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Author
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Topic: human time machine?
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Aaron
Member
Member # 1785
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posted 23. October 2005 01:40
I'm new here and by no means a scholar. Neverthless, has anyone ever noticed the parallel between the apparent stages of development of the human race and the human individual? At some early stage, Homo-sapiens or our precursors developed a consciousness. At about the age of two, the human individual becomes self-aware. Some time after the human race gains consciousness, we begin to explore our world and its constituents. An infant does just that as well. The human race devolops the capacity for language. As does the toddler. So on and so forth.
Obviously this is largely due to our acquired ability to pass on "knowledge" to subsequent generations through language. So that a ten year old child today is as knowledgable as the average adult of 150 years ago(this is all mostly speculative, bare with me). In this way, the human individual only develops (intellectually?) as far as the collective. Or is it the collective as far as the individual?
If there is any merit to this idea, couldn't we figure out how old the human race is? I mean if an average adult of 150 years ago only develops mentally to the equivalent of a ten year old today, then how old are we mentally?(I'd say mid to late teens)
Could we go even further to say that contained within the lifecycle of one human indivdual, from zygote or beyond and to death, is the entire lifecycle of the human race itself?
Its probably more an analogy than a parallel, and maybe only science-fiction at that. What do you think?
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Aaron
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Member # 1785
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posted 25. October 2005 00:34
So is this a foreign concept or just completely cliche? Does someone want to clue me in?
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Christopher D. Beling
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Member # 723
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posted 25. October 2005 03:57
Hi Aaron,
One person who has noted this similarity is Prof. John Davison. I think this parallel way of thinking may be more common than people would care to say. You can read some of John's ideas on the thread "Prescribed Evolution Hypothesis" (PEH). In broad detail biological information enters the universe's time-line in discrete bundles (either one or multiple) and then develops into multiple species (phylogeny) in parallel fashion to the organisms development from a single zygote (ontology). This is the human genome which forms the basis of making human life what it is - from which also derives man's innate intelligence - either came in by some chromosomal rearrangement from a pre-existing homonid genome or as some new information input. That this onset of modern human genome was not via the neo-Darwinian mechanism is also agreed. [I heard someone say recently that there were around 100 genes in modern man that were not there in any other species of animal - this needs some explaining - can anyone out there confirm this?] What may be important in answering your question is that the full mental capacity for language and information gathering was there at the time zero of the human race ~30kya. Human language (presumably) and human knowledge (certainly) then progressed over time. With regard to human language - one can see early languages like Hebrew have fewer words than modern languages. This, however, does not necessarily mean that they were less conceptually developed or expressive. Modern languages are richer in nouns (perhaps due to our technological development) but probably the difference in verbs is not so pronounced [see Erich Fromme's book "To have or to be"]
-Chris
[ 25. October 2005, 06:22: Message edited by: Christopher D. Beling ]
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Mesk
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Member # 630
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posted 02. November 2005 02:01
quote:
Christopher:
[I heard someone say recently that there were around 100 genes in modern man that were not there in any other species of animal - this needs some explaining - can anyone out there confirm this?]
This may well be explained by this post.
Mesk.
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Aaron
Member
Member # 1785
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posted 02. November 2005 23:08
Thanks for the info. Christopher and Mesk. I didn't express myself very well before.While I think the answer is at the heart of what all humans strive to attain, I guess I don't consider the ID vs. Evolution debate relevant until there is a clear understanding of what was "designed" or what has "evolved". I think we're getting ahead of ourselves when we attempt to explain what we don't fully understand. Don't get me wrong, I know nothing.
What I was trying to express, and please bare with me, was a little broader. When I used the term "developed", I think "progress" would have been more appropriate. The human individual "progresses" in a fairly standard fashion from conception until death. There is a physical, emotion, social progression for the individual. The human species has undergone and continues a progression. Toward what, I don't know, but there are striking similarities between the individual's progression and the groups'. One could almost plot parallel time lines for the group and the individual. The species has undergone physical progression if there is any merit to humans being the result of earlier hominids. Maybe the "zygote" of the human species was the first mammal on this planet, or the first single celled organism. As far as we know, there has never been another lifeform in existence with the same "conscious" awareness as humans possess. This quality is innate in healthy humans, but it didn't happen spontaneously. There was a progression that led to it. I've read that the human individual doesn't achieve self-awareness/ a conscience until about the age of two. The individual progresses to that point.
Think about some of the reality concepts of past peoples and civilizations. In hind sight, some of them are very similar to that of what we would expect of a child today. The human race is growing up, and maybe the direction is dictated by the direction the individual progresses or vice versa.
Feel free to let me have it.
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