Re: The Sciences of the Artificial applied to Biology

On Thu, 10 Jul 2025 11:04:32 -0700, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:

On Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:38:41 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:
>

I forgot to mention that he Sciences of the Artificial digs deep into
why living things (even microscopic ones) have distinct organs and
often components within such organs, versus the organism being a mass
of tissue that somehow does everything.  The driver is efficiency and
simplicity.
>
This assumes that life has already emerged in some unspecified way,
and goes from there.  This is a different approach than Dawkin's
Blind-Watchmaker arguments.
>
Joe
>
>
Ref:  "Simon_Herbert_A_The_Sciences_of_the_Artificial_3rd_ed" - The
Architecture of Complexity.  New copies are available from MIT Press.

>
Even single-cell critters have levels of intelligence. Some people
suggest some level of consciousness.

I would not go quite that far.  Resembles ancient paganism and
pantheism, where behind every rock and plant there is a god of some
sort.

The book sounds cool.

It is.  It was and to some degree still is very influential thirty
years later.

Dawkin says he is an atheist above anything else. So he naturally
hides from anything that's not primitive neo-Darwinism.

Yes.  Dawkins may have drawn on The Sciences of the Artificial, but
they differ.  Don't recall if he cites it.

Joe