Oversimplifying, axons are the nervous system’s telegraph wires, enabling neurons to form networks. When a neuron fires, it sends an electrical signal down its axon, which then stimulates other neurons. The signal travels down the axon by opening ion channels embedded in the cellular membrane, letting ions pass through. When enough ions cross a channel, they change the voltage across the membrane, which in turn causes the nearby channels to open, propagating the signal in a domino effect.
In principle, our brains could evolve to have thinner axons, which would save space so that more neurons and more axons could pack in. Thinner axons would also consume less energy. Nature already seems to have made axons nearly as thin as they can be: any thinner, and the random opening of the channels would make axons too noisy, meaning that they would deliver too many signals when the neuron was not supposed to fire. The problem is that ion channels are not precisely controllable. Instead, they open and close at random many times a second. Electrical signals only change the likelihood that they will open. In a typical axon the random opening of an ion channel does not have serious consequences, because the channel closes again before letting in too many ions. If evolution made axons much thinner, however, the opening of a single ion channel would often create a spurious signal which then would travel down the axon. Too much of this noise would make the neuron unreliable. We talk a lot about information and I notably never grasp what it is. There is information at work behind this limit and what interests me is that we are addressing information and being addressed by it, and developing ways to receive and transmit almost like scouts. Having reached this biological limit which seems 'designed in', we are almost operating as machines we might design for exploration and adaptation to environments we are not sure of (sort of AI). When my science is exhausted I go metaphor. Our brains are generally concerned (consciously) with the utterly puny and we are barely aware of most of what they are up to. Evolution looks to have subsumed many forms into 'individuals' and I find myself wondering about a new biological delimiting of collectivism (a bit like linking up a load of PCs), rather than trying to 'make slimmer axions' in an individual. This might mean a change from processing speed focus to limits in environmental scanning and what can be scanned. Autopoesis is in my head in its meaning of self-creation of environment. We are entirely unaware of this as delimiting however much we talk of 'nurture'. Our literature seems to have no grasp of it at all, centred on existential heroes and soppy drivel, playing to the biological crass. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Epistemology" group. To post to this group, send email to epistemology@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to epistemology+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/epistemology?hl=en.
