114 REAL GENES, REAL INTELLIGENCE
say. A new spatiotemporal formation appears, with a diff er ent grammar,
adapted to the new environment.
Now imagine, in either case, that a couple joins the set, but their tim-
ing and movements are slightly off (perhaps one of them has a limp). Th eir
deviations are nevertheless usually accommodated and the dance holds
its shape— varying a little in precision, perhaps slightly changing the
rules, but within certain limits. Now imagine they are wildly off. Th e
dance breaks down, the members mill around for a bit, consider alterna-
tives, and then devise a modifi ed formation, with modifi ed rules, to ac-
commodate the wayward couple more comfortably.
We now know that there are such molecular dances taking place in
every living cell in every living system. Again, the formation is an
attractor or basin of attraction, each shaped according to the fl ow of
energy around it. Diff er ent attractors are adapted to their diff er ent local
environments. Th e disturbance created by the incursion of an unusual
component— a new signal or stimulus, a molecule with an unexpected
shape— distorts the attractor. But, like a swinging pendulum knocked out
of sync, the signal becomes accommodated, and the attractor eventually
recovers its shape (such an attractor is called a “limit cycle attractor” for
that reason). Sometimes the disturbance is so way out, however, that a
complete reconfi guration is needed. A critical phase ensues; the attractor
becomes chaotic for a while and then settles back into a new limit cycle,
now accommodating the disturbance or change in a new formation with
a revised grammar.
We now know that living systems, from the single cell to brains to
complex human socie ties— all under constant perturbation— spend most
of the time in that critical state on the edge of chaos. Such dynamical sys-
tems are far more adaptable in changing environments than any me-
chanical, if- then, input q output system with predetermined “rules.”
I will be referring to these systems a lot in what follows.
In each case, the information that furnishes the crucial predictability
is not signal “ele ments,” but the dynamical structure: “statistical informa-
tion, based on past observations, about what seems likely to occur in the
future,” as David Moore puts it in Th e Developing Genome (p. 11). Th is is
the kind of information that all organisms need in circumstances that
are, in eff ect, constantly novel.
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