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vii-viii Whether in a social group or in an individual, human life always involves a continuous dialogue between the possible and the actual. A subtle mixture of belief, knowledge, and imagination builds before us an ever changing picture of the possible. It is on this image that we mold our desires and fears. It is to this possible that we adjust our behavior and actions.
p.8 Sex is thus considered as a diversity-generating device... A population with sex can thus evolve faster than a population without it.
p.9 In some respects at least, myths and science fulfill a similar function: they both provide human beings with a representation of the world and of the forces that are supposed to govern it.
p.10 The capacity to judge what problems are ripe for analysis, to decide when it is useful to reinvestigate old territory, to reexamine questions that once were considered as solved or insoluble, remains one of the most important qualities of a scientist.
p.11 Scientific knowledge often appears to consist of isolated islands. Important advances may sometimes come from new generalizations that unify what heretofore appeared as separate fields.
p.11 Whether mythic or scientific, the view of the world that man builds is always largely a product of his imagination.
[JLJ - So too in artificial intelligence - however "intelligent" the machine is depends to a large degree on imaginative perceptions of things and their interrelationships.]
p.11 Scientific advances often come from uncovering some previously unseen aspect of things, not so much as a result of using some new instrument, but rather of looking at objects from a new angle.
p.12 Science attempts to confront the possible with the actual.
p.14-15 Natural selection can be viewed as the result of two constraints imposed on every living organism: first, the requirement for reproduction... and second, the requirement for a permanent interaction with the environment... It is natural selection that gives direction to changes, orients chance, and slowly, progressively produces more complex structures, new organs, and new species.
p.18 an immunological response always represents a selection from a repertoire of preexisting structures, the activation of genetic information already present in the lymphoid cells, and not some kind of education of the cell by the molecular structure of the antigen.
p.18-19 the theory of evolution... During the present century, it has been strengthened by a series of results harvested by genetics, biochemistry, and molecular biology... Yet we are far from having the final version, especially with respect to the mechanisms underlying evolution. Genetics considers the organism on two quite different levels. One level deals with visible characteristics, morphology, functions, and behavior - what are called phenotypes. The other level deals with hidden structures, the state of genes - so-called genotypes... The device designed by Darwin to counteract Paley's argument from design was adaptation. This concept is at the center of the evolutionary representation of the world.
p.20 Adaptation results from competition among individuals, either within species or among species. It represents an automatic device that makes use of genetic opportunities and orients chance along paths compatible with life in a given environment.
p.21 Most important in restricting possible changes of structures and functions are the constraints imposed
p.22 A theory as powerful as Darwin's could hardly escape misuse. Not only could adaptation serve to fit any detail of any structure found in any organism, but the very success of the theory of natural selection in accounting for the evolution of the living world made it tempting to generalize the argument and shape it to explain any change at all occurring in the world.
p.30 Whether inanimate or living, the objects found on earth are always organizations or systems. Each system at a given level uses as ingredients some systems from the simpler level.
p.31 Complex objects, whether living or not, are produced by evolutionary processes in which two kinds of factors are involved: the constraints that, at every level, specify the rules of the game and define what is possible with those systems; and the historical circumstances that determine the actual course of events and control the actual interactions between the systems.
p.32 every single organism living today represents the last link of a chain uninterrupted over some three thousand million years. Living beings are indeed historical structures; they are literally creations of history.
p.34 evolution does not produce innovation from scratch. It works on what already exists, either transforming a system to give it a new function or combining several systems to produce a more complex one. Natural selection has no analogy with any aspect of human behavior. If one wanted to use a comparison, however, one would have to say that this process resembles not engineering but tinkering, bricolage we say in French.
p.34 the tinkerer manages with odds and ends. Often without even knowing what he is going to produce, he uses whatever he finds around him... to make some kind of workable object... none of the materials at the tinkerer's disposal has a precise and definite function. Each can be used in different ways. What the tinkerer ultimately produces is often related to no special project. It merely results from a series of contingent events, from all the opportunities he has had to enrich his stock with leftovers... What can be said about any of these objects is just that "it could be of some use." For what? That depends on the circumstances.
p.35 [Darwin] "...throughout nature almost every part of each living being has probably served, in a slightly modified condition, for diverse purposes, and has acted in the living machinery of many ancient and distinct specific forms."
p.35-36 Evolution proceeds like a tinkerer who, during millions of years, has slowly modified his products, retouching, cutting, lengthening, using all opportunities to transform and create... different tinkerers interested in the same problem will reach different solutions
p.36 in contrast with the engineer, the tinkerer who wants to refine his work will often add new structures to the old ones rather than replace them.
p.37 It is probably at the molecular level that the tinkering aspect of evolution is the most apparent.
