Darwin On My Mind

[dukealien]

Darwin On My Mind


Evolution’s subtle
but not difficult:
things (species, individuals)
arise, some die, some breed.
There is no guiding purpose
merely collisions with reality.

Just so in mind:
thoughts arise
some die, some breed;
there is no intelligence.

As for consciousness,
we have evolved a way
for a second sense to follow
as a single thought evolves...
not fox pursuing rabbit, but
one worm chewing on
another’s casts.

[TranquillityBase]

Darwin On My Mind


Evolution’s subtle
but not difficult:
things (species, individuals)
arise, some die, some breed.
There is no guiding purpose
merely collisions with reality.

Just so in mind:
thoughts arise
some die, some breed;
there is no intelligence.          

As for consciousness,
we have evolved a way
for a second sense to follow
as a single thought evolves...
not fox pursuing rabbit, but
one worm chewing on
another’s casts.

Duke,

An interesting read.  I'm assuming the second sense you are referring to is conciousness, or could it be the unconscious?  "there is no intelligence" probably is begging for argument, but I'm not much invested in the subject, so you won't get it from me.  Like the way each stanza ends, especially the last lines of last stanza, a very vivid image.

TqB

[rowens]

There is no intelligence that is fulfilling a purpose. Consciousness was hooked-up and stands out like a sore thumb because of what the Frenchman said about Cognition. That's the problem with clever sayings, people take them for gospel proof. For all that, there is an intelligence. It's a word that means purpose and aim. So we have just called two words with one phon-. My aim was sharp. Consciousness is awareness. There is a consciousness that You are not aware of that You call unconscious, the trick is whether or not the unconscious is an intelligence. It obviously regulates certain things that Your awareness takes for granted. These may be simple patterns that haphazardly got fixed, understood by the rhetoric: why fix what works?
  Maybe the phrase should go: I'm aware therefore I aim. But to what extent and by what measure?


Is that germane enough to the subject?

[rayheinrich]

I love the chewing on casts metaphor.
No intrinsic violence, though it can definitely lead to a woolly mammoth's destruction.
But hey, it can lead to some juicy berries as well.

Or it can lead to poems such as this one:
On the outside a juicy berry, but at its heart, quite wooly.