Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge

by Henry Plotkin

Book Overview

Bringing together evolutionary biology, psychology, and philosophy, Henry Plotkin presents a new science of knowledge that traces an unbreakable link between instinct and our ability to know. Since... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067419280X
• ISBN13: 9780674192805
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 269 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

What do we know and when did we know it?

Evolution is the most comprehensive and successful theory of existence yet conceived, and in this volume Henry Plotkin extends its scope to include human knowledge. Further, he helps the reader understand that all adaptation is knowledge, and that human knowledge is merely a special case of that larger truth. At first blush the interchangeability of the concepts of adaptation and knowledge seems strange. How can it be that the webbing of a duck or platypus foot; migration of Monarch butterflies; the modern vertebrate eye; coral's combination of free-swimming larvae and accretive communal adulthood; handedness; pea pod length; et. al., correlate to our brains' capacity to solve quadratic equations or fashion flint tools? The answer lies in the twin attributes of all adaptations. In the words of the author "One was their goal- or end-directed nature. Each and every adaptation is 'for' something." And again, "[this] leads directly to the second characteristic of adaptations. This is their relational quality. Every adaptation comprises organization of an organism relative to some feature of environmental order." This is to say that a duck's webbed feet are an adaptation for swimming faster, and flexible webbing enhances swimming speed because of the density of water, permitting folding and low-drag on the forward stroke followed by spreading and high drag on the thrust stroke. Knowledge, on close inspection, is no different, comprised of the same two parts as all other adaptations: a goal and a relation to the environment. What Plotkin's sweeping investigation of this correlation achieves is to bring our thinking processes fulling into the fold of evolutionary theory. More than ever we can see that humans are not different from the rest of earth life in any meaningful way: we are a special case as are all species, with strengths and weaknesses that make us what we are. Our solutions are not the best possible, just the best available to us now. Or, as Plotkin puts it, "Knowledge may never be absolute and certain, but it is always true enough to be workable." This volume is not an easy read, but the breadth of the author's insight is worth the work. Along the way Plotkin deepened my understanding of the visceral opposition to evolutionary theory on the part of religious zealots: there is truly no room for God in an evolving universe and human knowledge has long been the linch-pin of divine interventionism. Opposable thumbs, hairless skin, Ten Commandments and all, are adaptations to environmental conditions which change over time. As do we.

knowledge from an evolutionary point of view

In this remarkable book, Plotkin attempts to unify philosophical and evolutionary approaches to the concept of `knowledge'. He examines the various ways one can think about this concept and concludes that there is more to it than only philosophical epistemology. That's why the author tries to study knowledge in a broader perspective. In a well written, erudite manner, he guides the reader through philosophy, psychology and evolutionary biology. After a short introduction, Plotkin devotes a chapter to sketching the theory of evolution and its natural outcome: adaptation. He continues with the statement that the concepts of evolutionary theory have far broader applicability. They can be used to explain aspects of how our immune system works, the organisation of our brain, or the way science works. Plotkin introduces a model that can be used to study all these different subjects from the same evolutionary point of view. After these chapters we are well prepared to follow Plotkin in the application of his theoretical framework to the origin of knowledge. The fourth chapter contains the core of Plotkin's argumentation. Here he states that knowledge (also behavioural knowledge) and adaptation are closely related concepts. In fact, he maintains that all adaptations can be viewed as a form of knowledge, and knowledge as an adaptation. With this in mind he examines different kinds of behaviour. He discusses behaviour without thought, also known as instincts. Instincts are adaptations, evolved to cope with predictable changes of the environment. However, when the environment changes in an unpredictable manner, organisms need more than instincts. According to Plotkin, our intelligence is an adaptation which makes it possible to handle such unpredictable changes. Plotkin believes in the modularity of the mind. This theory states that the brain contains certain modules involved in processing modular-specific information. The most famous example is Chomsky's language module. The knowledge obtained through these modules has epistemic boundaries. Plotkin finds evidence for this point of view when he examines our ability to reason logically, the development of language, emotions and culture. He states that because of these boundaries, our intelligence is also restricted. We cannot learn anything we want. In our struggle to cope with the unpredictable changes in our environment, we are condemned to make failures. In the last chapter we turn to philosophy. Hume stated that induction can never lead to reliable knowledge. Plotkin agrees and confines that evolutionary epistemology cannot say anything about this reliability problem. Kant maintained that we can only know things in the way they are modulated by the mind, hence we cannot obtain true knowledge. Here Plotkin does not agree. Evolution provides the evidence for the fact that the surviving organisms `got it right' most of the time. So we are capable of generating knowledge that is reliable (enough). In fact

Our evolutionary roots control the way we learn.

Meaty and intellectual exploration of the evolutionary basis of knowledge and learning, a subject known as evolutionary epistemology. We have built-in filters and mechanisms that control our learning, resulting in quirky but predictable oddities in our perceptions and abilities. --Richard Brodie, author, Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Mem