p.40 Evolution has no foresight, and a genetic element cannot be selected because it might someday be of some help. Once it is there, however, whatever the reason, or absence of reason, for its presence, such a structure might prove "useful" and then become the target of some selective pressure on the host phenotype.
p.41 Small changes modifying in time and space the distribution of the same structures are sufficient to affect deeply the form, function, and behavior of the final product: the adult animal. It is always a matter of using the same elements, of adjusting them, of altering here or there, of arranging various combinations to produce new objects of increasing complexity. It is always a matter of tinkering.
p.53 biology incorporates time as one of its essential parameters. The arrow of time can indeed be found throughout the whole living world, which results from an evolution in time. It can also be found in every single organism, which changes incessantly during its life.
p.54 Life is a continuous process which does not just recall the past, but also looks ahead. And the nervous system, which probably first evolved as a device to coordinate the behavior of various cells in multicellular organisms, then to record certain features of the individual's life, ultimately became able to invent the future.
p.55 What an organism detects in its environment is always but a part of what is around... The brain functions, not by recording an exact image of the world taken as a meta-physical truth, but by creating its own picture.
p.56 No matter how an organism investigates its environment, the perception it gets must necessarily reflect so-called "reality" and, more specifically, those aspects of reality which are directly related to its own behavior... Perceiving certain aspects of reality is a biological necessity; certain aspects only, for obviously our perception of the external world is massively filtered... The external world, the "reality" of which we all have intuitive knowledge, thus appears as a creation of the nervous system. It is, in a way, a possible world, a model allowing the organism to handle the bulk of incoming information and make it useful for everyday life.
p.57 If the brain of higher mammals can handle the tremendous amount of information coming in through the sense organs during wakefulness, it is because the information is organized in aggregates, in bodies that constitute the "objects" of the animal's spatio-temporal world, the very elements of its daily experience. Identification and perception of objects can thus be maintained despite changes in spatial and temporal perception.
p.57-58 The information coming in through the different sense organs was integrated into a coherent picture of a spatio-temporal world, in which moving objects could be seen, heard, smelled, and touched, and in which, since the permanency of objects over time was ensured, their representation could be memorized.
p.58 We mold our "reality" with our words and our sentences in the same way as we mold it with our vision and our hearing. And the versatility of human language also makes it a unique tool for the development of the imagination.
p.58-59 each of us lives in a "real" world that is created by his brain with the information coming in through his senses and through language. This real world provides a stage where all the events of life take place.
p.59 Consciousness might be seen as the perception of self as an "object" placed at the center of "reality."
p.61 The more a scientific field deals with human affairs, the greater the chance that scientific theories will clash with traditions and beliefs; and also the more likely the data contributed by science will be distorted and used for ideological and political purposes.
p.62 There is no learning without the bringing into play of a program that determines what can be learned, when, and under which conditions.
p.65 The diversity generated by sexual reproduction among individuals in a human population is seldom seen as what it is: one of the main forces driving evolution, a natural phenomenon without which we should not be here.
p.66 Diversity is one of the great rules in the biological game. All along generations, the genes that constitute the inheritance of the species unite and dissociate to produce those fleeting and ever different combinations: the individuals. And this endless combinatorial system which generates diversity and makes each of us unique cannot be overestimated. It gives the species all its wealth, all its versatility, all its possibilities. [JLJ - Yes, with possibilities for game theory as well.]
p.66 Diversity is a way of coping with the possible. It acts as a kind of insurance for the future. And one of the deepest, one of the most general functions of living organisms is to look ahead, to produce future... There is not a single moment, a single posture that does not imply a later on, a passage to the next moment. To breathe, to eat, to move is indeed to anticipate. To see is to foresee. With each of our actions and each of our thoughts we are engaged in what will be. An organism is living insofar as it is going to live
p.66 Selection from preexisting diversity appears as the means most frequently used in the living world to face an unknown future
p.67 In humans, natural diversity is further strengthened by cultural diversity, which allows mankind to better adapt to a variety of life conditions and to better use the resources of the world.
p.67 Our imagination displays before us the ever changing picture of the possible. It is with this picture that we incessantly confront what we fear and what we hope. It is to this possible that we adjust our wishes and our loathings. Yet, while it is part of our nature to produce a future, the system is geared in such a way that our predictions have to remain dubious. We cannot think of ourselves without a following instant, but we cannot know what this instant will be like. What we can guess today will not be realized. Change is bound to occur anyway, but the future will be different from what we believe.
p.68 while science attempts to describe nature and to distinguish between dream and reality, it should not be forgotten that human beings probably call as much for dream as for reality. It is hope that gives life a meaning. And hope is based on the prospect of being able one day to turn the actual world into a possible one that looks better.
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