Hullo all,
Well... the long delay was due to fact that i had forgotten my password. Ofcourse, i knew that such a contingency could arise when i was creating the blog. So, i had written the username and password down securely. BUT, i also forgot where i had written those crucial details down :P
This "oversight" of mine then brings us to the problem of why we forget? Or to put it differently, why we remember? (Although there is a subtle difference between these two questions and, thus, between their answers)
Ofcourse, evolutionarily speaking, we can see the advantage of having the ability to remember. Thus, we can say we know why we remember. This line of thought is undermined by the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of species on this planet and yet only a handful can boast of a memory power comparable to ours (humans). Notice that i refer only to our ability to memorise and NOT our intelligence. I have reason to believe that our claim that we are intelligent is not founded on fact :P Coming back to our discussion... We know that there MANY (more than i'd care to count, anyway) species which DON'T have any decent ability to memorise. And YET, they survive just as well, if not better and in bigger numbers, as we do... SO, our contention that it is evolutionarily beneficial to us to have a memory is true only if we take a very narrow view and guage its importance in our CURRENT state. There wasn't any reason for us to get to this stage in the first place. It was pure chance that brought us here. And, so, now we enter the realm of philosophy... and i don't wish to go there.
Maybe, for a more scientific approach (and by that, i mean an approach where we have reasonable hope of getting definite answers) we should try another question... HOW do we remember?? That would be more like it... Now we can enter the realm of molecular biology, synaptic interaction, cellular signal transduction etc. etc... Way cooler and much more satisfying in that at least we'll get SOME answers...
It is this that i wish to study... Will one of you PLEASE take me on as PhD Student??? I have finished my Masters degree in Biophysics... PLEASE????
Well... the long delay was due to fact that i had forgotten my password. Ofcourse, i knew that such a contingency could arise when i was creating the blog. So, i had written the username and password down securely. BUT, i also forgot where i had written those crucial details down :P
This "oversight" of mine then brings us to the problem of why we forget? Or to put it differently, why we remember? (Although there is a subtle difference between these two questions and, thus, between their answers)
Ofcourse, evolutionarily speaking, we can see the advantage of having the ability to remember. Thus, we can say we know why we remember. This line of thought is undermined by the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of species on this planet and yet only a handful can boast of a memory power comparable to ours (humans). Notice that i refer only to our ability to memorise and NOT our intelligence. I have reason to believe that our claim that we are intelligent is not founded on fact :P Coming back to our discussion... We know that there MANY (more than i'd care to count, anyway) species which DON'T have any decent ability to memorise. And YET, they survive just as well, if not better and in bigger numbers, as we do... SO, our contention that it is evolutionarily beneficial to us to have a memory is true only if we take a very narrow view and guage its importance in our CURRENT state. There wasn't any reason for us to get to this stage in the first place. It was pure chance that brought us here. And, so, now we enter the realm of philosophy... and i don't wish to go there.
Maybe, for a more scientific approach (and by that, i mean an approach where we have reasonable hope of getting definite answers) we should try another question... HOW do we remember?? That would be more like it... Now we can enter the realm of molecular biology, synaptic interaction, cellular signal transduction etc. etc... Way cooler and much more satisfying in that at least we'll get SOME answers...
It is this that i wish to study... Will one of you PLEASE take me on as PhD Student??? I have finished my Masters degree in Biophysics... PLEASE????
