Chapter 46: The Cambrian Explosion of Life-forms

 

Reality is a simple concept, but it can be very powerful in its effects and the following will show just how a slight change to an animals’ reality can literally change the world, and as an example, let’s first look at the so called Cambrian ‘explosion’ of life-forms.

 

Why do we have curiosity? I believe that it is part of consciousness/creativity/curiosity because the mind/brain evolved to produce ‘parts of facts’ from the ‘trees’ of dendrites that hold ‘facts’ in the brain and these ‘parts’ form creativity because they are on the same subject as they arise from the same lobe in the brain (attractor of concept). Curiosity begets or produces creativity that results in consciousness by producing the idea of going down other (spurious) paths.

 

So, why do we want to know how and why life-forms changed so dramatically in the Cambrian? I think that the formation of reality by the mind/brain is to blame. Reality is a survival factor because if your reality breaks down at any time, magical or unexpected things can happen and you can quickly become someone else’s dinner. We are at the beginning of our own ‘explosion’ or perhaps Armageddon and the Cambrian is similar in form and may lead to insights into our future. Indeed, it will be seen that both are due to an increase in living-space (internet/eyes) and an increase in ‘sophistication’ (technology/mind-complexity).

 

Reality, or the steady state of ‘getting on with your neighbours’, precedes Survival of the Fittest and this is shown in the example of the Cambrian. The Mathematics of the Mind describes the situation where organisms and their interactions are attractors that would be, at least theoretically in this case, measured by our mind/brain and only a few relationships will be considered. The principle drivers or attributes of the whole change is the formation of the eye, the increased complexity of the mind, the increase in size that allowed this to happen and consciousness that opened up logic and the consequences of that to life as a whole during this period. It is little wonder that the effect was huge.

 

A secondary driver is consciousness because eyes ‘increase’ the volume of space that we have knowledge of, and, within which we are vulnerable to predators. Measuring and theorising locks our mind into the problem, and as discussed previously, logic is the consequence. The mind/brain increases in complexity as it struggles to cope and sets the scene to remember so that we better our reality to take part in Survival of the Fittest.

 

‘In Darwin’s day, however, there was no evidence of the existence of life earlier than the Cambrian period. Animals had simply appeared around 540 million years ago … these first life forms were not remotely primitive. They had claws, jaws, teeth, tentacles – and eyes.’ (The Eye: a natural history, Simon Ings, p 88) ‘Within five million years, between 543 and 538Ma, life on Earth transformed completely. The way animals were organised, how they lived and how they behaved, underwent a massive sea-change, from blind drifting and casual grazing to visually guided predation, defence, camouflage and evasion. (p 90)

 

To repeat, ‘within five million years, between 543 and 538Ma, life on Earth transformed completely’, and this parallels the current change to the Earth by humans over several thousand years. The Cambrian was a reality change using Survival of the Fittest, whereas the current situation is a reality change produced by the mind/brain and that started with the Greek Philosophers, the printing press of the Middle Ages and now the internet. We don’t know what will happen in the near future, but the Cambrian may give a few insights into our current situation.

 

If the Cambrian ‘upset’ took 5 million years, our mind/brain in two thousand years has brought us to the edge of global warming, over-population etc. through not using the complete mathematics, but only a limited special case that ignores crucial attractors. The Cambrian shows that the affected life-forms recovered, albeit in a completely different form, but the current changes are also to our environment and extreme events could happen. I think that this Armageddon scenario should be kept in mind as we ‘imagine’ the Cambrian unfolding, because there are differences and similarities between the Cambrian situation and now.

