
And yet, there is always more to explore. When I take it as a pointer and explore it in my own life, it can be very helpful. Especially when I find and explore those places in my life where I don’t quite get this yet.
Any story is a stepping stone.
It is a stepping stone to shifts in attention, and to choices and actions in the world.
And it is a stepping stone to other stories which may be more useful or appropriate in this or later situations.
The scientific approach in general is a good guideline and pointer for our own “spiritual” explorations.
And within science itself, it seems that the study of the very small and the very large both are fertile ground for pointers and guidelines for exploration.
Science in general helps us recognize that we don’t know. We operate from our own world of images and this is just a map. It may be very helpful in a practical sense in everyday life but there is no “truth” in it. Examples from quantum physics, the study of the very small, helps bring this home.
Through this, we notice that we may assume that there is an objective world “out there”, and it is helpful to act in daily life as if it is so, but this too is just an image. As is the images of a me and I (doer, observer). As we notice these images as images, as content of experience, there is an invitation for identification to release out of these images. We can still use any and all of them in a practical and pragmatic way, to help us function and orient in the world, but they are recognized as images, helpful tools only, and not any absolute truth. And we can notice what happens when there is identification with the viewpoints of some of these images, including the images of a me and I, and what happens when there is a softening or release of this identification and we are more free to play with and make use of these images while recognizing them as images only.
Genes – what are they good for? Absolutely… something. But not everything. Your “genius” genes need to be turned on – and your environment determines that. Find out how to unleash your inner-Einstein, and what scientists learned from studying the famous physicist’s brain.
Also, the bizarre notion that your children inherit not just your genes, but also the consequences of your habits – smoking, stress, diet, and other behaviors that turn the genes on.
Plus Francis Collins on affordable personal genomes, and a man who decoded his own DNA in under a week.
“Throughout evolutionary history, a big surprise would get everyone’s brain thinking,” said Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford. “But we’ve got a large and growing group of people who think the slightest hint that something interesting might be going on is like catnip. They can’t ignore it.”
- from NY Times, Your Brain on Computers: Attached to Technology and Paying a Price
I notice this for myself. In periods when I am more on the internet, I find that my attention becomes restless.
Fortunately, as with most other human skills, attention can be trained.
We already train attention, as we notice when we use digital information devices. Here, we train our attention to function over shorter time spans and be more easily distracted.
And we can also train attention to be more stable, and a tool we can use with more awareness and skill.
The simplest form of training attention this way is probably breath practice. Bring attention to your breath, either through the movements of the belly, or the sensations in the nose or at the nostrils. If the attention need extra support, count the breath in cycles of ten. This makes it easier to notice when attention is drawn into stories. If attention is already quite stable, then just bring it to the sensations without counting. And whenever you notice attention goes into stories, gently bring it back to the breath. Even short periods of this practice, for instance just five minutes once or a few times during the day, can have a big effect.
So this may be an additional advantage of our digital information age. We notice its impact on our attention habits, and seek out ways to train attention.
It is something we all are familiar with from daily life:
The brain continuously processes and digests undigested material – whether it is new information, beliefs in friction with reality, unresolved situations, or conundrums of any sort.
The signs are plenty, for instance when something is resolved without much conscious processing. The process may be started consciously, then left to digest on its own, and the result presents itself in its own time.
Attention is naturally drawn to undigested material, inviting and allowing processing and digestion, as noticed through everyday attractions, aversions, ruminations, and day dreaming.
Scientists are especially intrigued by the similarities between hallucinogenic experiences and the life-changing revelations reported throughout history by religious mystics and those who meditate. These similarities have been identified in neural imaging studies conducted by Swiss researchers and in experiments led by Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins. …..
Since that study, which was published in 2008, Dr. Griffiths and his colleagues have gone on to give psilocybin to people dealing with cancer and depression, like Dr. Martin, the retired psychologist from Vancouver. Dr. Martin’s experience is fairly typical, Dr. Griffiths said: an improved outlook on life after an experience in which the boundaries between the self and others disappear.
In interviews, Dr. Martin and other subjects described their egos and bodies vanishing as they felt part of some larger state of consciousness in which their personal worries and insecurities vanished. They found themselves reviewing past relationships with lovers and relatives with a new sense of empathy.“It was a whole personality shift for me,” Dr. Martin said. “I wasn’t any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people. You have a feeling of attunement with other people.”
Would you be happier if you spent more time discussing the state of the world and the meaning of life — and less time talking about the weather?
It may sound counterintuitive, but people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier, said Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who published a study on the subject….
