Without Miracles {ReadingNotes}

Without Miracle : Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution by Gary Cziko - ISBN 026253147X - MIT Press - 1995

note that this was finished much earlier but without recall, recall starts a month before the current date to already start with very spaced recalls

Motivation

Reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and his closing chapter on memetics, leading to a more general view on the theory of selection.

Pre-reading model

Draw a schema (using PmGraphViz or another solution) of the situation of the area in the studied domain before having read the book.

Reading

I The Need for Selection

• 1 Puzzles of Fit
  • (p3)

II The Achievements of Selection

• 2 The Fit of Biological Structures
  • (p13)
• 3 The Emergence of Instinct
  • (p27)
• 4 The Immune System: Selection by the Enemy
  • (p39)
• 5 Brain Evolution and Development: The Selection of Neurons and Synapses
  • (p49)
  • Wikipedia:Synaptogenesis
  • Wikipedia:Synaptic pruning
  • see Optimal brain damage page 737 of ArtificialIntelligenceAModernApproach#Chapter18

III The Promise of Selection

• 6 The Origin and Growth of Human Knowledge
  • (p73)
• 7 The Adaptive Modification of Behavior
  • (p87)
• 8 Adapted Behavior as the Control of Perception
  • (p101)
• 9 The Development and Functioning of Thought
  • (p123)
• 10 Cultural Knowledge as the Evolution of Tradition, Technology, and Science
  • (p151)
• 11 The Evolution, Acquisition, and Use of Language
  • (p179)
• 12 Education: The Provision and Transmission of Truth, or the Selectionist Growth of Fallible Knowledge?
  • (p213)

IV The Use of Selection

• 13 Evolutionary Computing: Selection Within Silicon
  • (p237)
• 14 The Artificial Selection of Organisms and Molecules
  • (p261)

V The Universality of Selection

• 15 From Providence Through Instruction to Selection: A Well-Traveled Road
  • (p281)
• 16 Universal Selection Theory: The Second Darwinian Revolution
  • (p303)

See also

• my notes on The Things We Do
• Seedea:Content/Newconcepts#QuantumDarwinism
  • Wikipedia:Quantum darwinism
• Wikipedia:Universal Darwinism
• Ontophylogenèse by Jean-Jacques Kupiec, ENS February 2010
  • Nature, Nurture, or Chance: Stochastic Gene Expression and Its Consequences by Arjun Raj and Alexander van Oudenaarden, Cell 2008
  • Stochastic Gene Expression in a Single Cell by Michael B. Elowitz, Arnold J. Levine, Eric D. Siggia and Peter S. Swain, Science 2002
• reviews
  • ChurchOfVirus
  • by Piero Scaruffi 2000
  • MassLine.org group review
• Valiant's WithoutNotesAugust11#Evolvability

New concepts

• exapted
  • ~=preadapted
  • Gould & Lewontin (1979)
• interactors
  • http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/wm/10.html#Heading13
  • organisms or groups of organisms can be considered to be the interactors on the stage of evolution, and it is at the level of interactors that selection takes place.
  • interactors who, in cultural evolution, are human agents who in interaction with their environments determine which memes are to be selected and, consequently, replicated.
  • See Hull (1988a, pp. 28ff.)
  • "interactor-environment interface" seems very close to my Interface notion (cf whiteboard)

Overall remarks and questions

• this? that?

Synthesis

So in the end, it was about X and was based on Y.

Critics

Point A, B and C are debatable because of e, f and j.

Vocabulary

(:new_vocabulary_start:) obeisance abhorrence oxen to plow monsoon covetousness replete smokestack to garner vicarious foretold winnowing sundry ordeal impinge expletive conundrum calf (:new_vocabulary_end:)

Post-reading model

Draw a schema (using PmGraphViz or another solution) of the situation of the area in the studied domain after having read the book. Link it to the pre-reading model and align the two to help easy comparison.

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Categories

• Information
• Biology
• Psychology

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