Theory of Consciousness as a Biological Imperative

A thorough appreciation of Earth’s Evolution over deep-time indicates that awareness appeared with the first living cells on Earth, billions of years ago, then came the complex internally cooperative metropolis of the eukaryotic cells !

By and by some 600 millions years ago those cells created organisms that evolved into basically ever more complicated sensing, processing, and action creatures.

The intellectual foundation for a Theory of Consciousness would need to begin with understanding the Ediacaran and Cambrian Periods and the birth of complex creatures and ecology and biomes and competition and so on.

From the day by day physical reality of Earth’s Evolution, a Theory of Consciousness must recognize that, “Consciousness” is in fact, a fundamental biologic imperative of life.

Fast forward

The Brain in a Vat doesn’t exist, the brain exists within a body, the two combined create a living creature, and it is the living that creates consciousness.

Isn’t your body your one companion through every moment of the life you’ve experienced? Your body is your Inner-Observer giving constant feedback to the brain. Or?

Love it or hate it, your body is the vehicle through which you’ve experienced everything and learned everything.

Human consciousness is the cherry upon Earth’s Consciousness Sundae.

I love this metaphor’s poetic coincidence, in that this human cherry of an introspective mind is nestled within a mountain of mammalian consciousness by way of whipped cream.


Obviously I’m approaching all this from a simple humanist Earth Centrist perspective, so my sketch may be a crayon drawing, rather than a scholar’s detailed sketch, still our understanding needs to start somewhere.

From the tower:

The Hidden Spring
A Journey to the Source of Consciousness
Mark Solms

… I’ve begun to realize that at its core consciousness is actually something rather different. Yes, its implementation involves computational sophistication. But its essence is not so much about what can happen as about having ways to integrate what’s happening to make it somehow coherent and to allow what we might see as “definite thoughts” to be formed about it.

What Is Consciousness?
2018, by Christof Koch
Scientists are beginning to unravel a mystery that has long vexed philosophers.

Microtubules. They allow cells to communicate with each other! We always come back to the “data processor”, since the beginning of evolution of single cells.

Microtubules have been there since the beginning! A simple dimer of 2 tubulins arranged into a dipolar variable coil. And we have the beginning of conscious communication.

CC, you really need to look deeper into the capabilities of microtubules. The philosophical approach will begin to make more sense.

Note, ALL Eukaryotic organisms have microtubules (cytoplasm and cytoskeleton) by the billions and trillions, that allow all organisms to process whatever data they need for survival.
That is what microtubules DO!

The natural WiFi part is sensory, the processing part is physical transmission (cables and differential equations). i.e neurons.

:poop:

Write, perhaps when you learn to appreciate the difference between a living human and a microtubule, we can pick up this discussion again.

Pray tell how would that work?
You keep pointing at microtubules as some sort of cosmic answer to consciousness,
but have yet to offer any narrative

Please do show me the way.

How do microtubules inform a philosophical understanding of the human mind - let alone our relationship with what we know?

I’m not asking for more microtubule trivia. (Most of the articles you’ve shared never even mention possible links to consciousness, but talk about its cytoskeleton properties and such.

You’ve yet to provide anything cogent explaining on how that works?

OK, microtubules allow individual cells to communicate with each other. I believe that single fundamental truth allows for a rational approach to the question of the mechanics of “sensory awareness”.

The rest is just a demonstration of the various ways microtubules allow the cells to communicate internally as well as externally.

It explains the qualified difference between “exteroception” and “interoception”.

For one, there is no magic about our relationship with the environment. All living organisms process environmental data via microtubules. They are a “common denominator” in all Eukaryotic Life! That is an important piece of knowledge, IMO.

Could we build computers without knowing about the necessary components?
What are the 4 main components of a computer?

There are four main computer hardware components that this blog post will cover: input devices, processing devices, output devices and memory (storage) devices. Collectively, these hardware components make up the computer system. Oct 16, 2020

With the Brain as the Central Processing Unit (CPU).

