[From: Bruce Nevin (Tue 930126 08:31:56)]
(From Greg Williams (930126) ) --
A number of months ago I tried to show (though "showing"
something involves 2-part harmony) that control systems of a
given order (e.g. cells) are necessarily oblivious to the means
by which they implement ECSs and their perceptual signals,
hierarchies of perceptual control, etc. in control systems of the
next higher order (e.g. animals and plants). The same principle
applies to the Gaia hypothesis. The means and terms of feedback
are obscured for us, through evolutionary selection, because if
they became more evident to us as perceptions they might become
controlled perceptions, which would ruin us as constituents of
the (postulated) higher-order control systems. Disclosing what
is going on behind this veil must be undertaken very carefully.
The bicycle might fall over (our participation in effecting
perceptual control in a control system of order Gaia, as
byproducts of our individual control in face of ecologically
coordinated environmental disturbances). If humans be analogous
to cortical brain cells, the analog of epilepsy might ensue for
gaia. Indeed, we may be in the fringes of that now.
All of which is not proof of course, but only an argument for
the plausibility of the hypothesis.
Bruce
bn@bbn.com