Crossing a Chasm: In Small Steps?

The author started his working career as an Air Traffic Control Officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, and after resigning his commission, spent thirty-five years in the Information Services industry. In the context of his writings, he describes himself as an analyst, by aspiration, inclination, proclivity, training, and occupation. His books reflect his primary intellectual pursuit: explanations given for human existence by both religions and evolution. Having published several analyses including "Religion: Of God or Man" and "Seeking After God", he concluded that there was nothing more that he could learn on that subject - the issue remained an enduring mystery. Returning to the other explanation, evolution, he had long wanted to complete a more thorough analysis of evolution theory, than as presented in his earlier publications, "The Dawkins Deficiency" and "Information, Knowledge, Evolution and Self". This required that he acquire and study dozens of academic books and other publications, seeking to understand the plausibility, and at times hollowness, of scientific explanations. Using his background knowledge of relevant technologies, he was able to identify parallels between modern automation and mechanisation, and human biological processes. One of particular interest was an analysis of the technical similarities between the human sensory system, and modern telemetry systems. With a lifelong passion for a travel, and a modest appetite for adventure, he has trekked in the Khumbu and Annapurna regions of Nepal, the Peruvian Andes, and Patagonia. His hobby, apart from writing, has been a love of all things motorcycling, from touring remote areas, and attending races, to complete restoration of vintage motorcycles. He has motorcycled throughout parts of his native Australia, North America, New Zealand, Iceland, Bolivia, Peru, Turkey, the Himalaya, Morocco, Greece, and eastern Europe. His business and holiday travels have taken him through sixty countries, and all continents, including Antarctica. Evolution is defined as the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations, resulting in changes in both the genotype and phenotype. The evidence for evolution is primarily circumstantial, being based on fossils of extinct species, physical similarities, and a largely common genome. Charles Darwin believed that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. Today, we know so much more than Darwin did 150 years ago, leading many scientists to discard genetic mutation and natural selection as having the development power previously ascribed to them. What has been missing in the science so far is "systems thinking" - a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system's constituent parts interrelate, and how systems work over time and within the context of larger systems. Questioning whether the mind consists of organs of the brain, an emergent property of the brain, or activities of the brain, as scientists suggest, the author has concluded for none of these. The brain being physical, it can only deal with the physical, but the mind deals in the conceptual, which has no physical properties. With his background in related technologies, the author has compared the human nervous system with telemetry systems as used in modern aircraft, vehicles, and other applications. Though implemented differently, the functional requirements remain the same, which has prompted a different perspective on how it could have evolved. The telemetry system in the human body is astounding in its complexity, accuracy, and reliability, leading to the author's doubts as to its claimed evolutionary origins. Crossing a Chasm is an analysis of the probability that such could be accomplished by innumerable, unguided small steps, over whatever time.