Computer Hardware Components Explained

It’s important for any business that utilises technology and computers to understand the basics of the computer hardware components they are using. Without adequate hardware, your software may not run efficiently – if at all. It’s important to stay informed about the equipment your business uses, as it can greatly impact your productivity. The rest can be left to your business IT support provider!

And so it is with living organisms and their evolved states of “consciousness” and the difference between sentient and sensory data reception and processing abilities.

In living organisms, microtubules fill all four roles! That is why I provided examples of those abilities and functions of microtubules.

Sentient vs Sensory - What’s the difference?

As adjectives the difference between sentient and sensory

is that sentient is conscious or self-aware while sensory is of the senses or sensation.

As nouns the difference between sentient and sensory

is that sentient is a lifeform with the capability to feel sensation, such as pain while sensory is (biology|dated) “sensorium”.

Interesting topic so I’ll chime in.

I think we’d all agree, from our own extremely limited perspective, consciousness, whatever it is, needs some kind of physical implementation to exist. Write4u is explaining that research seems to show it’s microtubules, our brain, etc. as far as humans are concerned. CC IMHO is saying the same thing, stating that it’s inherent in how biology works. But he’s bring up the bigger, more general question - how is it that this thing we call consciousness even arises at all, whether in microtubules, some future computer, whatever.

Consciousness appears to be something different in kind from say the color purple, which is just a simple combination of red and blue (I’m simplifying of course). That purple arises from blue and red is a simple physical effect. Consciousness arising from an arrangement of atoms/biological units/neurons seems different from that. I would go further and say it’s not even just some emergence from biological systems.

Great, welcome to the discussion.

The remarkable thing is it is not just humans but ALL Eukaryotic organisms use microtubules for cellular data processing. In animals they provide sentience and in plants they provide sensorium.
In fauna, MT allow for movement (pseudopodia) and mitosis (reproductive cell division).
In flora, MT allows plants to have ability for heliotropism and photosynthesis.

All (mathematical) electrochemical data processing is performed by MT, due to the unique dynamical dipolar coiling structure that makes them into actual organic potentiometers.

Note that they are nanoscale in size, but are present by the trillions in complex organisms. The human brain alone has 1000 trillion synapses, which are the connections between 100 billion neuronal microtubule bundles and produce EM fields.

Roger Penrose expressed particular interest in MT as potential substrate for data processing in the ORCH OR theory of emergent consciousness.

Bundles of Brain Microtubules Generate Electrical Oscillations

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30453-2

In plants

Microtubules in Plant Cells: Strategies and Methods

Microtubules (MTs) are a unifying feature of eukaryotic cells. Studying them in plants is not only important for understanding mechanisms of plant growth and development but also of broader interest for understanding the mechanisms that generate MT spatial organization, including the role of accessory proteins in MT dynamics.

The current literature describes the role of MTs in spindle formation and division plane organization [1–3], transition from division to expansion [4,5], cell wall formation and morphogenesis in diffusely expanding organs [6–13], tip growing root hairs and pollen tubes [14–19], movement of stomata [20], endomembranes [21–23] or nucleus [24–27], chloroplast organization and positioning [28–30] or in association with amyloplasts [31].

This research requires a variety of experimental strategies, ranging from basic description of orientation patterns, MT dynamics and associations with other cellular structures, plant hormones, mechanical stress to pharmacological and genetic perturbations.

With cytoskeleton research increasing in relevance to different plant research fields, it is especially important for researchers to be provided with a variety of standard techniques and tools for imaging MTs in plant cells. In this chapter, we outline such preparation methods for light and electron microscopy. Methods for imaging root MT and actin filament arrays are provided in chapter XX by E. Blancaflor and colleagues “Fluorescence Imaging of the Cytoskeleton in Plant Roots“.

more… Microtubules in Plant Cells: Strategies and Methods for Immunofluorescence, Transmission Electron Microscopy and Live Cell Imaging - PMC

It is my proposition that while microtubules have not changed in billions of years, their role was/is vitally instrumental in the evolution of sensory abilities and gradually emergent sentient consciousness

That’s all fine and good as far as it goes.
I don’t mean to knock microtubules, some fantastic stuff there for sure.
But again it’s a sort of rivet v Eiffel Tower thing.

