Joichi Ito recently emailed me asking if I would contribute to a comment thread regarding neoteny. The following is what I said…

Understanding neoteny as integral to human evolution and current social change is to reference evolutionary theories common in the nineteenth century (i.e., Mivart, Hyatt, Cope) that were let go when natural selection was raised to be our theory of choice. Ideas evidencing sensitivity to interconnection were abandoned in a theorizing environment that focused on theories offering the greatest number of questions being answered by the simplest hypothesis.

A reductionist milieu tends to pay less attention to solutions that suggest a connection between individuals or species across a scale or between scales. Over the last ten years, there has emerged a new evolution theory discipline called evolutionary developmental biology. In many ways, evo devo harkens back to the nineteenth-century theories that focused on the power of interconnection to both understand and predict how evolution will unfold. Central to evo devo and to the nineteenth-century theories was understanding the power of how individuals mature, and how maturity trajectories change over time when species are influenced by evolution. Central to understanding these kinds of changes, changes in maturity, is understanding how the environment directly and indirectly encourages evolutionary change. It is helpful to examine how the environment and social structure impact ontogeny, or growth.

Neoteny is one of two foundation maturity paradigms, one where the infant or embryo features of an individual in a species unfolds over generations to appear in later and later stages until manifesting in the look and behavior of adults. This is not a theory. This is a description of biological process. These processes can be studied by reading about heterochrony, described in detail in Stephen J. Gould’s Ontogeny and Phylogeny.

Humans evidence neoteny. It can be argued whether humans do or don’t evidence neoteny, but neoteny is central to how species evolve. Infant and embryo features of our ancient forebears have emerged to appear in the physiology and behavior of contemporary adults. I would suggest that what is occurring now in modern society, with huge increases in diversity, transparency and horizontal communication, is evidence of society being impacted by neotenic tendencies. I would go so far as to closely associate neoteny and the Internet.

There is one aspect of this process which was not understood in the nineteenth century, and it is only beginning to be understood today. Neoteny is hypothetically closely associated with matrifocal social structures, societies where women share authority with men. Cooperative males are highly valued in societies that value commanding women. Modern society is evidencing profoundly matrifocal tendencies. It is possible that surges in neoteny emerging today are closely associated with female-centered social structure that respects cooperation and creativity.

To observe perhaps the greatest evidence on neoteny today you need go no further than the Creative Commons. When an aesthetic features a proliferation of borrowing, with each creative act deeply influenced by the creativity of others in the environment, you are observing a societal reproduction of what occurs in earliest embryo ontogeny. As embryos, each being is profoundly impacted by changes in the environment, with growth determined by how each cell decides to grow, impacted by the behavior of its neighbors. Earliest maturing, ontogeny, is all about responding to the environment. That exact dynamic is emerging today in the behavior of those relying upon the Creative Commons for information that influences their personal growth and creativity.

Neoteny, the prolongation of infant and embryo features into the look and behaviors of adults, is perhaps the guiding principle, the zeitgeist, of our time.

An article in Science News last October 31 called attention to a discovery:  ”These dinosaurs were not separate species, as some paleontologists claim, but different growth stages of previously named dinosaurs, according to a new study.”

“Juveniles and adults of these dinosaurs look very, very different from adults, and literally may resemble a different species,” said dinosaur expert Mark B. Goodwin, assistant director of UC Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology.  ”But some scientists are confusing morphological differences at different growth stages with characteristics that are taxonomically important.  The result is an inflated number of dinosaurs in the late Cretaceous.”

In the article, Goodwin’s associate, John “Jack” Horner, says, “Dinosaurs, like birds and many mammals, retain neoteny, that is, they retain their juvenile characteristics for a long period of growth, which is a strong indicator that they were very social animals, grouping in flocks or herds with long periods of parental care.”

Horner associates neoteny with sociality, suggesting that animals that congregate throughout their lives exhibit neotenous characteristics.  I wish I knew more about these areas.  My next question is:  Are there specific social structures associated with those animals that group in flocks and herds?

