Aperture of Perception
From Mbscientific_wiki
Accumulation of Abstraction (knowledge) and the Widening Aperture of Perception
As we saw in the last chapter biotic neural networks can form abstractions. The Inherent Reality, within which we exist, presents us (as in all animals with heuristic neural nets) with stimuli representing abstract entities and phenomenon. That stimuli that we discern is then affirmed and stored in our memories. Then depending on circumstances we act on the stimuli to get a desired result. When significant results are obtained the action sequences and the logic (if-then-else) scenarios get committed to memory as well. Together, the memories of the stimuli, the actions and the logic form kernels of abstraction. Put together all of these abstractions form Perceived Reality.
We asked the question in the last chapter, why is it that the animals in the case studies stop short and we have taken abstraction to the extent that we have? The answer is Symbolic Thinking, and specifically writing.
Consider this, in the animal case studies all of the animals are primarily driven by their reptile/emotional brains. Symbolic thinking is in the domain of the cerebral brain. When researchers took the inordinate amount of time (years, even decades) to train the parrot or the Bonobo or the dolphin, they actually trained them to think and communicate symbolically.
If you think about it are we all that different? We take years and decades to think symbolically as well. And the more time we take to train our brains the more capable of composing complex abstraction we become.
When strung together these abstractions become tools for our survival. Knowledge, simply put, is abstraction that is affirmed, confirmed, corroborated and incorporated in a functionality. In that sense knowledge is a subset of the abstractions that our neural networks form, particularly in the cerebral (conscious) domain of our triune brain. For example, I might form an abstraction involving a shape of a cloud, color of the sky, pleasantness of the day. And that may make me feel good, so it is of value but not applicable use. On the other hand if I have knowledge of the weather patterns for the day, I could put it to practical use, e.g. dress warmly so I wouldn't freeze. So knowledge implies functionality, i.e. knowledge of something.
Our primary tool for symbolic communication and accumulation of knowledge through out our history has been writing. With oral communication of knowledge one has to be within ear shot and even then, unless repeated over and over, the knowledge could be forgotten. Writing expands the domain of communicable knowledge. And if we forget it, we can always read it again.
There is one special class of writing that has been seminal in our evolution, mathematics. Simply put math helps us build. And it is in that building process, that is the application of knowledge to create something pertinent to the business of survival, that we take the accumulation of knowledge to a whole different level.
Knowledge can be strung together to form larger kernels of rewarding knowledge, rewarding functionalities. In that sense, knowledge evolves in a hierarchy of complexity. Lets use the lesson of this exercise to demonstrate the point.
We started off with the elementary particles, a known class of abstractions. They coalesced to create atoms, another known class. Atoms coalesced to create molecules, another known class. They formed organic material, another known class. Some of them went on to form cells, another known class. Cells went on to form the tree of life, another known class. You get my point, lets stop there for now. As this example shows, knowledge coalesces with other similar known abstractions in what we can classify as a group, or a class, category. Then we might discover that that class (category) is a subclass (sub-category) of another class, or a super-class of another class, or both. And that is how knowledge accumulates. Our brain classifies similar knowledge in related classes, and then is goes about defining the subclasses and the super-classes. If the knowledge is affirmed, so much for the better, if not, it makes up its own artifacts anyway (figments of imagination) just to create closure.
If we string all of those classifications together we'll end up with a knowledge tree (of sorts), depicting the hierarchy of what we have learned.
By the way, that is how we communicate symbolically. Take any story, any movie, any book. You can break it down into a knowledge tree. Don't take my word for it, consider how they are made and then advertised, to get you to buy them, see them. They are first presented at the highest order of abstraction. And it is then unfolded, broken down to smaller subsets, plot points and flow lines (that would hopefully make sense, entice). And once you experience it, if it is any good, your brain should be able to integrate all of the sub-plots hierarchically, i.e. to make sense of the whole thing!
And that is how knowledge is taught. Take any course. It is presented at the highest order of abstraction (course title, abstract). Then it is broken down to chapters and sub-chapters (specific course topics).
And if that specific knowledge tree is to depict something real out of inherent reality, e.g. biology, chemistry, physics, etc. (as opposed to fiction), then it has to match the actual morphological flows that brought about the subject at hand. So, if the subject at hand has an inherent morphological flow (figure below left) then we would mentally depict it as a mnemonic knowledge tree (figure below right).
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If you add up all of the stories, lessons, courses, etc. that coalesce in your mind, you end up with your personal knowledge tree set. In time, as your personal knowledge tree set accumulates via learning, your behavior evolves, your consciousness evolves, your aperture of perception evolves, you evolve.
But as a rule, these knowledge tree sets are disjoint. Our brains are wired to piece them together. That, is the MENTAL CLOSURE we crave. In fact in many if not all of our professions we are paid and expected to have connected up the knowledge trees pertaining to that profession. Say, if you are an electrician, you need to have connected up all of the applicable knowledge trees pertaining to your profession, if you don't, i.e. can't do a job because you don't know parts of, you'll get fired.
Throughout our lives we internalize many knowledge trees sets which our minds amalgamate via finding corroborated or uncorroborated closures. The amalgam itself becomes a knowledge tree set. And as we live on and learn on, the internalized knowledge tree sets expand.
