The Evolution of Sapience

Finally! Part 5 of my series on the sapience is available here. I apologize for the long delay, but as some of you know I had been preparing for my sabbatical, coming here to Syracuse NY to SUNY-ESF to study energy return on energy investment with Charlie Hall and his students. And believe me, Charlie has kept me hopping.

So here it is: Abstract

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Dylan Thomas

The Emergence and Development of Sapience

The story of sapience and its conjoined twin, second-order consciousness (awareness of being aware), is told in the evolution of hierarchical control, both within the individual human brain and in the societal matrix in which humans operate. It is the emergence of elaborated strategic management of the self, coordination management (tactical and logistical) in the social group, and the begriming of strategic management for the group. Humanity finds itself in an awkward adolescence of consciousness. We have emerged from ape-hood as beings with superior future-thinking, mental models of both ourselves and others, and the language facility to share abstractions. But we are not fully mature sapient adults, on average. As a species we are only somewhat sapient. I suspect the story of our species' evolution has more chapters to open.

In this final installment I want to consider that story in terms of the evolution of sapience in our genus, Homo, its current status with respect to the degree to which it is expressed in modern populations, and its future potential as the next stage in human evolution.

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The whole series can be gotten in the index page.

Comments

[GaryA]

Thanks George. I suspect the reason why comments are sparse on your sapience series is that we cant find much to argue about! In my case it also take a good few days if not weeks to absorb this level of concentrated information- I often think of points much later but by then the discussion has moved on. Plus I reckon we all have our own projects and other fascinations. (My personal interest & passion is music and its influence on self-conscious/awareness into a higher emergence-almost 'third order' consciouness)

[George Mobus]

Hi GaryA.

I am not surprised about the comment traffic. Some people do send me private e-mails from time to time to comment on various subjects. I'm just glad I got that series done. Now I need to turn attention to the Systems Science series (cause that could turn into a book with appropriate material and editing!) and the on-going series about Steps to an energy solution.

Now that I am doing my sabbatical at the epicenter of energy modeling, I expect I will have a good deal more to write about there -- if I get the time!

I also am developing some more detailed work on the relationship between energy flow and the economy (that is probably the most talked about problem here). So look for more explanatory blogs on that subject. We are having a Biophysical Economics meeting here Oct. 16/17 in which I will be presenting some theoretical work on the issues. Should generate lots of discussion and ideas. But the bottom line is we are more convinced than ever that the current economic fiasco is a result of declining net energy flows. It just showed up first in the financial house of cards coming down. What is to come is mind numbing!

I'd better leave it at that for now.

George

[RBM]

I read often, George and thank you for your work.

I have come across something that may be of value to your work. It is a theory of everything that places Consciousness as the larger reality. As you can probably surmise, it is controversial and at this point in a materialistic science paradigm, it is quite problematical.

Thomas Campbell's book site, http://www.my-big-toe.com/catalognew/default.php has an extensive synopsis, https://www.my-big-toe.com/catalognew/about.php of his trilogy.

I believe this adds to the discussion of sapience.

[George Mobus]

HI RBM.

I took a very quick look at the web site yesterday. But I would have to dig deeper to extract any deeper insights. What I read was mostly claims about what he has 'discovered'. And by the looks of it, he has discovered a lot!

I will need more time than I have right now to look more deeply. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Carl Sagan). And the examination of the evidence requires extraordinary time. Right at the moment time is at a premium for me as I try to make the most of my time here at SUNY-ESF and still get in an occasional blog.

Please feel free to expand on your understanding of his contribution in these comments. AFAIK there is no great limit to the length of comments, so you could feel free to provide a synopsis of the parts you feel directly contribute to the conversation on sapience, etc. Consider it an open forum.

When I'm back in the old routine at my home institution I should have more time to review the work.

Regards

George