If it is true…

“Forest-dwelling apes efficiently conserve their water reserves, which they obtain primarily from fruit and vegetation, such that they need only rarely to visit predator-frequented watering holes.  By contrast, humans active in hot desert can lose up to 28 liters of water and up to 10% of bodily salt reserves per day (Morgan, 1982).  This incredible profligacy with water and salt suggests that early hominids must have enjoyed no shortage of either: they probably dwelled fairly close to fresh and salt water when not foraging.  Rivers and lakes would have provided not only drinking water, but also allowed body-washing and food-washing, offered fish, aquatic crustaceans, and shellfish for eating, and, because the thermal conductivity of water is much higher than that of air, quick swims would have allowed for efficient cooling-off after a long, hot day of foraging.  Note that these conditions would make the aquatic ape hypothesis (Hardy, 1960; Morgan, 1982) a bit more plausible…”  (Geoffrey F. Miller, “Evolution of the Human Brain through Runaway Sexual Selection:  The Mind as a Protean Courtship Device,” unpublished thesis (1994), p. 164.)

The aquatic ape hypothesis overlaps in two ways with the theorizing I’ve been conducting the last few years.  What I’m now…

Running some more riffs off of yesterday’s conjectures regarding the particular hypothetical dynamics that I’ve been exploring in human evolution, are there species that tend to cluster (1) sexual selection with females picking males for particular qualities (dance, song, plumage, etc.) and (2) females assigning relatively large amounts of attention to the young?  If so, males can be chosen for their neotenous features, features females would be attracted to in their young, which might result in relatively larger brains, more cooperative behavior, more tendencies to play, more creativity.

This could veer off in two directions.  If the female is picking males for those features that demand higher testosterone levels (bright red plumage), the male will not likely be displaying neotenous tendencies and would not likely be helping in the raising of the kids (though this would depend on seasonal variations in hormone levels).  Yet, if the female is picking males that are challenged to behave with some creativity, or at least species-related novel behavior, to get the females’ attention, the male may end up evolving in ways that suggest how the human species has evolved.

I’m thinking that those predators that hunt in cooperative packs might as a trend display…

“On the other hand, his sense of aesthetic appreciation, based on the pleasure which man can receive from the construction and matching of musical patterns involving the interaction of rhythm, melody, and harmony and visual patterns resulting from the interaction of form and color, has also resulted from the freeing of his association areas from the more rigid relationship with the lower centers and with the more stereotyped, amorphous symbol patterns which constitute the inner reality of all other animals (Koestler 1964).  Aesthetic appreciation, therefore, is a foetalised form of the continuous search for congruity or matching between models of the environment, models which the animal constantly constructs in its brain by processing its perceptions and the stereotypes retained in its memory store.”  (Crombie, Donald L., “The Group System of Man and Paedomorphosis,” Current Anthropology 12(2) (1971):163.)

Going through my store of excerpts from several hundred papers and close to 300 books, I came across the passage above, having no memory of having recorded it.  This is what I’ve been playing with the last few weeks as regards a theory of music and aesthetics that emerge as a result of embryonic features appearing in the behavior and experience of adults.…

To understand trends in current societal transformations requires an evaluation protocol that takes into consideration where we’ve come from, where we’re going and where we are.  This is particularly challenging when society origin myths, belief structures or paradigms are examples of some of the very content that is transforming.  Seeking understanding from a position with similarities to where we are headed should offer unique insights because the new understanding, at least temporarily, integrates all three frames.  Time will tell.

As regards understanding, convention is useful.  The following is a proposal for a new shared evaluation protocol.