But, he proposed, substantive conversation seemed to hold the key to happiness for two main reasons: both because human beings are driven to find and create meaning in their lives, and because we are social animals who want and need to connect with other people…..
Next, Dr. Mehl wants to see if people can actually make themselves happier by having more substantive conversations.
“It’s not that easy, like taking a pill once a day,” Dr. Mehl said. “But this has always intrigued me. Can we make people happier by asking them, for the next five days, to have one extra substantive conversation every day?”
It may be that happiness prompts us to deeper and more meaningful conversations. Or, as the researcher suggests, that deep conversations leads to happiness. They help us find meaning in our life, and connect with others in a more meaningful and intimate way.
And it may well be that this is another tool for happiness: A prescription of one more meaningful conversation in a day.
Cosmology is undergoing a great shift. The traditional Standard Model is unsatisfactory because it does not explain dark matter or dark energy. And the modifications to the Standard Model that do are unsatisfactory because they are inelegant add-ons. Something is missing from our understanding of the universe, and it is either new forms of matter and energy, our understanding of the basic habits (natural laws) of the universe, or a combination of both.
It is another reminder that what we think we know about anything, however elaborate or useful it may seem, is vanishingly small compared to the infinity we do not know. Our experience is always very limited. (*) And our interpretations of this experience is just one of an indefinite number of possible interpretations, some of which would make equally much or more sense to us than the ones we are currently aware of.
Whenever we have a story about something, there will always be something that doesn’t fit. And if this is something that appears significant to us, or if many smaller things that do not fit keep cropping up, it requires us to reorient, to reorganize how we look at ourselves and/or the rest of the world.
It is a continuous process for us at individual and collective levels.
The years from 1957 to 1962 were a golden age of science fiction, as well as paranoia and exhilaration on a cosmic scale. The future was still the future back then, some of us could dream of farms on the moon and heroically finned rockets blasting off from alien landscapes. Others worried about Russian moon bases.
I find it amusing when people talk about evolutionary dead ends and failed experiments.
It all depends on our perspective, from when we look in time and the time span we use.
If we look exclusively from our vantage point in time, and at a human time span, then – yes – it may appear that some species were evolutionary dead ends and failed experiments, and whichever species are alive today “made it”. But that is obviously a very myopic view, and not aligned with the vast time spans of evolution.
All species are born and die, this earth was born and will die, this universe was born and will die (heat death or big crunch). So in that sense, all species – including humans – are evolutionary “dead ends”.
Or we can say that all species are wonderful and awe-inspiring expressions of the amazing creativity of the Earth and this universe.
Can We Make a Star on Earth? is another great BBC Horizon documentary, this one hosted by the always excellent Brian Cox.
This segment is especially interesting, highlighting our need to use our current petroleum-based energy to develop new energy sources, including fusion. If we don’t speed up our efforts dramatically, it will be too late before we know it. If we apply a great deal of human and energy resources now, we can create a smoother transition for ourselves.
This is also a reminder of why the global warming debate is a sidetrack. First, because there is universal agreement among climate scientists that (a) significant climate change is happening and (b) it is caused by human activity. (The ones sowing the seeds of confusion are not climatologists, and the campaign to create confusion is fueled by the petroleum industry, taking a cue from the tobacco industry.)
More importantly, fossil fuel is running out and we need to put a great deal into the transition right now. We can’t afford to wait, partly since we need the current petroleum resources to fuel the transition, and partly because we don’t know how much oil is left. We have to act on the worst case scenario. The consequences of making a timing mistake are too great.
Cooking is something we all take for granted but a new theory suggests that if we had not learned to cook food, not only would we still look like chimps but, like them, we would also be compelled to spend most of the day chewing…..
Cooking food breaks down its cells, meaning that our stomachs need to do less work to liberate the nutrients our bodies need. This, says Wheeler, “freed up energy which could then be used to power a larger brain. The increase in brain-size mirrors the reduction in the size of the gut.” Significantly Wheeler and Aiello found that the reduction in the size of our digestive system was exactly the same amount that our brains grew by – 20%. Professor Stephen Secor at the University of Alabama found that not only does cooked food release more energy, but the body uses less energy in digesting it. As a consequence, more time was available for social structure to develop.
- from BBC, Learning to Cook Produced Bigger Brains
Changing food habits is a good example of how we shape our own evolution.
Our evolved biology makes our behavior and culture possible. Our behavior and culture changes, and this allows us to make use of our evolved potential in new ways. Both of these changes our selection pressures. Which in turn changes us biologically as a species. And this changes what is possible for us as individuals and as a culture.
