Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!venera.isi.edu!smoliar
From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Understanding & Explanation (Intelligence requires reflexes)
Summary: What is the current biological story?
Message-ID: <13872@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 12 Jun 90 00:56:37 GMT
References: <13583@venera.isi.edu> <9ehl02tsa9SD01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <583@ntpdvp1.UUCP>
Sender: news@venera.isi.edu
Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute
Lines: 32
Keywords:

Sandra Zinn is back "on the air" with a fascinating piece on reflexes (and a
pleasant relief from all those bits expended over John Searle).  However, I
cannot resist the urge to question one of her foundations.  In article
<583@ntpdvp1.UUCP> sandyz@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Sandra Zinn) writes:
>
>The evolutionary development of biological systems proceeds, according to
>theory, from simple organisms to complex ones.  The complex ones, however,
>are not huge lateral masses of details, but hierarchically structured, with
>layers of complexity built on successful previous layers of complexity.
>
My current .signature is taken from Lewontin's recent review of Stephen Jay
Gould's new book, WONDERFUL LIFE:  THE BURGESS SHALE AND THE NATURE OF HISTORY.
As I understand Gould's story, the fossil record of the Burgess shale
essentially contradicts the traditional view of evolutionary development
which Sandra has articulated.  Nature is apparently much richer in the
diversity it provides and perhaps more arbitrary in which forms actually
survive than we might wish to think.

=========================================================================

USPS:	Stephen Smoliar
	USC Information Sciences Institute
	4676 Admiralty Way  Suite 1001
	Marina del Rey, California  90292-6695

Internet:  smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu

"So, philosophers of science have been fascinated with the fact that elephants
and mice would fall at the same rate if dropped from the Tower of Pisa, but not
much interested in how elephants and mice got to be such different sizes in the
first place."
					R. C. Lewontin