Adonis Diaries

What did come first? (Jan. 24, 2010)

There is this hellish cycle: a chicken lays an egg to generate chicken; and the cycle continues.  What comes first, nature or nurture…? Human brain is not satisfied with this obvious mechanism: our brain wants to know the origin of the process.  For example, what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Then what? Would this cycle cease to exist if we “resolve” the origin problem? Would any interpretation or conjecture make a difference?

Now suppose we take a different perspective and instead of considering the source we tackle the problem as a medium issue? Let us declare: the egg uses the chicken as a mean to generate another egg.  Would that satisfy human curiosity and drop the origin “idée-fix”?  It makes plenty of sense: an egg is an egg and uses many different mediums (name with me the varieties of fowls that lay eggs; hell, snakes lay eggs!) Sure, the “essence” or nature of the egg is different when hatched but the process is fundamentally the same. Eggs can be hatched without fowls: industrial processes do it all the time. An egg can be altered genetically and generate a diversity of fowls.

Can we claim that it is the process that counts? It appears that the chicken must have come first:  There are more essential components in a chicken that an egg lacks.

Still, human mind would counter: “who created the egg?” or the first kind of egg in the first place? Now we are back to “origins” and creators.  What if it is not the egg that count during the process or mechanism that generated an egg?  

Would the purpose of sciences be based on the study, analysis, and invention of processes that optimize the production of particular products that human need?  Maybe not to survive as mankind, but indeed to live in luxury and opulence while living?

By analogy to chicken and egg cycle, let us consider the cycle of laws and facts (data).  Let us bypass the previous lengthy reasoning and tackle the problematic head on. Let me state: “facts use laws to produce facts.”  There are varieties of natural and social laws that generate facts for the brain to perceive. Actually, the brain is the machine that set the foundations for generating laws in order to perceive facts.

The brain is the eminent scientist: no law can be discovered that the brain had not the potential to recognize or manufacture. The Erica syndrome is common among scientists: a law was in hiding to taunt the hard working and focused scientist to discover it, by using many viewing perspectives and possibilities.

The brain has the scientific mechanism in place to discovering whatever laws or “truths” we are willing to uncover.  We use reasoning methods such as deductive, inductive, and abductive methods (you may read my post “Abduction field”); we use all kinds of plausible logic systems to structure our processes; we have various senses to extend our perception into “seeing” the facts.

Actually vision and hearing go through many filters (processes) in order to be perceived by the brain: they are more complex and richer impressions (distorted perceptions) than smell, taste or touch. All we have to do is to take seriously the “rhetorical” mechanisms (analogy, association…) that the brain is excellent at processing in order to offer us the means to discoveries.

It is time that scientists boldly proclaim that their Ericas were pretty much within the common realm of capabilities of every normal man, if he had the passion and endurance to go the extra mile in whatever could interest his “nature”.

The “truth” is this: the universe is the facts and the brain the laws.  Our brain is just the medium to perceive models of the real universe. If we manage to preserve an adult human brain from deterioration, then the brain will “sees” universes and it will create new facts to amuse and exercise its “curiosity”.  Preserve a new born brain and it will “see” the same incoherent universe (whatever this thing might be) in vivid colors and rich sounds that adult brains have blunted for survival needs: the brain needs outside impressions to form and become an efficient processors of impressions to perceive coherent worlds.

Note: I tend to agree with Umberto Eco that books generate books.  Authors are medium in that process. An author does not have to have read plenty of books to emulate a notion, an idea, a concept, or a process that was not already published.  The human brain is assimilating world data and world knowledge and many “coincidences” are very much “reasonably” plausible. (You may read my post “how the mind acquires knowledge”)

Note 2:  You may read the follow up article https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/what-comes-first-totally-irrelevant-question-in-most-cases/