We have evolved so it is possible for us to use tools and cook food. Cooking food allows us to make better use of food nutrients, which in turn allows us to make different and new use of our evolved potential. Both of these changes our circumstances and selection pressures, so different characteristics are selected for. This changes us biologically as a species. And this opens new options for us as a species and a culture.
Nowadays, our own culture is perhaps the most significant source of our own evolutionary change, as it has been for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Through culture, we change our social and ecological environments, which in turn changes the selection pressures, which in turn changes who we are.
For a good introduction to what sets humans apart from other animals, you can’t do much better than Alan Alda’s three-part series The Human Spark.
It is easy to think that since the lives of humans are so different from the lives of other animals, there must be big differences in how we are put together.
But is that the case? Are humans very different from other animals? No. We share almost everything with at least some, and often many, other species.
It is the small differences – often in degree – that sets us apart. As we know from the butterfly effect, in a complex system, small differences in the initial conditions can lead to big differences in how it all unfolds over time. In this case, small differences in biology leads to big differences in how we live our lives.
It is these small differences that leads to what we see as uniquely human such as relatively advanced culture, technology, and social organization.
The human brain is a big believer in equality — and a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, has become the first to gather the images to prove it.
Specifically, the team found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person’s head, rather than the poor person’s.
- from Science Daily
From an evolutionary perspective, it is not surprising that we may be predisposed for justice. We are social animals, and in many cases, justice benefits the group as a whole.
Our biology makes everything we know possible: metabolism, walking, digesting, feeling, thinking, anger, joy, sadness, culture, technology, imagination, creativity, compassion, ethics, a sense of meaning, and anything that is part of our individual and collective lives.
Some of it is shared among all Earth life. Much of it is shared among all animals. A great deal of shared among all mammals. Even more is shared among all humans. And some is differently emphasized among humans.
By observing brain cancer patients before and after brain surgery, researchers in Italy have found that damage to the posterior part of the brain, specifically in an area called the parietal cortex, can increase patients’ feelings of “self transcendence,” or feeling at one with the universe. The parietal cortex is the region that is is usually involved in maintaining a sense of self, for example by helping you keep track of your body parts. It has also been linked to prayer and meditation.
- Discover Magazine blog
Its a rich and interesting field, finding physiological correlates to whatever goes under the “spiritual” umbrella: A sense of awe, gratitude, compassion. A widened sense of “us”. A stronger and more mature sense of ethics. A reduced sense of boundaries, or recognition of boundaries as imagined. Effects of meditation or prayer practice, such as a more stable attention, improved self-regulation, and recognition of thoughts as thoughts. States of various kinds. And much more. Each of these are most likely related to short- and long-term changes in different and specific brain regions, and also the endocrine system, immune system, cellular function, and so on.
Daniel Johnson makes remarkably accurate Olympic medal predictions. But he doesn’t look at individual athletes or their events. The Colorado College economics professor considers just a handful of economic variables to come up with his prognostications.
The result: Over the past five Olympics, from the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney through the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, Johnson’s model demonstrated 94% accuracy between predicted and actual national medal counts. For gold medal wins, the correlation is 87%.
His forecast model predicts a country’s Olympic performance using per-capita income (the economic output per person), the nation’s population, its political structure, its climate and the home-field advantage for hosting the Games or living nearby. “It’s just pure economics,” Johnson says. “I know nothing about the athletes. And even if I did, I didn’t include it.”
- Forbes, see also Daniel Johnson’s own website
Which countries tend to do best in the Winter Olympics? The ones with large populations, cold winters, and wealth. Nothing surprising there.
And yet, the strength of these connections and the accuracy of Johnson’s predictions is impressive. And it is perhaps surprising that this accuracy is achieved free from any data on the athletes.
This hints at a revolution still in its infancy, and one with with great promise: Uncover surprising, far from intuitive and yet important connections, using statistics, vasts amount of date, and modest computer power.
The Work shares much with cognitive therapy, and has also many similarities with forms of inquiry found in Buddhist and Advaita traditions. In some ways, The Work is a Buddhist flavored form of cognitive therapy, or a cognitive therapy flavored form of Buddhism.
There is a great deal of research on cognitive therapy, of course. And also on Buddhist forms of meditation. There is very little, or perhaps no, research on inquiry as found in Buddhism or Advaita.
And there is nearly or actually no research on The Work. A quick Google Scholar search only turned up a general overview.
Why do research on The Work? There are many reasons. It would make it interesting to more therapists. It would gain sufficient support so it can be included in interventions, including large scale interventions to increase health and well-being and prevent illness. It would give it a foothold in the academic world, opening up for further research into The Work and similar approaches.
