Behavior and Culture in One Dimension

Sequences, Affordances, and the Evolution of Complexity

Dennis Waters

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000359565
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Lingüística

Behavior and Culture in One Dimension adopts a broad interdisciplinary approach, presenting a unified theory of sequences and their functions and an overview of how they underpin the evolution of complexity.

Sequences of DNA guide the functioning of the living world, sequences of speech and writing choreograph the intricacies of human culture, and sequences of code oversee the operation of our literate technological civilization. These linear patterns function under their own rules, which have never been fully explored. It is time for them to get their due. This book explores the one-dimensional sequences that orchestrate the structure and behavior of our three-dimensional habitat. Using Gibsonian concepts of perception, action, and affordances, as well as the works of Howard Pattee, the book examines the role of sequences in the human behavioral and cultural world of speech, writing, and mathematics.

The book offers a Darwinian framework for understanding human cultural evolution and locates the two major informational transitions in the origins of life and civilization. It will be of interest to students and researchers in ecological psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and the social and biological sciences.

1
THE PROBLEM OF SEQUENTIALIZATION

1.1 Our World as Sequences See It

In the beginning there were no sequences. The Earth of four billion years ago was devoid of one-dimensional patterns. Everything was predictable, humming along in accordance with the laws of nature. But then sequences appeared, and nothing was the same again.

The Earth we inhabit today is overrun with sequences and their products. First to emerge on our lifeless planet were the sequences of RNA, DNA, and protein that govern the function of living things. Later a certain kind of living thing, a social primate, developed sequences of speech and eventually of writing. Today all of these molecular and linguistic sequences are routinely transformed into one-dimensional patterns of zeros and ones that flow through wires and over the air. All day, every day, we swim in an ocean of sequences. And like the proverbial fish who does not know what water is, we are largely oblivious to their profound influences.

But on the sequence-free Earth of four billion years ago there was just the ordinary stuff of matter and energy, all obeying the predictable and inexorable laws of nature. Matter and energy are still with us and still obey the same laws but, thanks to sequences, they are much better organized across time and space, into liver cells and violins and universities. That’s a big change. How did it happen?

To appreciate how sequences achieved their hegemony, we must first understand how they differ from the ancient sequence-free physical world from which they arose. What are the properties of sequences—systems of sequences, really, because sequences never travel alone—that distinguish their behavior from that of ordinary matter governed by the laws of nature? Despite the long tenure of sequences on our planet, this is a relatively recent question, unasked before the modern age of molecular biology. This chapter will set out exactly why sequences are different and why they are worthy of study in their own right.

In the decade after Nobel laureates James Watson and Francis Crick figured out that the DNA molecule was in fact a sequence of smaller molecules,¹ the field of molecular genetics struggled with the problem of what Crick calls sequentialization. “It is this problem, the problem of ‘sequentialization’, which is the crux of the matter,” he writes.² DNA was known to be a sequence of nucleotides, as was its cousin RNA, and proteins were known to be sequences of amino acids. What was not known was how these sequences related to one another.

By the late 1960s, researchers had worked out a fundamental explanation of the genetic code, which shows how the one-dimensional patterns of nucleotides in DNA are mapped to the one-dimensional patterns of amino acids in proteins.³ That is what a code is, a mapping from one kind of sequence to another. In Morse Code, for example, unique sequences of dots and dashes map to the letters, numbers, and symbols of the alphabet. In the genetic code, three-letter sequences of DNA (codons) map uniquely to each of the 20 individual amino acids found in protein sequences.

But Crick’s problem of sequentialization can be viewed more broadly. How did Earth’s surface become sequentialized? How did systems of sequences emerge? How did they create and propagate their own complex world of coordinated matter and energy, a world that exhibits functional coherence and temporal endurance in ways that could never be predicted from the laws of nature, but which in no way contradict those laws? How did inanimate matter give rise to life and life in turn give rise to civilization?

But first things first. What is a sequence, anyway? In everyday usage, it is one thing following another: a sequence of steps to bake a pie or a sequence of stages in the development of an embryo or a sequence of floats and marching bands in a parade. Sequence is rooted in the Latin sequor (“to follow”), best known today for describing a lapse in logic: a non sequitur (“it does not follow”).

The steps required to bake a pie form an instructive sequence; the sequences of text in a recipe tell us what actions to perform and in what order. Navigational directions to a destination, the user manual for a kitchen appliance, instructions for erecting a tent, and lessons in how to tango are all examples of instructive sequences. They tell us how to behave, how to move in time and space; their one-dimensional arrangement specifies the order of steps to be performed in an activity.

The sequence of stages in embryonic development, however, is a descriptive sequence. We observe an event as it unfolds and, based on our perceptions, generate a one-dimensional pattern to record how it changes over time. Almost all observations of the natural world—most of science, from how stars form to how horses canter—take the form of descriptive sequences. The point is that descriptive sequences do not tell us how to behave; they result from our perception of how the world behaves.⁴

The sequences of human language can both describe and instruct. This may seem obvious, but it is also crucial. A single set of letters and words, and a single set of grammatical rules for combining them, can not only create a record of something that has happened in the world but also can guide worldly activities like baking a pie. We may not think twice about this, but try to envision a world that requires one language for instruction and a completely separate language for description. How cumbersome would that be? Imagine the instructions for assembling a bookcase where the text describing the parts is in Estonian and the text telling us how to put them together is in Hindi.

Instead, we have unitary languages in which instructive and descriptive sequences complement one another. We can receive instructions that guide our behavior: what to do, when to do it, how to do it, etc. We can also perceive the world and create a record of what we observe, what scientists call measurement. Since a single language can do both, the interplay between description and instruction gives systems of sequences extraordinary power to organize the world. See something, do something.

1.2 Persistence of One-Dimensional Patterns

When we think of sequences, we envision events in a fixed order in time: first this happens, then that happens, etc. This is true regardless of whether the sequence is descriptive (“I saw this, then I saw that”) or instructive (“Do this, then do that”). The later steps are usually dependent in some way upon completion of the earlier steps. Embryologists observe that the retina develops only after formation of the neural tube. The developmental sequence is fixed: it makes no sense to speak of the retina emerging before the neural tube. Likewise, in baking a pie the crust is made before the pie is placed in the oven; trying to make the crust after baking does not produce good results.⁵

However, the sequence of floats and marching bands in a parade does not quite fit the model.⁶ The pattern of the parade sequence persists even when the parade is not moving; it exists independently of time. Unlike the performative steps of a mechanical procedure or the observed stages of a natural process, the sequential ordering of a parade is a one-dimensional pattern of interchangeable elements (bands, floats, drill teams, etc.). Further, if the Navy Band follows the Chamber of Commerce float, in no way does this imply that other arrangements are impossible. It could just as easily be the other way around, with the Navy Band in the lead.

This is how I will use sequence in this book: sequences are persistent, one-dimensional patterns composed of interchangeable elements. Many sequential arrangements describe and coordinate activities like baking a pie or building an organism, but it is their persistence, their stability in time, that accounts for their power. A pie recipe is made up of sequences of letters and numbers forming a pattern we call a text. It comprises individual elements drawn from an alphabet, elements that have no inherent meaning in and of themselves but which gain meaning when combined and recombined into one-dimensional patterns.

Before life emerged on Earth there were no sequences, no one-dimensional patterns either to describe what was going on or to guide the behavior of matter. The forces of nature that governed earth, air, fire, and water operated of their own accord. Once sequences appeared, however, strange behaviors emerged that are difficult to explain satisfactorily with the universal laws of nature. If you drop a $20 bill, the laws of physics can tell you that it will fall to the ground, but they cannot tell you that someone else will quickly pick it up.⁷

To be sure, sequences—whether DNA molecules, ink on a page, or voltages in a chip—are nothing other than ordinary physical objects that obey the laws of nature like everything else. There are no special laws or supernatural activity that somehow exempt sequences from the physical and chemical processes that control the universe. In this sense, sequences are quite ordinary, just more stuff. But in another sense, in their ability to orchestrate the behavior of matter, they are extraordinary.

We must stand ready to look at sequences both ways, as ordinary matter and as something much more. “Central to the notion of a ‘message’ is the difference between the structure of a physical object which follows necessarily from its physical makeup and that which does not,” explains David Hull.⁸ You and I may readily acknowledge that this book is made of paper, ink, and glue, but unless we are bookbinders by trade, the details of its fabrication are of little interest. The pattern of sequences in the book is what interests us. Sequences lead us to ignore their own physical details and attend instead to their persistent one-dimensional arrangement.

1.3 Sequences, In and Out of Time

Time, space, matter, and energy are the great quartet of physics. So unusual are sequences that their behavior can be contrasted across all four domains. We shall take them in turn, starting with time. When a gym class runs a 100-meter dash, the student who finished ahead of all the rest always wins. Likewise, when a linguistics class takes its final examination, the student who completed the test ahead of the others always gets the best grade. Uh no, wait, that’s not right. The student who finished the test first might easily get the worst grade, and the student who finished last might get the best. Why is this? Why should time be decisive in foot races but not in finals?

The answer is central to how sequences function. It is to be found in the difference between behaviors that call for processing sequences, like taking a test, and behaviors that entail only dynamic motion, like running a race. Taking a test is rate-independent and running a race is rate-dependent.⁹ Rate dependence means that the result of an activity depends on how quickly it is performed. Rate independence means the opposite: the result does not depend on speed.

Think of our parade. Whether the marchers are standing still, walking at a normal pace, or double-timing, their order, their pattern, their sequence, remains the same. The motion of the marchers may be faster or slower, but their relationship to one another does not change. This relationship, their one-dimensional arrangement, is rate-independent. Moving faster does mean the parade will finish sooner; its motion is rate-dependent even though its arrangement is not.

Physical laws like gravity and electromagnetism predict how events develop over time. When we describe the everyday physical world, we are all about rates and how the fundamental forces of nature affect them. Here’s a clue. You can tell an activity is rate-dependent if it contains the time variable “t” in its denominator:...