Re: The Sciences of the Artificial applied to Biology

On Fri, 11 Jul 2025 17:43:36 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jul 2025 14:02:17 -0700, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:
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On Fri, 11 Jul 2025 16:44:47 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:
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On Fri, 11 Jul 2025 12:22:12 -0700, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:
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On Thu, 10 Jul 2025 19:48:28 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:
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On Thu, 10 Jul 2025 15:16:48 -0700, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:
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On Thu, 10 Jul 2025 16:14:51 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:
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On Thu, 10 Jul 2025 11:04:32 -0700, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:
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On Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:38:41 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
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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.
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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.
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Joe
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Ref:  "Simon_Herbert_A_The_Sciences_of_the_Artificial_3rd_ed" - The
Architecture of Complexity.  New copies are available from MIT Press.

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

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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.
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But rocks don't have DNA.

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Sure they do, from everything near.  But a god is better, but it was
getting crowded.
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Plants turn out to be pretty intelligent. A really good book is
Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard.

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I know of that book, but from a book review if I recall.  Made perfect
sense.  There is all kinds of horse trading going on between species,
no matter the size or kind.
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What I always tell people is that if you can see a critter, it's not
actually important, being far outweighed by all the microscopic stuff.
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I'd really like to see the fiberoptic-like fungi network seriously
instrumented.

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I recall seeing that.  There is a kind of clam that has calcite fibers
embedded in its shell, and so has a crude form of vision even when
closed tight.
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Joe

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Humans have upside-down retinas, with klugey light pipes.

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Yes, but what does it matter?  They seem to be doing well enough.

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They are very fragile, barely glued to the back of the eyeball. I have
personal experiences with that.
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I wonder why they evolved that way.

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Well, it persists because it doesn't become a problem until well after
people have had their children.
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Joe

One theory is that having the blood vessels on top gives better
cooling and lets us look up, near the sun, which is good somehow.

Our night vision is correspondingly bad. Some critters can see single
photons.