What we understand “teleology” to mean is central to how we interpret current events, societal change, politics, geopolitical dynamics, the control of resources and the ability of the disenfranchised to feel free of want.  “Teleology” can be defined as the belief that there are overriding, perhaps spiritual, forces at work, compelling society to evolve or transform in particular directions featuring progress, improvement and an enhancement of individual positive experience.  There are atheist humanists that nonetheless display teleological tendencies insofar as they experience a confidence that our species has been acting and will continue to act, more or less, in our own best interest, compelling…

“The entire scheme represents a hierarchically organized system of increasing size, differentiation, and complexity, in which each component affects, and is affected by, all the other components, not only at its own level but at lower and higher levels as well.  Thus, the arrows in Figure12-2 not only go upward from the gene, eventually reaching all the way to the external environment through the activities of the organism, but the arrows of influence return from the external environment through various levels of the organism back to the genes.  While the feedforward or feedupward nature of the genes has always been appreciated from the time of Weismann and Mendel on, the feedbackward or feeddownward influences have usually been thought to stop at the level of the cell membrane.  The newer conception is one of a totally interrelated, fully coactional system in which the activity of the genes themselves can be affected through the cytoplasm of the cell by events originating at any other level in the system, including the external environment.”  (G. Gilbert, Individual Development and Evolution (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 145.)

The article appearing in the 11/8/09 BBC News, “Early Life Stress ‘Changes’…

“In a study of alcoholism, it was noted that alcoholism is a significant health concern for lesbians, with an incidence rate perhaps three times that of the general population.  The relationships among the development of alcoholism in women, the experience of stigmatization and the complex facets of lesbian identity and lesbian community are explored.  This exploration provides for a more comprehensive and critical analysis of alcoholism in lesbians.  As a phenomenon of women’s health, alcoholism is examined using the perspectives of developmental theory, symbolic interactionism and critical theory.  The author offers insights and implications for health care, research and theory building.”  (Hall, J. M., “Alcoholism in Lesbians:  Developmental, Symbolic Interactionist, and Critical Perspectives,” Health Care for Women International 11(1) (1990):89-107.)

“Yalom et al. (1973) studied 20 16-year-old boys of diabetic mothers, who had received estrogen or progesterone during pregnancy.  These boys showed less heterosexuality and less masculinity than 20 control boys.  Netley and Rovet (1982) showed that among 33 males with 47,XXY syndrome, 24% were nonrighthanded, compared to 10% of a control group. …  In the present study, as well as in Lindesay (1987), only homosexual men were studied.  In Rosenstein and Bigler (1987) and McCormick et al. (1990), both

…

A professor recently wrote me that she introduced the ideas described in my blog to her class on Neanderthals and Human Evolutionary Theory.  Her email asked or suggested several questions or expressed her class’s confusion in the following areas:

Are you proposing that testosterone levels are driving evolution of mammals in general or primates specifically?

The evidence that testosterone is driving evolution mostly comes from anomalies emerging in neuropsychology around progeny maturation changes that result from environmental influences upon a pregnant mother and other studies in the neuropsychological literature.

An interesting primate study was as follows…

“In a 5-year longitudinal study, we examined the effect of disrupting the neonatal activity of the pituitary–testicular axis on the sexual development of male rhesus monkeys.  Animals in a social group under natural lighting conditions were treated with a GnRH antagonist (antide), antide and androgen, or both vehicles, from birth until 4 months of age.  In antide-treated neonates, serum LH and testosterone were near or below the limits of detection throughout the neonatal period.  Antide + androgen-treated neonates had subnormal serum LH, but above normal testosterone concentrations during the treatment period.  From 6 to 36 months of age, serum LH and testosterone were

…

Maturity is not the same as progress.  To pass through a series of ontological stages evidencing the look, sound and behavior of the personal epochs that have been experienced is not progress.  It is life.

All mixed up in contemporary theorizing are three things:  the exact nature and difference between that which transforms over time that is changing as a result of random interconnections, that which is changing as a result of progress or improvement over time and that which is changing as part of a larger pattern of maturation.

