How a Scheme of Segmentation Comes to Be
71
ingenious kind of experiment: In one experiment, the adult is holding a ball
and releases it. If the ball drops, the child shows little interest—but if the ball
is made to hover in the air when the experimenter lets go of it, the baby shows
surprise. A special camera is focused on the baby’s eyes and detects the baby’s
emotional response, whether surprise or boredom.
This lesson applies also to ontologies: We come into the world with an innate
inclination to admit just certain objects as things that exist in the world and
are worth attending to and remembering. As individuals mature, the higher
levels of human ontology are absorbed from the social context.
When people think about the evolution of species, what generally comes
to mind is the development of body structures and internal organs. However,
the structure of an animal’s behavior is at least as important as its anatomy.
There is no such thing as an organism without behavior—and by the same
token, organisms whose behavior is poorly adapted to their environment do
not survive. What an animal is, and how successfully it exploits its habitat, is
determined by its behavior. In a sense, what is most important for assuring the
success of a species is the set of practical skills it has evolved.
Darwin already observed that some kinds of behavior are more adaptive
than others, and species with adaptive behavior eventually replace those whose
behavior makes them less fit. The evolution of behavior is grounded on the same
principles of variation and selection that underlie the evolution of biological
structures. As postulated in the 1940s by Konrad Lorenz, and now confirmed,
there is a genetic basis for the behavior of animals, so that particular behavior
patterns are closely associated with specific genes or groups of genes. 3
On the whole, evolution is a process of increasing complexification. The
simplest creatures, which existed a half billion years ago, have been largely displaced by animals whose body plan is more complex. Likewise, the behavior of
early animals evolved over time and gave way to animals with complex behavior, whose success has been achieved by sophisticated behavioral strategies. It
could be argued that the rise in behavioral complexity was a more powerful
and significant factor than physical evolution in driving the advance of species
toward more effective ways of surviving. It is no coincidence that the most
successful species today is a puny primate, with little in the way of strength or
skill, whose behavioral pattern catapulted it to dominance.
The earliest kinds of inherited behaviors were probably fixed action patterns
and reflex mechanisms imposed by the manner in which physical forces and
constraints impinge on organisms. These elementary, stereotypical response
mechanisms became more flexible when feedback loops became part of the
brain’s motor regions. We see behavior becoming more flexible yet when learn-
71
ingenious kind of experiment: In one experiment, the adult is holding a ball
and releases it. If the ball drops, the child shows little interest—but if the ball
is made to hover in the air when the experimenter lets go of it, the baby shows
surprise. A special camera is focused on the baby’s eyes and detects the baby’s
emotional response, whether surprise or boredom.
This lesson applies also to ontologies: We come into the world with an innate
inclination to admit just certain objects as things that exist in the world and
are worth attending to and remembering. As individuals mature, the higher
levels of human ontology are absorbed from the social context.
When people think about the evolution of species, what generally comes
to mind is the development of body structures and internal organs. However,
the structure of an animal’s behavior is at least as important as its anatomy.
There is no such thing as an organism without behavior—and by the same
token, organisms whose behavior is poorly adapted to their environment do
not survive. What an animal is, and how successfully it exploits its habitat, is
determined by its behavior. In a sense, what is most important for assuring the
success of a species is the set of practical skills it has evolved.
Darwin already observed that some kinds of behavior are more adaptive
than others, and species with adaptive behavior eventually replace those whose
behavior makes them less fit. The evolution of behavior is grounded on the same
principles of variation and selection that underlie the evolution of biological
structures. As postulated in the 1940s by Konrad Lorenz, and now confirmed,
there is a genetic basis for the behavior of animals, so that particular behavior
patterns are closely associated with specific genes or groups of genes. 3
On the whole, evolution is a process of increasing complexification. The
simplest creatures, which existed a half billion years ago, have been largely displaced by animals whose body plan is more complex. Likewise, the behavior of
early animals evolved over time and gave way to animals with complex behavior, whose success has been achieved by sophisticated behavioral strategies. It
could be argued that the rise in behavioral complexity was a more powerful
and significant factor than physical evolution in driving the advance of species
toward more effective ways of surviving. It is no coincidence that the most
successful species today is a puny primate, with little in the way of strength or
skill, whose behavioral pattern catapulted it to dominance.
The earliest kinds of inherited behaviors were probably fixed action patterns
and reflex mechanisms imposed by the manner in which physical forces and
constraints impinge on organisms. These elementary, stereotypical response
mechanisms became more flexible when feedback loops became part of the
brain’s motor regions. We see behavior becoming more flexible yet when learn-