I don’t think you want to grasp that scale matters. Why?

Pasterkamp Lab

CERN

Cosmic Voyage is a 1996 short documentary film produced in the IMAX format, directed by Bayley Silleck, produced by Jeffrey Marvin, and narrated by Morgan Freeman.

Cosmic Voyage has a format similar to Eva Szasz’s Cosmic Zoom, and Charles and Ray Eames’s classic Powers of Ten educational video. All were based on the 1957 book Cosmic View by Dutch educator Kees Boeke. Cosmic Voyage takes viewers on a journey through forty-two orders of magnitude, beginning at a celebration in Venice, Italy slowly zooming out into the edge of the observable universe. Then the view descends back to earth, and later zooms in upon a raindrop on a leaf on a hoop used in the celebration mentioned earlier, down to the level of subatomic particles (quarks).

I’m an Earth Centrist, Earth and her natural processes are my touchstone with reality.
The tiny at the edge of matter and energy is fascinating enough, essential foundation, but ultimately and always unreachable for us and more to the point, beside the point. Especially when it blinds people to the Evolutionary Pageant that unfolded here on Earth and why that still matters to us.

WE live in this macroscopic realm of Earth, where biology and Evolution and complex systems and emerging properties happen.

I’m talking about thinking individuals connecting in that deep time reality and ponder that pageant. Suggesting, why not a visceral, deep down in the seat of your pants sense it making sense? That philosophical impossibility, an “inner watcher” is your own body, because that’s what it’s been trained to do since it was a itty bitty creepy crawly creature and here we are today, able to behold and wonder at it all.

The fact of our own Evolution via an amazing pageant of creature forms. The end result of all that itty bitty stuff, including microtubules, doing its thing in stupendous numbers, with unbelievable precision.

Fordrum
(the music is a bit harsh for me, but hey, it is what it is, and there’s always volume control. )

Is a 1000 trillion synaptic data distribution network from connections by 100 billion neurons, each containing hundreds of microtubules in the brain alone a large enough scale?

The Universe has nothing to do with this. The microtubule is a “common denominator” in all complex life on earth. There is no other known physical candidate and obviously, anything metaphysical is purely speculative as compared to what we do know about the incredibly versatile microtubule functions…

Microtubules already communicate with each other at the cellular level. There simply is no competing candidate in the biological world.

According to Penrose and Hameroff, microtubules may well function at electrochemical quantum scale, let alone atomic and molecular scale.

What you see as out of reach is within reach of microtubule function.
They normally reach a length of some 25 nanometers.

Microtubules and Filaments

The cytoskeleton is a structure that helps cells maintain their shape and internal organization, and it also provides mechanical support that enables cells to carry out essential functions like division and movement. There is no single cytoskeletal component. Rather, several different components work together to form the cytoskeleton.
image

What Is the Cytoskeleton Made Of?

The cytoskeleton of eukaryotic cells is made of filamentous proteins, and it provides mechanical support to the cell and its cytoplasmic constituents. All cytoskeletons consist of three major classes of elements that differ in size and in protein composition. Microtubules are the largest type of filament, with a diameter of about 25 nanometers (nm), and they are composed of a protein called tubulin. Actin filaments are the smallest type, with a diameter of only about 6 nm, and they are made of a protein called actin. Intermediate filaments, as their name suggests, are mid-sized, with a diameter of about 10 nm. Unlike actin filaments and microtubules, intermediate filaments are constructed from a number of different subunit proteins.

https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/microtubules-and-filaments-14052932/

So we’re back at the dog chasing tail game.

I’m left very confused at why you find it so impossible to grasp the difference between a human and a microtubule?

