372 Information Storage and Neural Control 



finding, which I have also quoted with enthusiasm, is under 

 question as to whether the hpase at the pH and ionic strength 

 used was acting on hpids or exhibiting its other, venomlike, action. 

 So this may not hold. 



Saul Kit (Houston, Texas) : Dr. John's question is a very 

 complicated one. I believe I would have to discuss it with him to 

 understand fully all of its implications. I think we should be very 

 careful in extrapolating from the molecular biology level to the 

 neurophysiology frame of reference. I should prefer, therefore, to 

 let Dr. Gerard's answer stand. 



Gregory Bateson (Palo Alto, California) : This is changing the 

 subject somewhat, but going back to what Dr. Gerard said about 

 evolution and the relations between Lamarckian and Darwinian 

 theories, there are some rather peculiar problems in the economics 

 of communication within the organism which indicate, at first 

 glance, that neither the Lamarckian nor the Darwinian system 

 will work. Let me put it this way. We have an organism. We 

 describe it at any given time or over any given finite time in terms 

 of all necessary variables to define all possible states — Vi, V2, . . . , 

 V„ — perhaps many thousands of variables. Any one of these has 

 a finite set of values. If the organism exceeds any of these finite 

 thresholds, it dies. 



Now consider a pre-girafTe which has the good fortune to get 

 the mutant "long neck" as an item in the genotypic corpus of 

 genes. That genotypic system is not going to tell the heart of the 

 giraffe that it now has to enlarge in order to supply the head with 

 blood. It is not going to deal with the new problems of the inter- 

 vertebral disks. It is not going to solve all sorts of other new 

 somatic problems which, in fact, the happy giraffe, the lucky 

 giraffe, is going to have to deal with at the somatic level. The 

 giraffe is going to have to occupy servo-circuits within its soma 

 to modify the size of the heart, and so on. By doing so, it has 

 reduced the finite set of possible states of its organism. 



Later, this pre-giraffe is lucky enough to get another externally 

 adaptive mutation — let us say big feet, which it needs for kicking lions. 

 It is now again limited to a subset of its possibilities; and if it has to deal 

 with both mutations simultaneously, it is limited to that overlapping 

 subset of possibilities which is compatible with both mutations. 



