Category: Uncategorized

LOSS OF TOOL PLASTICITY. "Due to developmental constraint, these core GRNs have been highly conserved since the Cambrian. Disruption of these core developmental networks is generally catastrophic, and so, once established, they are very difficult to modify and change (i.e., have low “evolvability”)." (GRNs = gene regulatory networks). https://lnkd.in/dTKCkih View in LinkedIn

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE. "The invention of the printing press was at its time perceived as a threat to European culture, social order and morality. “Ever since they began to practice this perverse excess of printing books, the church has been greatly damaged,” lamented Francisco Penna, a Dominican defender of the Spanish Inquisition." There are modern parallels of course. https://lnkd.in/d8-nHvR View in LinkedIn

TOOL REWIRING. "Some of these “experiments” were successful, producing the animal body plans that we see today. Each of the many diverse body plans would have been formed by a distinct regulatory network, formed by roughly the same set of regulatory genes acting in different combinations and regulated by a different set of developmental enhancers." https://lnkd.in/dTKCkih View in LinkedIn

COMMUNICATION IMPACT. "Throughout human history new technologies of communication have had a significant impact on culture." The printing press. Morse code. The telegraph. The telephone. TV. Radio. The internet. https://lnkd.in/d8-nHvR View in LinkedIn

TOOL COMPLEXIFICATION. "In an ancestral metazoan, this parts list must have been employed in relatively simple GRNs, controlling the development of an ancestral body plan. During early animal evolution there must have been a period of rapid experimentation involving the re-wiring of this parts list in many different combinations." (GRNs = gene regulatory networks). https://lnkd.in/dTKCkih View in LinkedIn

OLD DRIVERS. "Historically, cultural evolution occurred through migration. Migration happens as a result of war, geographical changes or survival requirements and demands. War affected the cultures morals, and regions (if they were dominated etc.) Regional domination could imply control over the population, causing the citizens to move.” https://lnkd.in/dsKGhcp View in LinkedIn

SIMILAR TOOLS. "A central conclusion from decades of developmental genetics is that the same regulatory genes control development across diverse animal groups. That is, the same basic “parts list” is re-deployed in the core of developmental programs of diverse animals, and it is the alternative regulatory connections between these genes that must explain most of the alternative morphologies of animals." https://lnkd.in/dTKCkih View in LinkedIn

AN ENORMOUS CULTURAL EXPERIMENT is taking share before our eyes. Our youth have digitized childhoods, locked into social media in a way never seen before. The next generation will have an entirely different relationship to the internet and the cybernetic world, and likely be early adopters of new virtual technology. View in LinkedIn

AMPLIFIED OPTIONS. "Gene duplication itself is widely considered to facilitate evolution. The redundancy that arises immediately following duplication is generally thought to allow for beneficial mutations to accumulate and new functions to arise. Thus, the increase in parts (regulatory genes) and the resulting explosion in the ways the parts could be put together probably opened up new possibilities of forms that, under permitting environmental and ecological conditions, could be attained." https://lnkd.in/dTKCkih View in LinkedIn

TOOLKIT AMPLIFICATION MATHS. "To illustrate the point, a network of 2 genes that can activate, repress, or do nothing to each other or themselves, has 81 possible topologies, while a network of 3 such genes has 19,683 possible topologies (number of topologies = 3(n)(2), where there are n2 interactions between pairs of genes and each interaction can be positive, negative, or neither of the two)." https://lnkd.in/dTKCkih View in LinkedIn