Why are you trying so desperately to separate humans from microtubules?
I grasp the connection between humans and microtubules.
Moreover, without microtubules, there would be no intelligent life on earth.
Without microtubules there would be no complex life on earth at all!

Microtubules are the building blocks of all Eukaryotic life on earth.

What you are asking is why I find it impossible to grasp the difference between a castle and and a brick or as you say the tower and the rivets that hold it all together.
What you are overlooking is that microtubules enable the tower to build itself! and tell the rivets where to fasten everything.

Microtubules are the difference between animate (living) and inanimate (lifeless) objects.

What the heck are you talking about?
How am I trying “separate” microtubules from humans?
Why are you trying to imply there is nothing to humans beyond microtubules?

I haven’t denied any thing about microtubules,

other than your single minded worship of them as the answer to everything.

I haven’t taken issue with any of the articles you’ve shared, or the facts they share, but I have also noticed you tend to over-promise the articles. Hammerhoff & Penrose have a lot of informed speculation, some positive results yet there’s a lively debate, with plenty of experts disagreeing. There is no consilience of evidence, scientist are still at the endless speculation phase.

Or have you been holding something back?

You can’t answer my question as to why you find it so impossible to grasp the difference between humans and a trillion-gazillion microtubules, instead you sidestep:

Okay try to explain it.

Bonus:
What the difference between medical science and the humanities

Again, microtubules are fine, I’ll give you that they are the seat of consciousness. Doesn’t matter. The point I was making, and I think CC, is that there’s something different about consciousness and my silly purple example. And let’s take it a step further. The MT are in fact made of star stuff, correct? So when Carl Sagan said, we’re one way the universe thinks about itself, that’s what he meant. And MT seem to be the conduit for that.

And CC - Earth centric is way way too small a scale to think about. Earth doesn’t even count in the scheme of things, other than of course yes, if all you’re wondering about is consciousness on lil ol’ earth.

I am not. I have explained before that my interest is in the role microtubules play in all living organisms on earth. Is that not expansive enough?

I leave the human mindscape to you. I’m sure you will admit that the human mindscape is not the only thing in the universe that counts as a scientific curiosity.

Are you telling me that the difference lies in the human mindscape?

I have not argued against your area of interest at all. I am interested.
Why do you persist in arguing against my area of interest? Aren’t you interested?

That’s where we differ. I see nothing miraculous about conscious perception.

What’s the difference between fluorescent bulbs producing light generated by a high voltage EM field resulting from a network of high voltage towers, and experiential imaging (controlled hallucinations) in the brain, generated by a microtubular EM field from a network of low voltage microtubules in the brain?
image

This is the dimension Penrose and Hameroff are exploring.

p.s. Hameroff is a practising anesthesiologist and knows a thing or two about consciousness and how to make it disappear and return. An important skill that very few theoretical philosophers possess.

How do you figure you’re being expansive?
Seems to me you are dismissing all the other components that are required for cells to function.

You’re ignoring the functional differences of the variety of cell configurations and who knows how much more of the universe that exists within creatures and their cells.

You’re also dismissing that scale matters. For instance we can kid ourselves into thinking an atom is mostly empty space but the moment you start glomming them them together, they get very solid, no matter what a philosopher will tell you.

You’re missing time and cumulative change turning into evolving creatures
that react to their environments and change with the generations, as a dynamic Earth constantly changing sometimes slowly, other time breathtakingly fast.

You microtubules don’t have a soul.
Living creatures have souls, or . . . perhaps you’d find a way to deny that.

(Soul, as in a self aware life force, not something that lives forever after you die. )

Also since it appears you still don’t understand what I mean by “mindscape” I feel compelled . . . ,

The Earth Centrist’s perspective acknowledges Earth, her material constituents and physical processes, unfolding one day at a time, as our fundamental touchstone with reality. We acknowledge Earth and glory in understanding her pageant of Evolution and appreciating how that pageant is reflected within our own body and mind.

We celebrate the physical fact that humans were created out of Earth’s evolving biosphere.

