"Functional redundancy, studied by biologists, is as follows: Unlike
organ redundancy—the availability of spare parts, where the same func-
tion can be performed by identical elements—very often the same function
can be performed by two different structures. Sometimes the term degen-
eracy is used (by Gerald Edelman and Joseph Gally).
There is another redundancy: when an organ can be employed to per-
form a certain function that is not its current central one. My friend Peter
Bevelin links this idea to the “spandrels of San Marco,” after an essay by
Steven Jay Gould. There, the necessary space between arches in the Vene-
tian cathedral of San Marco has led to art that is now central to our aes-
thetic experience while visiting the place. In what is now called the span-
drel effect, an auxiliary offshoot of a certain adaptation leads to a new
function. I can also see the adaptation as having a dormant potential func-
tion that could wake up in the right environment.
The best way to illustrate such redundancy is with an aspect of the life
story of the colorful philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend
was permanently impotent from a war injury, yet he married four times,
and was a womanizer to the point of leaving a trail of devastated
boyfriends and husbands whose partners he snatched, and an equally long
one of broken hearts, including those of many of his students (in his day,
certain privileges were allowed to professors, particularly flamboyant pro-
fessors of philosophy). This was a particular achievement given his impo-
tence. So there were other parts of the body that came to satisfy whatever
it was that made women attached to him.
Mother Nature initially created the mouth to eat, perhaps to breathe,
perhaps for some other function linked to the existence of the tongue.
Then new functions emerged that were most probably not part of the ini-
tial plan. Some people use the mouth and tongue to kiss, or to do some-
thing more involved to which Feyerabend allegedly had recourse.
Over the past three years I became obsessed with the notion that, under
epistemic limitations—some opacity concerning the future—progress (and
survival) cannot take place without one of these types of redundancy. You
don’t know today what may be needed tomorrow. This conflicts very
sharply with the notion of teleological design we all got from reading Aris-
totle, which has shaped medieval Arabic-western thought. For Aristotle, an
object had a clear purpose set by its designer. An eye was there to see, a
nose to smell. This is a rationalistic argument, another manifestation of
what I call Platonicity. Yet anything that has a secondary use, and one you
did not pay for, will present an extra opportunity should a heretofore un-
known application emerge or a new environment appear. The organism
with the largest number of secondary uses is the one that will gain the most
from environmental randomness and epistemic opacity!"
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan
organ redundancy—the availability of spare parts, where the same func-
tion can be performed by identical elements—very often the same function
can be performed by two different structures. Sometimes the term degen-
eracy is used (by Gerald Edelman and Joseph Gally).
There is another redundancy: when an organ can be employed to per-
form a certain function that is not its current central one. My friend Peter
Bevelin links this idea to the “spandrels of San Marco,” after an essay by
Steven Jay Gould. There, the necessary space between arches in the Vene-
tian cathedral of San Marco has led to art that is now central to our aes-
thetic experience while visiting the place. In what is now called the span-
drel effect, an auxiliary offshoot of a certain adaptation leads to a new
function. I can also see the adaptation as having a dormant potential func-
tion that could wake up in the right environment.
The best way to illustrate such redundancy is with an aspect of the life
story of the colorful philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend
was permanently impotent from a war injury, yet he married four times,
and was a womanizer to the point of leaving a trail of devastated
boyfriends and husbands whose partners he snatched, and an equally long
one of broken hearts, including those of many of his students (in his day,
certain privileges were allowed to professors, particularly flamboyant pro-
fessors of philosophy). This was a particular achievement given his impo-
tence. So there were other parts of the body that came to satisfy whatever
it was that made women attached to him.
Mother Nature initially created the mouth to eat, perhaps to breathe,
perhaps for some other function linked to the existence of the tongue.
Then new functions emerged that were most probably not part of the ini-
tial plan. Some people use the mouth and tongue to kiss, or to do some-
thing more involved to which Feyerabend allegedly had recourse.
Over the past three years I became obsessed with the notion that, under
epistemic limitations—some opacity concerning the future—progress (and
survival) cannot take place without one of these types of redundancy. You
don’t know today what may be needed tomorrow. This conflicts very
sharply with the notion of teleological design we all got from reading Aris-
totle, which has shaped medieval Arabic-western thought. For Aristotle, an
object had a clear purpose set by its designer. An eye was there to see, a
nose to smell. This is a rationalistic argument, another manifestation of
what I call Platonicity. Yet anything that has a secondary use, and one you
did not pay for, will present an extra opportunity should a heretofore un-
known application emerge or a new environment appear. The organism
with the largest number of secondary uses is the one that will gain the most
from environmental randomness and epistemic opacity!"
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan
