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Referring to Figure 2.1 we can observe once more the function of bio psychological processes and systems as they occur within human thinking and problem‑solving processes ‑ yet another homologous system. The sequence of functions in the stream of consciousness that accompanies mental processing of a “problem” is represented by the same steps living organisms follow:
a. Searching for available knowledge and information.
b. Analyzing, breaking down, and digesting the data.
c. Manipulating that information through imagination into new synthesis, into a hypothesis or idea.
d. Internally projecting the use of the idea.
e. Evaluating the solutions for their "fitness," that is, their potential effect and value and the probable feedback that will be received.
Once this internal system has processed a problem to our satisfaction, we put it into the primary growth system and try it out in the external world. Although we do not know the details of all the internal processes of the cell, we can speculate that this creative internalization confers to the activities of Man a unique advantage ‑ being able to submit a wide variety of growth alternatives to an internalized simulation of evolutionary natural selection process before actually applying it in the real world.
Although we have so far considered the process by which the ectogenetic system of Man came about and how it operates, some of the parallel steps in the growing organization of information may indeed have created a reconstructed system even more fundamental than the ectogenes or culture. Because the primary mechanism of biologic endogenetic information accumulation has always occurred by creating mutated nucleotide codes and testing their fitness through natural selection, it is reasonable to imagine that both the external replication of the system through Man's tools and ideas, and the internal structure of the human system operate in an identical way. Man's brain may be, in fact, a miniature evolutionary laboratory.
To take a closer look at this concept, imagine that the brain is a colony consisting of 12 billion cells or so. If an "idea" is formed in the mind, it can actually represent the rearrangement, addition, or subtraction of codes among neurons. The neuron does not duplicate itself in the usual way, however. Its propagation and self ‑verification come about when it is subjected to the environment made up of the other brain cells. The nuclear data making up the coded pattern of these cells are the facts, opinions, and perceptions of the external environment, a condensed replica of that believed world. It may very well be that, like the transfer of DNA in such operations as temperate phase transduction, the idea attempts to grow in the "culture" by transmitting its code to other cells. In this process it encounters normal environment pressures. If it fits, it is allowed to grow and affect many parts of the brain. Thus, by successfully propagating in the replica culture, it has been "pretested;" it can change, mutate, and even die within the cerebral system without incurring any gross biologic waste. The brain and the process of thinking may be, in effect, a miniature, accelerated, and magnificently more efficient evolutionary instrument ‑ in quite real organic and biologic terms.
Figure 2.1: Internal problem-solving system
As an automatic and autonomic “laboratory" of testing reality, the enigma of the unconscious state of dreaming can also be explored within the conceptual framework of transformation. Although we may temporarily sever the connection of our link with external reality in sleep, the process of mutation and selection continues. Deprived of external effect and feedback, however, the brain may react unconsciously in the same way that consciousness operates in sensory‑deprivation experiments. After a period of no perception and feedback, even while fully awake, a person will begin to fantasize and hallucinate. The unconscious, while it is attempting to perform normal "problem‑solving" or what can be seen as evolutionary activity, may be greatly affected by loss of connection with the outside world.
In a practical sense, by applying individual experience each of us can observe the evolution, mutation, and selection processes as they go on in our own minds at any time. The process which Ainsworth-land calls imagination generates mutations with “novelty and diversity”; the function of natural selection or “judgment” is observed as the pressure of facts buffets an idea, allowing it to grow or die inside the mind.
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