Science shows us that we belong to the nurturing mammalian branch of one of Earth’s amazing animal kingdoms. Yet, it’s undeniable that something quite unique happened around six million years ago when certain apes took a wild improbable evolutionary turn.

By and by, besides the marvel of our two hands, we developed two feet and legs, that could stand tall and run for hours, combined with keen eyes and a growing brain that learned rapidly and remembered.

During this period our brain physically morphed in some significant ways that enabled it to host a profound leap in cognitive information processing, storage and retrieval ability. On the outside hominids learned to make tools, hunt, fish, and select plants, plus they mastered fire for cooking and better living.

On the inside our brains were growing and benefiting from the new super nourishment while human curiosity and adventures started filling and stretching our Mindscapes with experiences, questions, and knowledge beyond anything the “natural” physical Earth ever knew.

By Mindscape, I mean the product of all that our body/brain perceives and processes, which of course, evolutionarily speaking, was dependent on our brain’s hardware keeping pace with and driving the ever increasing volume of information and thoughts.

While the human mind and spirit seem ineffable mysteries, they are also of tremendous consequence and real-world physical power. They drove our growing ability to study and manipulate our world; to communicate and record our experiences; and to formulate explanations for a world full of mysteries, threats, wonders and dreams.

People learned to think and gossip and paint pictures upon the canvas of cave walls, and even better, upon the canvas of each other’s imaginations. We’ve been adding to our mind’s awareness and complexity ever since.

Of course, while all this was going on our extraordinary human mind was also beginning to wonder about the ‘Why’ of the world it observed and the difficult, fragile, short lives we were allotted.

In seeking comfort and answers to unknowable questions it seems inevitable that Gods would inhabit our Mindscape. I suspect inspired by buried memories of being coddled within mom’s protective loving bosom those first couple years of life.

No doubt these “Gods” enabled further successes, though not through super-natural interventions, rather through their ability to form, conform, reform & transform the Mindscapes of the people beginning to congregate. Thus, combining pragmatic civil societal needs with universally felt, but keenly personal questions, fears, and dreams.

During the middle ages tribal stories, accepted ancient doctrines, and religious “truths” were no longer enough to satisfy our Mindscape’s growing desire for ever better understanding and power over our destinies and the biosphere that sustains us.

The human mind took another tremendous leap forward in awareness with the Intellectual Enlightenment and the birth of serious disciplined scientific study. Science’s success was dazzling in its ability to learn about, control and manipulate Earth’s physical resources and to transform entire environments.

Science was so successful that today most believe we are the masters of our world and too many have fallen into the hubristic trap of believing our ever fertile Mindscape is reality itself. But now I’m digressing, back on point, in summary,

Earth Centrism , is a perspective on our human condition that’s based on the understanding that Earth is our fundamental touchstone with physical reality and that we are creatures made through Earth’s own natural processes.

Earth Centrism comes from appreciating the “Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide.” Which also helps us get a handle on how the paternalistic Abrahamic mindset (that gave birth to three religions), with their self-serving attitudes towards other peoples, creatures, landscapes and resources, imposed a simplistic dualistic default that has blinded humanity to a clear understanding of ourselves, this planet, it’s processes, deep-time and how it created us.

The Mind/Brain conundrum and the Hard Problem of Consciousness are rooted in ancient religious and philosophical arguments, contrivances of our minds, dressed up in modern language. As though reality needs to prove itself to us self-serving petty humans.

Earth Centrism is founded on the understanding that scientific study of the material world is our best window into understanding our own lives within physical reality. Because Science is, at its core, a set of rules for observing and recording and learning about our natural world, and ourselves that strives as much as possible to eliminate human ego driven biases from its deliberations.

Science is founded on an unspoken understanding that we need each other to keep ourselves honest. It’s a community of educated, competitive, skeptical, experts who are constantly looking over each other’s shoulders. With fidelity to honesty being science’s Golden Rule.