Evolutionary biology tends to take the position that evolution follows Darwin’s wedges metaphor, with every feature of every being emerging as a direct or indirect result of what is necessary to survive to procreate.  Features acquired by individuals are random, unconnected to the environment or the parents’ experience, making random feature survival the central focus of evolution.  There is no such thing as progress.  There is no larger picture to inform what survives to procreate.

Society, religion and spirituality tend to focus on the idea that either we are on a pathway toward improvement or we are not.  Those saying not are often atheists, and often they find themselves sympathizing…

“Before Agassiz, recapitulation had been defined as a correspondence between two series: embryonic stages and adults of living species.  Agassiz introduced a third series: the geologic record of fossils.  An embryo repeats both a graded series of living, lower forms and the history of its type as recorded by fossils.  There is a “threefold parallelism” of embryonic growth, structural gradation, and geologic succession.  ‘It may therefore be considered as a general fact, very likely to be more fully illustrated as investigations cover a wider ground, that the phases of development of all living animals correspond to the order to succession of their extinct representatives in past geological times.  As far as this goes, the oldest representatives of every class may then be considered as embryonic types of their respective orders of familiar among the living.’”  (1857, 1962 ed., p. 114)  (Stephen J. Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge:  Belknap Press, 1977), pp. 65-66.)

Stephen J. Gould’s Ontogeny and Phylogeny lies at the heart of many of the interconnecting concepts of this thesis.  Ontogeny and Phylogeny made sense of many of the disciplines I’d been studying for many years, showing how evolutionary theory informs many levels of experience.  Central to Gould’s thesis…

I have found that definitions of neoteny that I provide to friends often don’t easily stick in their mind.  To ask someone to think of an automobile accelerating is easy.  It is not too difficult to ask people to make a picture in their mind’s eye of an accelerating automobile changing its model year to acquire future features while speeding up, decelerating to change shape to look like an older model.  But it is more difficult to ask them in their mind’s eye to perform this animation while considering a long succession of automobile models, each succeeding vehicle behaving a little different from the one before, different in a fashion where its ability to change model year with speed is enhanced or compromised with time.  Minds’ eyes sometimes can use a little training.

Neoteny, one of six heterochronic dynamics described by Gould (1977), is the biological process that prolongs ancestor embryo, infant and childhood features and displays them in the physical bodies and behaviors of descendant adults.  The classic examples are our ancient chimpanzee-like forebear infant features of small jaw, small teeth, big head, relatively large brain, upright stature, vertical skull positioning, playful disposition, curiosity, social dependency and displays of…

Several themes run through this blog.  Several related melodies play off each other as I explore how they are connected and the way that the melodies seem to transform when approached from different directions.  Perhaps this work’s most influential theme is the power of play to inform understanding.  I am not an academic.  I have no affiliations with an established institution or connections with groups that compel me to defend specific beliefs or conjectures.  I feel like a grown-up surrounded by toys, ideas that represent patterns in our experience, and I’m reveling in the process of letting myself be led to what feels like unique ways for the ideas or patterns to interact.

Like a child, I presuppose that what I am exploring, I can understand.  Engaging, I intuit and experience connection, and I estimate that my participation will be rewarded with my having learned something I didn’t know before.  Many themes carry through this work, but perhaps the core idea is that everything is connected and that those connections can be understood, or at least intuited, by a nonacademic.

I maintain a deep reverence for what might be called “fun.”  When I feel attracted to something, I take that…

I just noted a paper, Multiple ancient origins of neoteny in Lycidae (Coleoptera): consequences for ecology and macroevolution, that observes instances of neoteny compelling jumps in evolution.  One of the riddles of the career of Stephen J. Gould was how he seemed to rarely discuss how his deep insights focusing on neoteny explained his theory of punctuated equilibrium.  Gould did not believe in gradual evolution.  Yet, he seemed to only occasionally discuss the specifics of his saltationist conjectures, particularly when it came to heterochronic theory, or the study of the rate and timing of maturation and development, the source of neoteny.

