Re: Which organism has the smallest brain?
- From: "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 08:46:34 -0400 (EDT)
"Robert Karl Stonjek" <rstonjek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:daghdv$241f$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>> I am trying to find out which organism has the smallest brain. By brain
>> I mean neuron, cluster of neurons, or anything resembling a neuron. As
>> far as I can tell it is C. Elegans with 302 neurons. Is there no living
>> ancestor to the C. Elegans that has a smaller number?
>>
>
> RKS:
> I wouldn't eliminate those who post here regularly. For even smaller
> brains, try some of the posters at sci.physics.relativity
>
> Kind Regards
> Robert Karl Stonjek
Total concurrence.
The one intellectual stance that takes the fewest brain cells to support is
one which fails to recognize the fallibility of all brains to get things
right
the first time out of the chute.
My view of learning is that higher thought processes ultimately are those
that are evolvable, and not those that are entrenched.
In time I hope not to impress with what I know, or how well I can think,
but how capable I am of accessing ever-better sources of facts and ever
more accurate ways of processing them -- rather than memorizing much
and ossifying it and putting a shell around it.
Years ago, when I was a do-or-die student, with no monetary support from
anybody, working 48 hours a week in a grunt job at a newspaper
(hourly-student-part-time-rate, thirty-four hours officially, and the
remainder
working for other student employees who had sufficient money to pay me to
work in their slots while they studied for exams) I was told by one of my
professors, "You do not belong here," referring to the (his, in his opinion,
it seemed to me) university."
I slogged (to use a word JAH used recently in another frame of reference)
along, sleep-deprived, thirty pounds underweight, needing eye-glasses
desperately and unable to afford them, and by the grace of (fill in this
blank any
way you choose) and a willingness to die or graduate -- I obviously did not
die.
In the workaday world, I worked a many a seventy-hour week, raised the kids,
paid off everything, and made a few fortunate investments. Then one day
found
myself in the wonderful position of having time to focus on learning.
While working at that newspaper I had opportunity to take books out of the
garbage can which had been reviewed by a local book-review columnist. One
of those books from the trash had a huge impact on my thinking about
learning.
It was Psycho Cybernetics, by Maxwell Maltz.
Years later... recently actually... I got to thinking about Maltz's example
in
respect to evolutionary theory, and realized that evolution (by which I
refer to
any and all manifestations of it -- microcosmic through macrocosmic -- and
not
merely biological evolution) works in a way that is more complex than
Maltz's
basic proposition with regard to what people do (or fail to do) with their
lives
and their thoughts.
Maltz, a plastic surgeon, sought to understand why some of his patients, who
looked great and some of whom were even of above-average intelligence, were
hampered by attitudinal sets about themselves that predisposed them to
feelings
of inadequacy and ugliness, from enjoying their surgically corrected or
enhanced
(or self-perceived-only), Not only did some of these patients feel ugly --
when
nobody else did -- but some of them were unable to get their lives together.
Maltz compared a person's propensity not only to enjoy life more, but also
to be
more effective in goal setting and goal realization in his life, to the
flight of a
guided missile -- whereby it is not so important where one IS, but where one
is
headed. A guided missile, Maltz asserted, has a goal, or target, and it has
the
ability to sense when it is off course and to "correct" for it.
I DO NOT concur with a concept now popular among many that one's "self
image" determines one's course to a goal or target. One study of positive
"self
image" revealed that the inmates in a penitentiary scored higher on "self
image"
than a control population of persons chosen at random from among people who
had never been in trouble with the law. Thus, it seems clear to me that it
is not
how high one's image of himself is that determines quality of emotional
life, and
quality of social life but, rather, an ability to make ACCURATE critique of
one's
progress... vis a vis the valid (if simplistic) Maltz model. After all,
just thinking
one is the queen of England does not make him (or her) so.
But, yes, some of use who contribute regularly to sbe are veritable
annelids.
But in my case I am AN EVOLVING annelid-level student (self-guiding) on
the
subject of evolution (and bio-evolution), but I am EVOLVING -- perhaps even
acceleratively.
What would I bring to sbe, if I am able to contribute to its membership
(rather
than simply look upon others condescendingly and disdainfully)? I would
seek to
bring increasing CLARITY to issues, even as I work to disabuse myself of
ignorance about those issues.
I would hope to provide opportunity for all to assume an upwardly EVOLVING
sense of what they know that does not drip with hubris and self-deception...
but
seeks to know where it is pedestrian and off course, and grasping at weak
ideas
because they are popular, or because of a need to belong, or to impress, or
some
such negative thing.
I would hope to make of myself a tool for my own self-correction and a tool
for
offering others an opportunity to see where clarity is of the essence, and
to begin
distinguishing between entrenched ideas and an openness to picking up and
examining other ideas... not necessarily to embrace them for the sake of
embracing
them, but to embrace "correctibility" itself.
I would seek a learning rationale and a learning methodology that is
upwardly
evolvable. (I also believe there is such a phenomenon as downward
evolvement,
but that needs full treatment on its own merits and in its proper time.)
What do I think of sbe? I think it is like me... in need of correction and
upward
evolvement but also CAPABLE of becoming a more progressive forum and a
place for us to learn better facts, better attitudes, better purposes and
thus attain
better results than we do.
This little annelid brain may be small... especially in comparison to all
the
wisdom in the universe -- but it has every intention of evolving upwardly
and
offering opportunity for others to do likewise.
g
upwardly.
.
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- Which organism has the smallest brain?
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- From: Robert Karl Stonjek
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