DESIGN FOR A BRAIN 17/14 



the work of the last century, and especially of the last thirty 

 years, has demonstrated beyond dispute that natural, Darwinian, 

 selection is responsible for all the selections shown so abundantly 

 in the biological world. Ultimately, therefore, these ancillary 

 regulations are to be attributed to natural selection. They will, 

 therefore, come to the individual (to our kitten perhaps) either 

 by the individual's gene-pattern or they develop under an ultra- 

 stability of their own. There is no other source. 



17/14. The subject of adaptation in brain-like mechanisms, how- 

 ever, today interests an audience much wider than the biological. 

 I will, therefore, give a brief account of these processes of selection 

 so that the reader whose training has not been biological can see 

 just how the ancillary regulations must be developed in brains 

 other than the living. 



The account will also serve a second purpose. So far, the book 

 has followed the method of starting, in Chapter 1, with the fact 

 of adaptation as an effect, and has argued back to its causes. 

 This is not the natural direction for argument, which goes alto- 

 gether more simply and clearly if we just take an initial state and 

 then ask: what will happen from now on ? I propose, therefore, 

 to sketch the process in its natural direction, showing that, given 

 a certain very general starting point, adaptation as an outcome 

 is inevitable. 



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