The work just noted, Multiple ancient origins…, doesn’t just not note the influence of neoteny on humans, but it goes back many millions of years to discuss its subject.  My work has focused almost exclusively on neoteny in humans and makes the following statement….

If heterochrony is the study of the rates and timing of maturation with testosterone levels impacting rate and estrogen levels controlling timing, then those environmental or social structure adjustments that influence levels of testosterone and estrogen determine the speed, timing, features and direction of evolution.

Contemporary research on neoteny and heterochronic theory,…

An aspect of neoteny just struck me that has never crossed my mind before.  It perhaps suggests a basic principle in evolution.  I’m not sure.

Two days ago, I posted a piece exploring a paradox of recapitulation that focuses on an odd possibility.  When a species is in an accelerated phase and withdraws adult features backward over generations to eventually appear in the infants of descendants, adults may exhibit features of ancient forebears.  If the species lineage had in the past gone through a similar cycle, then that genetic inheritance would have been available, emerging when a similar hormonal disposition became engaged.

Haeckel may have been focused on that very dynamic as he obsessed on recapitulation as a source of new behavioral and physical characteristics.  What strikes me now is that though recapitulation (acceleration) is not considered at this time as a relevant description of evolutionary process, it does seem to be half of a process that results in a seemingly natural biological dynamic that not only withdraws species backward through ontogeny to conception but at the same time carries forward or prolongs features of this planet’s earliest species forward into adults.

There are two waves or currents moving through…

There is an idea I’ve been wrestling with for several years that I don’t think is going to get resolved by putting it into words, but I still want to describe the conundrum.

Alpheus Hyatt was a contemporary of Darwin. In Hyatt’s view, all species transformations could be explained by acceleration, with the apparent withdrawal or reversion into former stages, neoteny or paedomorphosis, being explained by a natural reemergence of early ontogenetic stages very late in an accelerated process, an exhibition that might be compared to senility in human development.

I’ve hypothesized that humans and many other species evolve over time by delaying and accelerating maturation (influenced by higher and lower levels of testosterone and estrogen).  Both the environment and sexual selection informed by social structure can influence these hormone levels.  Imagine a roller coaster or a snake’s wavering path revealing periods of time in a species’ transformation that evidence relatively high male testosterone, for example, and relatively low male testosterone.  Over time we might observe several peaks of high testosterone, reflected, we might hypothesize, by far more male-against-male control of procreation competition and shorter life spans with higher mortality.

Let’s hypothesize that humans have followed something like this meandering…

There are the interpretations of evolution that emphasize mutation.  Evolutionary developmental biologists are exploring ways life may be evolving that are unrelated to mutation, pathways influenced by the environment.  My work concentrates on how the rates and timing of maturation are influenced by hormones, with sexual selection or environmental changes transforming individuals and then species over time.

In the river analogy that preceded this piece, there is no explanation for how a species might leave the groove provided by the trajectories set up by maturational delay and acceleration.  This river chatters, making music as it flows downstream.  What might be the music of evolution?

A species could evolve over time, prolonging infant features into adult descendants, and then it could reverse that trend by withdrawing adult features into descendant infants.  Then repeat.  It would seem, like a teeter totter, that over great periods of time there would be no real movement, just variation between two polarities.

Indeed, in some cases this may be what occurs.  Nevertheless, unique variations keep emerging, species that have never been observed.

Some reasons for this come to mind.  What might these reasons sound like?

Species don’t just prolong infant features to adult descendants.  Aspects of…

I’ve been playing with the idea of the Mississippi as a metaphor for a species’ life when it comes to understanding neoteny and acceleration.  It’s not a perfect fit, but it is an interesting one.

Imagine the Mississippi as representing changes in a species over time.  At the source, Itasca in Minnesota, clear water emerges from beneath the earth in a pristine environment featuring wildlife and virgin forest.  At first a trickle, the stream picks up speed and breadth, finally leaving the protected environment of the park.

