Consciousness can be understood when knowing the evolution of attention from the first multicellular lifeforms to modern mammals. #evolution #consciousness #attention
Author: Clemens Lode
Clemens Lode is a management consultant with focus on agile project management methods (check out https://www.lode-consulting.com). He likes to summarize his insights into books, check out his philosophy series "Philosophy for Heroes" here: https://www.philosophy-for-heroes.com. His core approach to philosophy and management is that people need to be more aware of their limits and ultimately their identity and their vulnerabilities.
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. In our daily lives, too often we have our creativity submerged. We can walk down the street, drive to work, bicycle, watch TV, eat, etc. without ever really using this Darwinian machine. The more accustomed we become to […]
Categories
Evolution in the Head
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. If you’re good at finding the one right answer to life’s multiple-choice questions, you’re smart. But intelligence is what you need when contemplating the leftovers in the refrigerator, trying to figure out what might go with them. Or if trying […]
Categories
The Red Queen Hypothesis
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. “Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, […]
Categories
The Origin of Life
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. How would you create a life-like model of your face? A simple approach is to cover your face with papier-mâché, let it dry, detach it from your face, then fill the inside of the mask with plaster, […]
Categories
Artificial Life
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. It is raining DNA outside. On the bank of the Oxford canal at the bottom of my garden is a large willow tree, and it is pumping downy seeds into the air. […] [spreading] DNA whose coded […]
Categories
Chemical Evolution
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter. —Charles Darwin, Letter To J. D. Hooker [Darwin, 2012] What are some specific examples in nature of complex […]
Categories
Basics of Evolution
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. What are the three major properties a system needs to have in order to evolve? Still, it needs to be said that the light of evolution is just that—a means of seeing better. It is not a […]
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. It makes one wonder what the evolutionary tree of this idea [the theory of evolution] would look like, were it an organism that could be mapped out by fossil record rather than words. The concept is one […]
Categories
The Big Bang
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. If the “big bang” created the universe, and if nothing existed before the big bang, where did the big bang come from? Imagine an infinite sea of energy filling empty space, with waves moving around in there, […]
Categories
Chaos Theory
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry. —Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law [Feynman, 1994, p. 28] How can structure emerge from chaos? […]
Categories
Interpretations of the Quantum Theory
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. Many Worlds Interpretation Why could the many worlds interpretation be called ontologically wasteful? An approach to explain what is going on at the ontological level is the so-called many worlds interpretation. Instead of claiming that until something is […]
Categories
Copenhagen Interpretation
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. What is the ontological view of the Copenhagen interpretation? The unexplained mystery of thermal radiation (among others, like the photoelectric effect) led to the theory that light comes in packages: the quantum theory. The first interpretation to […]
Categories
Development of Quantum Mechanics
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. Is light a wave or a particle? […] when we allow for the dynamics of gravity and quantum mechanics, we find that [our] commonsense notion is no longer true. This is the beauty of science, and it […]
Categories
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
This is an excerpt from the book series Philosophy for Heroes: Continuum. You can get a copy here. Ask me if an ordinary person could ever get to be able to imagine these things like I imagine them. Of course! I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There are no miracle people. It happens […]