I also contend that science offers spiritual/mystical challenges, experiences and resolutions , well beyond anything offered by the traditions of our self-made, ego straddled, religions with their tunnel vision and that ingrained resentment towards Earth and learning.

Earth Centrism is a personal emergent appreciation. When the sum total of all those insights one has collected from a life time of wonder and learning come together into a tapestry, a pageant of life and circumstance that is harmonious and graspable. When understanding and increasing awareness blossoms into a visceral connection that infuses one’s body and outlook upon life with the simple reality of being a transient element in Earth’s evolution.

Along with that comes a grounded feeling. A deep inside awareness that, I have arrived. I am a child of Earth, and it is beautiful, and this moment is mine.

And yes, microtubules are a part of it, and infuse all the creatures mentioned, still, they are backstage, the rigging you could say. We who live upon this planet need more than that, that’s why we keep coming up with Gods.

Unfortunately now that we’ve made ourselves God, with the Atom Bomb, microprocessors, AI, we’ve lost that spiritual inner mooring that religion once offered, that feeling of “belonging”¶ that humans so crave.

I figure, why not try to regain that mooring by better recognizing where we come from?

Namely, Earth and an amazing 600 some million years of creature experimentation and development. Creatures that had to be aware and reactive from the first in order to survive! Grasping that and grasping one’s own kinship with other animals and with our own ancestor generations, and with the amazing pageant Earth has gone through to get to here and now. That’s what I’m talking.

Where have I ever claimed perception is miraculous?
Refer to my previous comment about creatures being at this for six hundred million years.

Perception is a biological imperative and consciousness is the other side of that coin.

¶ {Belonging, whether to a family, group, or the universe, or for me Earth.}

Yep, and all that information is processed and transported from cell to cell by microtubules in the cytoplasm and cytoskeleton and over long distances to the brain via the microtubules that make up the body’s neural network.
You seem to forget that microtubules do make a distinction between the variety of cell configurations, else they could not make exact copies of cells during mitosis.

You’re missing time and cumulative change turning into evolving creatures
that react to their environments and change with the generations, as a dynamic Earth constantly changing sometimes slowly, other times breathtakingly fast.

What do you think is processing all that information?
You’re still not accepting that the microtubule network between cytoplasm. cytoskeleton, neural network, and brain are what make the organism into what it is.
The rest of the information sharing is performed biochemically, like the bonding of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, … etc.

Your microtubules don’t have a soul.
Living creatures have souls, or . . . perhaps you’d find a way to deny that.
(Soul, as in a self-aware life force, not something that lives forever after you die. )

I see the “soul” as an emergent dynamic process that is generated by the natural chemical reactions that create a dynamic flow of cellular information, via microtubules.
Does a rock have a soul? No, it does not strive to stay alive. It has no microtubules.
Does a single-celled paramecium have a soul? Yes, it strives to stay alive. It has microtubules.

You need to understand that all biochemical data exchange at the physical level is facilitated by microtubules. Once you accept that fact all woo woo mystery goes away.

The Earth Centrist’s perspective acknowledges Earth, her material constituents and physical processes, unfolding one day at a time, as our fundamental touchstone with reality. We acknowledge Earth and glory in understanding her pageant of Evolution and appreciating how that pageant is reflected within our own bodies and minds.

Yes, but that doesn’t tell us “how”. This is pure philosophy.

We celebrate the physical fact that humans were created out of Earth’s evolving biosphere.

Yes, along with everything else in earth’s biosphere.

Science shows us that we belong to the nurturing mammalian branch of one of Earth’s amazing animal kingdoms. Yet, it’s undeniable that something quite unique happened around six million years ago when certain apes took a wild improbable evolutionary turn.

Yes, I explained the chromosome fusion event that must have been responsible.
More remarkable is the fact that it was a lucky error made by microtubules in copying DNA during mitosis. We may thank the microtubules for that extremely rare beneficial fusion. Most mitotic errors are detrimental and fall victim to natural selection.

By and by, besides the marvel of our two hands, we developed two feet and legs, that could stand tall and run for hours, combined with keen eyes and a growing brain that learned rapidly and remembered.