The river grows wider as it meanders south.  Houses and, later, towns appear beside it.  Soon, industry emerges, and before too long, boats carrying the product of industry share river space with tourists and local boaters.

At the other end of the river, New Orleans, the river is girdled by cities on both sides, massive commercial and industrial activity and almost a million people.  Cities like Baton Rouge offer single corporate sites square miles in size, using the Mississippi as an opportunity for profit.

Driving down and up the Mississippi with my son, I am sensitive to the ways he is different and the same as I, as I am similar yet vary…

Physicists maintain a reverence for process that transcends deity, the metaphors that deity is associated with and the battles that sometimes result from deep commitment to metaphor.  Physics is a relatively nonmetaphoric undertaking.  Reverence for process connects physicists across the world.  There is evidence that this state of reverence, this respect for the awe-inspiring mathematics of the universe, often results in the practitioners of physics having an experience of everything being connected.  Transcendence without mythology.

In the biological sciences, most practitioners are still enamored of the implications of Darwin’s theory of natural selection.  Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), studies revolving around epigenesis and the work of heterochronic theorists such as Matsuda have not been integrated into a general understanding similar to that engaged in by the practitioners of physics.  In biology, interconnections are viewed as contingent upon random circumstance leading to complexity.  In physics, interconnection is often viewed as evidence of an integrated whole.

In biology, a central focus is natural selection’s insistence that the variation of progeny produced by a coupling is random, unrelated to environmental effects.  Alternative theories (evo-devo, epigenesis and Matsuda) suggest that there may be little that is random in the proliferation of life upon earth.  Physicists…

“The existence of mammary ridges on the embryo concording with ancient synapsids suggests that those ancient animals also had nutrient-supplying ridges on their bodies for which there is no paleontological evidence.  On the human embryo, the mammary ridges gradually coalesce and finally resolve into discrete nipples on day 58.  This event concords almost exactly with the lowermost Triassic, where the fossils of Cynognathus are found.  Discrete mammary glands and a fused secondary palate in the embryo coincide with a fused secondary palate in the fossil record.”  (Swan, Lawrence W. (1990) The concordance of ontogeny with phylogeny.  Bioscience 40: 380)

Because male humans differentiate from the foundation female at six weeks after conception, might this reflect an ancient emergence of testosterone after estrogen?  Might the Pre-Cambrian explosion have had something to do with there being no testosterone to call an end to the party?

…

“No one, least of all Williams and Kafatos, expect the eventual story to be so simple.  But it does seem likely that normal development is controlled by gradually decreasing concentration of a hormone acting primarily at high levels of the regulatory system.  This is also an ideal mechanism for the simple and rapid production of heterochronic…

It seems too elegant to be true, but I’ve become enamored of the possibility.

Heterochronic theory, the study of the effects of rate and timing on maturation and development, takes the work of several late nineteenth century and early twentieth century theorists and packages that work into a sort of seamless whole. Stephen J. Gould in his Ontogeny and Phylogeny went far, codifying the various theorists’ predilections so that they made an overriding sense. I say “sort of” seamless whole because the actual endocrinological underpinnings of the dynamics were never explored.

Neoteny is the best known of the six heterochronic processes. Neoteny is the process whereby features of infants, embryos or the very young are, over the course of generations, prolonged to emerge in the adults of descendants. Acceleration is the opposite, whereby features of adult ancestors appear in the infants of descendants. For example, let’s say great great grandfather had a baritone voice, emerging at puberty. His son’s deeper voice may emerge just before puberty and his great grandson might have an unusually hoarse voice as a child. That would be an acceleration of a feature. These things normally take hundreds and thousands of generations, though they can be…

Hegel and Lyell and others made philosophical and physical science contributions that led to the idea that such a thing as progress could exist.  With Darwin, progress was not a variable; contingency was king.  Species evolved according to the dictates of what was required to procreate.  Marx believed society was evolving toward a specific end in a particular way.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin believed the particular end was profoundly positive.  Others have run with variations on that theme.  At this time we have Social Darwinists, what we now call free market proponents, suggesting that economic survival of the fittest and societal progress are both true.  The wealthy have to be allowed to do what they want to make it possible for society to advance.  This is the entrepreneurial imperative.

