Richard Ostrofsky

The Ecodarwinian Paradigm Richard Ostrofsky

The ecoDarwinian paradigm replaces our traditional explanatory metaphor of a supreme author and king with scientific concepts of evolution and ecology. Rather than explain Nature top-down by asking who wanted something and for what purpose, it seeks a dynamic bottom-up explanation, by asking how and under what influences a system configured itself along the lines observed. Today we begin to understand the mind itself as an outcome of self-organizing firing patterns in a highly evolved brain. To many, these new ideas will seem far more dangerous (once grasped) than our kinship with the apes. This book uses dialog format to review our emerging theory of mind, and to discuss its human implications.