Physically we are by no means extraordinary. Many animals can outperform us in specialized survival techniques.

During this period our brain physically morphed in some significant ways that enabled it to host a profound leap in cognitive information processing, storage and retrieval ability. On the outside hominids learned to make tools, hunt, fish, and select plants, plus they mastered fire for cooking and better living.

Yes, the new much larger chromosome 2 in humans created a longer and more complex brain cell growth instruction as is evident by the enormous quantity of microtubules that make up the brain’s neural network.

On the inside our brains were growing and benefiting from the new super nourishment while human curiosity and adventures started filling and stretching our Mindscapes with experiences, questions, and knowledge beyond anything the “natural” physical Earth ever knew.

Yes, all facilitated by the microtubule network!

By Mindscape, I mean the product of all that our body/brain perceives and processes, which of course, evolutionarily speaking, was dependent on our brain’s hardware keeping pace with and driving the ever-increasing volume of information and thoughts.

YES! The brain’s hardware consists of microtubules! They allow for the ever-increasing volume of information, thoughts and memories!

While the human mind and spirit seem ineffable mysteries, they are also of tremendous consequence and real-world physical power. They drove our growing ability to study and manipulate our world; to communicate and record our experiences; and to formulate explanations for a world full of mysteries, threats, wonders and dreams.

All living organisms are driven by the same autonomous biochemical reactive processes. Can you stop the oxidation and rusting of iron? That is the life force at work.
Unfortunately iron cannot replace its lost molecules. Biochemical organisms can use available energy sources to replenish and regenerate lost cells.
Just look at seasonal replacement of leaves on trees. How incredible is that enormous growth potential and the energy it requires.
It is said that a single almond requires 1 gallon of water (+ nutrients) to grow and mature.

People learned to think and gossip and paint pictures upon the canvas of cave walls, and even better, upon the canvas of each other’s imaginations. We’ve been adding to our mind’s awareness and complexity ever since.

Yes, there seems to be no limit to the information processing of microtubules.

Of course, while all this was going on our extraordinary human mind was also beginning to wonder about the ‘Why’ of the world it observed and the difficult, fragile, short lives we were allotted.

As Ricky Gervais says; “the why is unimportant. It’s the how that is useful knowledge.”

In seeking comfort and answers to unknowable questions it seems inevitable that Gods would inhabit our Mindscape. I suspect inspired by buried memories of being coddled within mom’s protective loving bosom those first couple years of life.

WOW, that is a fatalistic outlook. The only unknowable question is a useless “why”, not the useful “how”.

No doubt these “Gods” enabled further successes, though not through supernatural interventions, but rather through their ability to form, conform, reform & transform the Mindscapes of the people beginning to congregate. Thus, combining pragmatic civil societal needs with universally felt, but keenly personal questions, fears, and dreams.

During the middle ages tribal stories, accepted ancient doctrines, and religious “truths” were no longer enough to satisfy our Mindscape’s growing desire for ever better understanding and power over our destinies and the biosphere that sustains us.

Exactly, we shifted our question from “why” to “how” and science was born.

The human mind took another tremendous leap forward in awareness with the Intellectual Enlightenment and the birth of serious disciplined scientific study. Science’s success was dazzling in its ability to learn about, control and manipulate Earth’s physical resources and to transform entire environments.

Exactly, but what we have yet to learn is that our manipulations are not always conducive to what the earth requires for its natural homeostatic processes.

The earth sequestered (buried) billions of years of CO2 underground where it fed all flora, which then released oxygen into the atmosphere and provided the surface life with life-giving oxygen.
Until man came along and in 350 years pumped 1/2 of this sequestered CO2 (oil) from the ground and back into the atmosphere, where it is clearly beginning to disturb the natural dynamic balance in many ways.

The double-edged sword of a god-like creative mind is not always beneficial to the grander scheme of Nature’s life force “striving to maintain balance among interactive forces”.

That’s the best you can do?