In the West, we have been seeking to integrate these two seemingly incompatible beliefs:  evolution has no goal and society is evolving toward something specific that is good.  It would not be the first time that humans believed two opposite things to be true if it seemed there was a benefit in doing so.

What if both things could be true?  What if understanding how both contingency and progress could both…

“We do have data from Japan that are highly suggestive.  Here, for many centuries, fair skins have been under parental control and, other things being equal, parents seek attractive brides for their sons.  As elsewhere, members of the upper classes tend to be the luckiest.  This might be expected to lead to selection as the generations have gone by.  Research which I conducted a few years ago (Hulse 1967) indicated that this has taken place, for upper-class high school students have the fairest skins and those of the lower class the darkest, while middle-class students are intermediate in pigmentation.  Furthermore, data from Greece (Friedl 1962) indicate that girls who are considered good-looking marry earlier than, and need not be supplied with as large a dowry as, their less-attractive sisters.  Throughout southern Europe, the upper classes contain a disproportionate number of blondes and near-blondes.  Sexual preferences, though they may be based on social snobbery rather than aesthetic interest, are capable of shifting allele frequencies in human population.”  (Hulse, F. S. (1978) Group selection and sexual selection in human evolution.  In Evolutionary Models and Studies in Human Diversity (Hague) Meier, R., Otten, C. M., Abdel-Hameed, F. (eds.), Moulton Publisher, Paris, p. 33.)…

Watching Technology, Entertainment, Design Lectures (TED Lectures) just now, I took in a couple of Kevin Kelly presentations.  Then I visited his blog.

Kelly is writing a book and inviting feedback from visitors for his emerging ideas.  I remember a similar process engaged in by Orson Scott Card for a book he was writing ten years ago or so.  Card was writing fiction.  The end result was disappointing.  Kelly is exploring the nature and ramifications of technology.  I expect the results will be profound.

In one of the TED Lectures of Kelly discussing the ideas he’s playing with as he writes his book, he describes technology as a seventh earth biota emerging from human machinations.  While looking at Kelly’s blog, it hit me that the principles I work with might apply to technology.

I left the following message on Kelly’s blog…

“I study the effects of neoteny and acceleration on human evolution and societal transformation.  This was called heterochronic theory over 100 years ago.  It is a biological evolutionary principle popularized for a time by Stephen Gould in his 1977 book, Ontogeny and Phylogeny.

Heterochronic theory traces the effects of changes in the rate and timing of maturation.  These effects…

Rummaging around some old papers stacked behind my desk, I found a 1987 Neuropsychologia piece titled “Associations of Handedness with Hair Color and Learning Disabilities” by Schachter, Ransil and Geschwind.

The researchers puzzle over the seeming connection between increased left-handedness and blond hair.  I would additionally consider left-handedness as a marker for male maturational delay and possible increases in autism and Asperger’s.

What has me muddling over the various connections at this moment is the profound difference between rates of left-handedness in countries where blond hair is common, like Scandinavia, vs. Asia, where left-handedness is about 2%.  This would suggest that autism rates in Asia would be lower.  Of course, percentage totals are profoundly complicated by differing diagnostic protocols and social support systems.  There does not even seem to be consensus that Asian rates of handedness are really lower than in the West, with many academics suggesting that prejudice is so strong against sinistralality in the East that the low numbers reflect only that strong bias.

So, it’s not the case that we’re exploring patterns with clear conventions regarding even basic agreements on the percentages of autism and handedness.

Nevertheless, the following is what is bothering me right now.  As…