So that is how knowledge coalesces. And that is no accident. As we find out, once we understand morphological flows, that is how morphological flows coalesce! Morphological flows are apparently the demonstrable property of our surrounding Inherent Reality, the way of the coalescence of the abstract. It is no wonder that abstractions of the brain have to mimic the real thing to get it right. I'll take it a step further, how knowledge morphologies assembles in your brain must reflect how morphologies coalesce in Inherent Reality. That is the ONLY way your mental model can render the real thing. We can in fact visualize this:
To be technically accurate, a knowledge tree is really a knowledge GRAPH. A graph is a mathematical structure, like a tree, but where any element of the tree can connect up to any other element of the tree. So a knowledge element in a class can connect up with any other element in any other class in the tree. But, since hardly anyone knows about graphs, and if they do they think of a chart or a curve or some such thing, lets stick with the word knowledge tree. Though this is a technical distinction, the graph like connections of internalized knowledge trees are critical to the expansion of knowledge trees. Dreams, both day dreams and night dreams, use these graph connections regularly to join up knowledge. I'll give you 2 examples.
First, the visualization of the Benzene molecule; in 1865, Friedrich Kekulé visualized the structure of benzene in a dream as a regular hexagon with a hydrogen at each corner: "My mental eye..could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformations; long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together; all twisting and turning in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail...". His mind plugged in his chemistry knowledge tree with a new node extracted from circling snakes, from his animal knowledge tree: "...the form whirled mockingly before my eyes...", he wrote.
The second example is a personal one. In 1980, at Arizona State, I was working on interpolation problems, specifically building connected structures from measured data points, e.g. physical surfaces from elevation points (map of Monterey Bay from elevation points gathered from sonar soundings.. this one ended up in National Geographic many years later). I noticed that through my mind, my hand could draw a line curving from point to point to point, and at the time we had no formulaic mechanism to automate it. Then it came to me dreamlike. I saw in my mind's eye spaceships being pulled in by planetary gravities, and upon reaching one planet's orbit their engines would fire towards the next planet, and so on. And that is what I did, I made the data points gravitational attractor sets, my plot lines spaceships, and I let the formulas run and literally spin surfaces out of the data points. I plugged in my interpolation knowledge tree from known concepts in my planetary physics knowledge tree.
If you think about is, most of (night) dreams are nonsensical. That is, the mind attempts to connect up all of these separate knowledge trees. Most of those connections are not affirmed, they don't make sense. But, the connections that are affirmed, that do make sense, expand the knowledge tree. And it is the graph like connections of the knowledge trees that do the job.
That is the basis for the evolutionary architecture of knowledge, of the mind, of consciousness.
Going back to a point we made in the last chapter, once knowledge is corroborated and applied repeatedly, it becomes instinctive, i.e. long term genes in its container neural networks switch on. That kernel of knowledge can then serve as input for the heuristic circuits trying to assemble any other knowledge that might use that kernel. By the same token, knowledge trees that are sufficiently affirmed become part of instinctive behavior. Much more on this later.
So we are born with our 5 senses, our initial affirmation inputs. Then through out our school years, class times and play times, work, and life in general, we mentally assemble our knowledge trees. In that process something interesting happens.
There is this Inherent Reality that surrounds us, within which things exist of their own volition, regardless of whether we perceive them or not. I sense what I call the physical, through my 5 senses: touch, sight, smell, hearing and taste. This is by enlarge the domain of the ancient hind, mid and fore brains and the neural physiology and the resultant behavior that it renders are pretty much pre-wired in me. For me that is the initial condition of my aperture of perception, I sense what is physical through that narrow keyhole.
Then I start learning, forming my knowledge trees. As these abstractions are corroborated, calculations are made and verified, devices built and used, then the results of these abstractions register on my 5 senses as well. Therefore my notion of what is physical expands, my sense of perceived reality expands, my aperture of perception expands.
Given the extent of that inherent limitation of my, our, aperture of perception, I am nothing short of amazed that we have managed to accumulate this much knowledge, applied abstractions.
A modern person is totally dependent upon successfully applied abstractions. If you consider the range of tools and appliances that you use daily, e.g. cars, computers, phones, etc., they are all successfully applied abstractions. By the same token, if you are a knowledge worker, say an architect, engineer, doctor, physicist, etc., your work is entirely engulfed in the applied abstraction domain. Perhaps one can even argue that the very success of us humans is completely dependent upon successfully applying abstractions. The most primitive actions such as using tools, planting crops, even hunting and gathering, to some certain extent require the formulation of abstractions and acting upon them. The abstractions that are applied successfully then take root and can be copied, modified, combined to create further applications that enhance the business of survival.
Knowledge trees grow in two specific manners, incrementally and transcendentally. Incremental abstractions draw from the known and expand upon it, perform associative logic. One sees a bike, sees a motor, plans how to put the motor on the bike and comes up with a motor bike. Transcendental abstractions don't reduce to anything previously known. That is when one strings together a knowledge tree and perceives a hole (a missing subset/superset), which he then proceeds to plug in by mentally deducing a heretofore unknown abstraction. The history of science is replete with transcendental abstractions, electro-magnetism, quantum mechanics, relativity theory, etc. are all transcendental abstractions. Transcendental abstractions are also the corner stones of religious thought (referred to as revelations). Abstractions then, are generally a combination of incremental and transcendental abstractions to various degrees. And once new abstractions are corroborated, they append the knowledge tree and it grows.
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