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Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge
Learn and survive. Behind this simple equation lies a revolution in the study of knowledge, which has left the halls of philosophy for the labs of science. This book offers a cogent account of what such a move does to our understanding of the nature of learning, rationality, and intelligence. Bringing together evolutionary biology, psychology, and philosophy, Henry Plotkin presents a new science of knowledge, one that traces an unbreakable link between instinct and our ability to know.
Contrary to the modern liberal idea that knowledge is something derived from experience, this science shows us that what we know is what our nature allows us to know, what our instincts tell us we must know. Since our ability to know our world depends primarily on what we call intelligence, intelligence must be understood as an extension of instinct. Drawing on contemporary evolutionary theory, especially notions of hierarchical structure and universal Darwinism, Plotkin tells us that the capacity for knowledge, which is what makes us human, is deeply rooted in our biology and, in a special sense, is shared by all living things. This leads to a discussion of animal and human intelligence as well as an appraisal of what an instinct-based capacity for knowledge might mean to our understanding of language, reasoning, emotion, and culture.
The result is nothing less than a three-dimensional theory of our nature, in which all knowledge is adaptation and all adaptation is a specific form of knowledge.
Contrary to the modern liberal idea that knowledge is something derived from experience, this science shows us that what we know is what our nature allows us to know, what our instincts tell us we must know. Since our ability to know our world depends primarily on what we call intelligence, intelligence must be understood as an extension of instinct. Drawing on contemporary evolutionary theory, especially notions of hierarchical structure and universal Darwinism, Plotkin tells us that the capacity for knowledge, which is what makes us human, is deeply rooted in our biology and, in a special sense, is shared by all living things. This leads to a discussion of animal and human intelligence as well as an appraisal of what an instinct-based capacity for knowledge might mean to our understanding of language, reasoning, emotion, and culture.
The result is nothing less than a three-dimensional theory of our nature, in which all knowledge is adaptation and all adaptation is a specific form of knowledge.
269 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 8, 2019
The central theme of this book is that biological adaptation and knowledge are the same thing. A bird migrating south for the winter might be doing so out of some genetic instinct, but Plotkin makes the case that instinct is just knowledge encoded into that bird's genetics. By framing knowledge in this way we can begin to study knowledge in a scientific way.
The first couple chapters are an overview of evolutionary thinking since Darwin. Darwin's theory of natural selection, first introduced in the late 19th-century, has been revised and updated with the advent of modern genetics, undergoing an evolution of its own. Nothing here should be too surprising for anyone with a basic knowledge of evolutionary theory.
Where the book gets interesting is in chapter 3 when Plotkin introduces what he calls Universal Darwinism. When Darwin introduced his theory of natural selection, he intended it to be an explanation of how species change and evolve over time. But on a closer inspection the processes of natural selection have more far-reaching implications about how individual organisms develop over time, and in fact can provide a framework for understanding every aspect of biological life, including the generation of knowledge. As a result, our thoughts themselves evolve in a manner analogous to how species evolve.
So what does it mean for thought a thought to evolve? Well Plotkin proposes that each thought that arises in our conscious experience is a product of the reproduction of previous thoughts. Whether this thought lives or dies depends on selective pressures in our mind such as whether the thought grabs our attention or whether that thought provides an accurate explanation of the environment in which we live.
Plotkin then describes the scientific enterprise--a systematic accumulation of human knowledge--as an evolutionary process of its own. Many scientific theories are put forth every day, but only the theories that can withstand scrutiny by peer-review and provide empirically testable explanations of physical reality are passed on the next generation of scientific theories. These barriers are in effect the selective forces which determine the fitness of our theories within the environment of scientific thought. It is because of the evolutionary nature of human thought that the scientific enterprise has had such success in explaining physical reality.
What the book doesn't delve into is how knowledge is physically embedded within our brain's neural structure. In my opinion, modern research in neural networks and natural language processing provide the clearest avenue to a scientific understanding of how knowledge is physically instantiated within the brain. It seems clear that we have yet to unravel the many mysteries of how the brain creates knowledge, but it also seems clear that the scientific process is powerful enough to unravel these mysteries in the coming decades.
The first couple chapters are an overview of evolutionary thinking since Darwin. Darwin's theory of natural selection, first introduced in the late 19th-century, has been revised and updated with the advent of modern genetics, undergoing an evolution of its own. Nothing here should be too surprising for anyone with a basic knowledge of evolutionary theory.
Where the book gets interesting is in chapter 3 when Plotkin introduces what he calls Universal Darwinism. When Darwin introduced his theory of natural selection, he intended it to be an explanation of how species change and evolve over time. But on a closer inspection the processes of natural selection have more far-reaching implications about how individual organisms develop over time, and in fact can provide a framework for understanding every aspect of biological life, including the generation of knowledge. As a result, our thoughts themselves evolve in a manner analogous to how species evolve.
So what does it mean for thought a thought to evolve? Well Plotkin proposes that each thought that arises in our conscious experience is a product of the reproduction of previous thoughts. Whether this thought lives or dies depends on selective pressures in our mind such as whether the thought grabs our attention or whether that thought provides an accurate explanation of the environment in which we live.
Plotkin then describes the scientific enterprise--a systematic accumulation of human knowledge--as an evolutionary process of its own. Many scientific theories are put forth every day, but only the theories that can withstand scrutiny by peer-review and provide empirically testable explanations of physical reality are passed on the next generation of scientific theories. These barriers are in effect the selective forces which determine the fitness of our theories within the environment of scientific thought. It is because of the evolutionary nature of human thought that the scientific enterprise has had such success in explaining physical reality.
What the book doesn't delve into is how knowledge is physically embedded within our brain's neural structure. In my opinion, modern research in neural networks and natural language processing provide the clearest avenue to a scientific understanding of how knowledge is physically instantiated within the brain. It seems clear that we have yet to unravel the many mysteries of how the brain creates knowledge, but it also seems clear that the scientific process is powerful enough to unravel these mysteries in the coming decades.
October 7, 2014
I really wanted to like this book. And even read in all to get all the best parts from it. But it's just not a must read book on the concept of evolution. The best part of it were the few pages about actual science. They were very illustrative and made the reader create new thoughts. The philosophical parts which were 70-80% of this book seemed unfocused and were not clearly conveyed by the author. One of the things that made me finish the book was the writing, it was brilliant. If this, clearly very knowledgeable, author had books about science or experiments I would read them all right away as he has a great writing style. But he is just not a good philosopher and should have kept away from philosophy, at least in a book form. This book is, at least for me, outdated and not that illustrative of evolution as a philosophy. I would recommend Dawkins books on the subject.
November 19, 2012
Incredibly good book.
December 13, 2013
Evolutionary epistemology. Moves a bit slowly as you'd expect with the topic; but very readable.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews