1Fish in Schools or Fish in Cans. Evolutionary Thinking and Formalization

Abstract: Gregory Bateson maintains that individual development and natural evolution follow the same principles; thus he parallels learning and evolution. I try to establish the precise mechanism in the case of human learning, by attributing to concepts the role of genes: We develop our thoughts conceptually through selection in the same way as living beings develop genetically. Thoughts thus evolve in our mind like fish in a cove, yielding concepts as the genetic material from which new thoughts arise. This puts thinking into contrast to talking, where we build sentences from words like buildings from bricks. Thus, while we represent concepts directly through words, thoughts have to be formulated into, and started from, sentences. Communication involves much choice, and thus chance; how come we relate so well, being so different? How do we share our thoughts if the world is so big? We have to care to keep our systems “small”, to balance between “too big ” and “too small”. Otherwise we could not manage in man-made environments. This viewpoint yields consequences for learning and teaching; many of them are known, but may appear now in a new light. Communication is most risky with formal matters; formal concepts are needed to describe machines, and thus have to be developed through artificial breeding