Lamarck

Dear all,

I wanted to address some of the recent comments on VEMS with respect to
biology. I think we have been referring to two general topics, 1) the
emergence and evolution of VEMS (why individuals became societies) and 2)
VEM dynamics (inter and intra-society discriminations). From my point of
view, the first involves explanations that are more ultimate and refers to
genes and the other is more proximate and perhaps refers more to memes (� la
Richard Dawkins).

An important difference is that gene type fitness is correlated with
Darwinian natural selection pressures. But social fitness is not Darwinian,
instead it seems Lamarkian! One thing is slow, long term, a priori evolution
and
another is immediate, fast changing, experiential dynamics which are shared
above and beyond genetic information. Importantly, Lamarkian dynamics also
leaves room for reversibility (which I think is an important element in
VEMS and has been mentioned by Stockinger and Ebeling).

When we refer to the inception of social complexity and VEMS we can look
to natural selection pressures as a cause e.g. colonies or societies formed
to improve defense, mating opportunities, food finding etc. But once the
minimal
society is formed (and we get rituals, rites and VEMS) we jump to different
dynamics and leave room for things like altruism (another messy field which
is still quite hotly debated in biology), shared accumulation of knowledge,
etc.

I think the discussion on fitness up to now has dealt only with individual
fitness in a Darwinian sense, but social systems move in a Lamarkian
dynamic.

And a final question, Is the bridge between genes and memes what we call
"information processing"?

Morris
Received on Tue Oct 27 21:40:27 1998