Science Will Figure You Out

The bird behaves as if there were a causal relation between its behavior and the presentation of food, although such a relation is lacking. There are many analogies in human behavior. Rituals for changing one's luck at cards are good examples. A few accidental connections between a ritual and favorable consequences suffice to set up and maintain the behavior in spite of many unreinforced instances. The bowler who has released a ball down the alley but continues to behave as if he were controlling it by twisting and turning his arm and shoulder is another case in point. These behaviors have, of course, no real effect upon one's luck or upon a ball half way down an alley, just as in the present case the food would appear as often if the pigeon did nothing -- or, more strictly speaking, did something else.

...from "Superstition" in the Pigeon by B.F. Skinner.

Imagine two houses that were built from the same blueprint and that were initially identical. But now, years later, we notice that they look different at night. In one, the first floor is bright and the second floor dim; in the other, the opposite is true. This difference could have arisen in two ways. Maybe the houses now feature different lights; the owners of the first house might, for instance, have replaced bulbs on the first floor with brighter ones; the other owners might have done the same thing on the second floor. But maybe—and this is the evo-devo picture—the owners of the first house have switched on most first-floor lights and switched off most second-floor lights; the owners of the second house might have done the reverse. Evo devo tells us that animal species look different not because their structural bits and pieces have changed but because they switch on and off the same old bits and pieces in different combinations. Roughly speaking, then, penguins and people differ for the same reason your pancreas and eye differ: they’re expressing different genes.

...from Turned On by H. Allen Orr.

(Science Will Figure You Out is one of many excellent records by Soltero.)