Design In Nature -2-

“The verb “to design” has been monumentally unproductive in our quest to understand design in nature for three main reasons. First, it led to the common view that the things humans design are “artificial,” in contrast to the “natural” designs that surround us. This is wrong, because we are part of nature and our designs are governed by the same principle as everything else, the constructal law. Second, it has led some of us to search for “the designer”—God, or an individual, who must be behind every design. Science is not and never was the search for “the designer.” The name for that much older search is religion. Finally, it has led other, more scientifically minded people to reject the idea of design in nature as part of a broader repudiation of the traditional idea of a designer.”

Zane, J. Peder; Bejan, Adrian (2012-01-24). Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization (Kindle Locations 897-903). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

KB:  The reason I use the term network consciousness is because my reading of animal behavior leads me to believe that there is only one kind of evolution (confirmed in this book by the constructal law) and thus all systems from the inanimate to the animate are part of one universal dynamic, i.e. the network. The earth, moon and the sun, tectonic plates, prey and predator ecosystems, and geopolitics all evolve within the one network because these all subscribe to the same principles of nature. I believe it is more sensible to believe that genes mutate according to principles of energy rather than by random. This idea has been criticized as magical thinking by modern biologists who consider their theory of random gene mutations to be a rational, fact based, rigorous system of thinking.  However unlike modern biology, Natural Dog Training does not ask What causes dogs to do what they do, i.e. what creates behavior, which is what modern evolutionary theory is doing with the theory of gene replication being the “creator” of behavior. Rather it asks How do dogs do what they do, what is going on inside the dog during a moment of behavior? The How question leads us to see that two equal/opposite emotional poles allow emotion as energy to move from a pole of high concentration (stress) to a place of less concentration (preyful aspect absorbs stress).The flow of emotion then begets the social structure, or design, to implement this flow according to the principle of emotional conductivity. The important thing to understand is that the How question which leads to the correct definition of the design, neither proves nor disproves the notion of a Designer. What it shows is that either position requires the same leap of faith. Paradoxically the Intelligent Designers and Creationists are aware of the leap of faith they make, whereas modern biologists believe they are being strictly rational. They are unaware of their faith in their God of Randomness as the Creator of behavior.

Why is there but one network? Because all forms of life participate in the flow of emotion as energy. Resistance to the flow of energy creates stress. All emotional beings are therefore carriers of an emotional charge more than they can be said to be carriers of genes. Eventually through billions upon billions of interactions over time, the universal action of emotion becoming unresolved (stress as the physical memory of pure emotion toward something positive) intensifies and disseminates the charge and in this way (e–>UE–>RE) computes the many carriers into but one design pattern not only for the more efficient flow of energy, but to add more energy to the network so that it can continually expand. So stress evolved in order to transmit information of an emotional content through the system and through time and thus the network always becomes more complex. In other words, raw physical energy of natural forces becomes information. Energy enters the network and is processed into information, i.e. it inflects the feelings of one organism and changes how it feels toward other organisms and beings.

(From what I’ve read so far, I believe the author would contest the point I’m making here in that he is arguing that the constructal law validates modern Darwinism, even though as far as I can see the constructal law undermines the central tenet of modern biology. I believe he might say that genes mutate by random, but only the ones that subscribe to the constructal law go on to flourish. But even if the mutations can be called random, again, I think this merely returns us right back to the same leap of faith. The most important thing is when trying to understand How do dogs do what they do, that we put the question of ultimate causation aside and understand that behavior must subscribe to a universal dynamic of flow and that this is far more fundamental than gene replication. When we see two dogs meet and greet, if they subscribe to the emotional principle of flow then they flourish. Their behavior has nothing to do with dominance and gene propagation.)

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Published March 7, 2012 by Kevin Behan
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6 responses to “Design In Nature -2-”

  1. Ben says:

    Can you expound on how randomness is a leap of faith? I think I get the gist of what you’re saying elsewhere.. but the actual nuts and bolts of how mutations occur in genes is very well understood. If I understand correctly though, you’re saying that, holistically, the point of evolution is the propagation of the flow of emotion and to add information to the network? And that genes are but a “tool” in service to that network?

    Randomness in evolution is supported by current “accepted” interpretation of the evidence available, so I don’t see how it is a leap of faith? If there is indeed something deeper and it is not truly random, then that is an error, an oversight — it does not mean it was a leap of faith.

    Just trying to get my head around this! I’ve got Design In Nature in my Amazon queue.. I’ll be reading it just as soon as I finish Incomplete Nature which looks to be quite a daunting read.

  2. kbehan says:

    What got me thinking along these lines was that first, we know that specific traits are inheritable, and we also know that in any litter of pups, there will be a predictable diversity across a personality spectrum. In other words, genes seem to be distributed according to a precise protocol rather than a random mixing of mother and father’s genes. So we can see this same “design” in the spectrum of the various breeds of dogs, and this then correlates with the spectrum of hunting orientations when wolves align around a large dangerous prey. We also know there’s a direct feed from the environment to the genome by way of epigenetics which influences timing of the genes, and also stress chemicals inhibit the expression of the genes and also the timing of their expression. We also have viruses that manipulate the genetic code of cells in the body, and then the intermixing of bacterium genes with human genes in the composition of the overall organism (there is 100 times more bacterial DNA inextricably incorporated into our physical body, and in communion with vast legions of bacterium external to our body) and so If all of nature subscribes to the same flow dynamics, then the genes within us, in their timing and precise expression, would most logically be subscribing to the energetic principles the external world is subject to especially given that their is this fundamental interface with viruses and bacterium, not to mention quantum effects happening on the microscopic scale of cell function. Does the mutation of one gene with the movement of single electrons have any affiliation with other electrons forming the bonds in other genes?
    Finally, I’m not very good at math but it seems to me that if we don’t know what Pi is, then we can’t really say what is random and what is a pattern. From our particular frame of reference we can say that a particular sequence seems to be random, but as someone who designed computer programs to generate random numbers once told me, it’s really just a point of granularity that determines when we consider something to be random or not. It’s an arbitrary designation. Also, this doesn’t mean that something has to be deterministic, that without random there has to be intention. When charged particles of consciousness interact, we may never know how specifically they will arrive at a coherent form, but whatever form is generated, it will have to subscribe to a template.
    Furthermore, I believe consciousness is energy, with emotion being how it evolved to affect material objects coherently, in this view the genetics would reflect the underlying emotional process, rather than the other way around. I was told by a biology major doing field work in Africa, that due to poaching of the males for their tusks, the young males began to be born without tusks. I’ve heard that a litter of kittens born from domestic cats under a porch in a feral setting, are genetically different from another litter of cats born from the same parents in a domestic context. I’m open to the idea that modern dogs are genetically disposed to becoming aggressive to whole males because there is such a powerful judgment in society against whole males. And then autism seems to be spreading faster than a genetic model can accommodate or even environmental toxins can explain.
    So what I’m trying to say is that the genes shift in conformance with the overall network, nature as a whole, so that when there is a shift at one end, there will be a counterbalancing shift needed at the other, and the genes execute this counterbalance to conform to the overall network which must subscribe to a template. Hope this clarifies and appreciate any input.

  3. john says:

    On a small scale, would that genes shift in conformance be similar to the Russian fox experiment, where as a number of fox’s became social through the generations, inversely certain other fox’s in the experiment became completely and utterly anti social, thanks

  4. kbehan says:

    This is exactly right and is why for example, the more the world’s greatest breeders, German Schutzhund breeders, select for working traits, the more by default they select for the counterbalance, i.e. shyness.

  5. Annie says:

    I can’t resist bringing up Vermont poet Robert Frost’s famous piece, “Design”….anyone familiar with it?

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Books about Natural Dog Training by Kevin Behan

In Your Dog Is Your Mirror, dog trainer Kevin Behan proposes a radical new model for understanding canine behavior: a dog’s behavior and emotion, indeed its very cognition, are driven by our emotion. The dog doesn’t respond to what the owner thinks, says, or does; it responds to what the owner feels. And in this way, dogs can actually put people back in touch with their own emotions. Behan demonstrates that dogs and humans are connected more profoundly than has ever been imagined — by heart — and that this approach to dog cognition can help us understand many of dogs’ most inscrutable behaviors. This groundbreaking, provocative book opens the door to a whole new understanding between species, and perhaps a whole new understanding of ourselves.
  Natural Dog Training is about how dogs see the world and what this means in regards to training. The first part of this book presents a new theory for the social behavior of canines, featuring the drive to hunt, not the pack instincts, as seminal to canine behavior. The second part reinterprets how dogs actually learn. The third section presents exercises and handling techniques to put this theory into practice with a puppy. The final section sets forth a training program with a special emphasis on coming when called.
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