 

‘Not until 1946 did an Australian mining geologist happen upon the first well-preserved pre-Cambrian fossils. Exploring the Ediacara Hills, a range of mountains north of the city of Adelaide, the mining geologist Reginald C. Sprigg found fossils of what looked like soft-bodied organisms. Some resembled jellyfish; others were more like shellfish, or worms.’ (p 90) When animal life consisted solely of tiny, millimetre-long worms and planktonic drifters, there was no need for vision, for there was no animal big enough to see…. Just as there is a minimum size for a true, image-forming eye, there is a minimum level of complexity. Vision requires a nervous system sufficiently complex to harness the dance of light within the eye.’ (p 94)

 

An ‘eyespot’ is a piece of skin connected by a nerve to the brain that distinguishes night and day and if the eyespot bulges outward in a sphere it divides and forms the ‘pixels’ of compound eyes used commonly in insects. This produces a usable eye of small size. If the eyespot sinks into a spherical shape, it forms a pinhole camera, which can evolve a lens and become the type of eye used in animals. This can occur in a few hundred thousand years, but requires a larger organism. The premise is that this increase in size, leading to an increase in neural capacity and the formation of acute sight produces the Cambrian explosion of life-forms.

 

‘There is no point having legs if you can’t see where you are going. (The other senses will give you some idea of your environment, but only vision will give you the instantaneous information that makes agile movements possible.) Teeth and armour, too, are the product of an arms race that could not have got started without vision. When the chances of getting snared by a predator are little more than random, there’s no reason to evolve heavy, expensive defences against misfortune. But once the predator can see you, and pursue you, the chances of falling victim to its attentions are astronomically increased and a suit of armour becomes a worthwhile investment.’ (p 94)

 

‘What our prey animal needs is spines. Lots of spines. Marella splendens, a large (two centimetre-long) blind bottom feeder is so spiny, it resembles a stripped skeleton more than a living animal. It was the Volvo of the Cambrian shallows, tootling complacently about in its safety cage. Other creatures were more direct, growing hedgehog-like spines and even blades. Many trilobites were fantastically spiny; others were able to roll up in an armoured ball’. (p 95)

 

‘According to Parker’s recent book In the Blink of an Eye, the advent of vision powered the Cambrian explosion…. Parker’s discovery of colour in the Cambrian suggests a dangerous, fast-paced, colourful environment. It also suggests that Cambrian animals possessed a modicum of cleverness; the shape, texture and colour of things meant something to them.’ (p 97)

 

I would like to repeat: ‘it also suggests that Cambrian animals possessed a modicum of cleverness; the shape, texture and colour of things meant something to them.’ The italics are the author’s, and show that these logical descriptions were present in the earliest organisms in the Cambrian, and suggest that consciousness existed at that time. I believe that consciousness/creativity is a relationship generated by the nerves and pre-dated the formation of a head, as described above. But, pre-dated by very little time because the nerves running parallel and close together are probably going to a mind/brain. This will be explored in a later chapter.

 

As mentioned above, many factors contribute to an outcome, as described by the Mathematics of the Mind, which was developed from organizational change, and it is not just the evolution of sight, but to some extent the development of consciousness/creativity as well, that played the major part in the Cambrian ‘explosion’. So generalizing this, we have the operators of sight and consciousness/creativity forcing a change in reality that can, to some extent be anticipated by the forward indicator (reality) if we extrapolate. In other words, by noting the beginning of eyes and consciousness/creativity, our mind/brain can extrapolate into the future using this new reality that we call logic. Notice that logic is not part of the iterative process of the backwards-looking operator Survival of the Fittest.

 

‘The Earth has experienced at least six major extinction events – from asteroid strikes to plagues of clever apes. The “ape plague” story is still being written, but the outcome of the other five events is always the same: a period of rapid evolutionary development among the species that survived. The trouble is, the Cambrian explosion was not preceded by an extinction event…..   all good ideas and there are plenty more. But none of them is complete or compelling.’ (p 91) This shows why an iterative mathematics must be used and that an ‘exact’ mathematics will not do what is required.

 

This “ape plague” has worsened over the last two thousand years and using the COMPLETE Mathematics of the Mind we can use logic and the forward operator (reality) to solve the problems of the world before they become uncontrollable. The incomplete use by mathematics has produced technology, which has created the problem and, at the same time (and perhaps a just-in-time means of effecting a solution) the internet/TV/radio allows world-wide communication, which along with the world-wide ‘religion/reality’ of government and the justice system allows all humans to ‘pledge’ or agree on a solution, as outlined in this book and prevent a catastrophe from occurring.