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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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From:
Robt Mann <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 9 Mar 2002 10:11:22 +1300
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Hello moderators
                It's been drawn to my attention that the poem could be
simply referenced by the URL.  I've adopted this suggestion, which will I
hope satisfy you.
        Also I've taken the opportunity created by the delay to clarify
some minor parts.


cheers

R


Karen Oland wrote:
> The processing
>power required for locating a small, bee sized object against either the sky
>or the ground, at a distance, then calculating the best trajectory to get
>there before the competition would be much greater than that required for
>flying up in the sky and avoiding the (much) larger bird objects there.

        Karen's approach assumes a bee works like, or at least includes, a
computer.
        A famous ivy league prof showed up at Berkeley in 1965 insisting
(in a very tired German accent, as tho' she had little hope that the msg
would sink in) "the brwehn is  NOT  a compughter".  What has been learned
about brains since then, and the evidence we've been touching on about bee
instincts (innate behaviour patterns), learning, planning  ;=}  all suggest
to me that computer analogies are worse than useless to explain these
biological processes.
        I hasten to admit that no alternative idea has been much developed.
All the more reason to press on with new thinking, rather than continuing
down the blind alley of (usu digital) computer analogies for mental
processes.


> If
>this excess brain power were being used for much of anything else, one would
>expect the drones to have figured out how to quit getting tossed out of the
>hive in the fall, by now.

        In my usual lazy cyberevasive way I've not searched the archives,
but I wish to dispute this anthropomorphism (esp gynomorphism).  We do not
know, and quite probably we cannot tell, what pains the drone suffers in
the exits we observe each autumn.  You may think they're suffering, and
Karen as expected scorns them for supposed lack of brains (or cleverness,
or cunning) which she implies could, if they didn't lack it, get them a
continued role inside the colony.  But that is all mere speculation,
projecting onto a v different species her mental processes.
        The idea of a willing sacrifice for the greater good is near the
heart of the system of ethics on which the USA was founded and my little
country has largely thrived.  By far the most decent empire of all history
functioned basically to spread that code of ethics and its religious basis.
One of the better statements (by a Nobel prizewinner) of that spirit of
self-sacrifice is:
  The White Man's Burden   by  Rudyard Kipling
   http://www.boondocksnet.com/kipling/kipling.html

        The concept of the *supreme* sacrifice is even nearer the heart of
the Christianity-based civilisations (now struggling against novel forces
as well as some reinvigorated oldies).  Why shouldn't the behaviour, if not
any awareness thereof, be built into the noble honey bee?  We're all aware
that the small minority of drones that achieve copulation are gutted &
killed by that act; they give their lives for the greater good.

        We flatter ourselves that cleverness needs a fancy brain like ours.
But
{1}  the evidence that the mind is produced by the brain is far weaker than
most assume  -  even v clever Berkeley profs like John Searle
{2}  for the social bee (ant, & termite  -  wasps get blacked out around
here  :=}  ) it is the society that behaves; the individual amounts to v
little
{3}  the processes of coordination of a bee colony are barely glimpsed.
Even a flock of birds wheeling in unison, in v close formation, represents
a severe challenge to the 'we're just computers' assumption, and even to
the 'we include a computer or two' assumption.
{4)  something like R Sheldrake's morphogenic field theory  -  which
actually goes as a school of thought back thru Sir Alister Hardy's
magnificent 1965 'The Living Stream'  -  is needed to explain very many
biological phenomena which cannot be explained by computer analogies or
indeed by any purely mechanistic view of life.

        For all we know, the drone dies in ecstasy, glad to sacrifice his
life for the good of the species.    Alternatively, I can imagine that he
dies in pain & regret, but is aware that this is his destiny and he is
grimly proud of it.  Then again, he may have no idea of any such lofty
concepts or feelings; I have insisted we don't know.
        As I watch them die, I reflect that many of these magnificent
animals have moved over the whole Auckland region, nomadic among several
colonies.  Their functions remain very largely unstudied  -  which would
not be the case if science really were a male-chauvinist arena like the
female-chauvinist racket that some are trying to pervert it to.  Both
within the hive and between colonies, the drones' functions are almost
entirely unknown.  And we certainly have no way to share their feelings  -
if they have any.  It is idle to talk of a drone that has got clever so as
to loiter on past autumn; mind you, the bee-DNA sequencing that A Dick
sooled us quietly onto may lead  -  deliberately or accidentally  -  to
such a wonky drone  ;=}  but far be it from me to query the Wall St Jungle
let alone gangs like du Pont, Dow, etc. in which some readers may own stock.

        Having tossed in the squib to start this thread, I reckon we should
be humbly accurate about how exceedingly little we know of bee thought (for
want of a better term).  I say they plan; don't give me any hypotheses
about how their physical equipment doesn't fit them for thought.  And don't
project onto them human feelings or values that they may not have.
        Start with the facts.  We'll probably turn out to have little idea
how to explain them; but the facts come before theory in science.  Can our
observations of bees on various time-scales suggest to us whether or not
they plan?


R

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