[FRIAM] Spandrel

[Steve Smith]

Eric -

In my contrived (in my head, not in the post) example I imagined some
stonehengian folke who had decorated acute isosceles triangular stiles
with their earth/air/wind/fire dieties who *then* and only then realized
that they had an obscured, unintended affordance that they could be
stood on their tips and leaned together to form 4 archways around the
perimeter and a larger opening above.  


By experiment they may have discovered that if they aligned the archways
(now considered spandrels in this context) to the rising/setting sun and
the north star (and is there anything persistent to see in the heavens
through the southern arch?) that these *arches* took on a significance
that was not intended but nevertheless welcome (useful to their
spirit/psyche).   Building barrel vaults off of each arch and narrowing
the top-opening would yield an interesting (at first) and useful (after
completed) way of focusing celebrants who came to worship the 4
elementals carved in the styles on the distant heavens (rising/setting
sun, pole-star, zenith, etc.)    A refined and elaborated "elemental"
shrine might therefore become indistinguishable from pendentive dome
that is San Marco in construction.  Parallel (nay, complementary)
evolutionary paths might lead to homomorphic architectures where one
man's spandrel is the other man's adaptive element?    (contrivances R Us)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendentive


consider the geodesic-triangle Aad, Bba, Ccb, Ddc as the "styles" I've
contrived and the arches DAd, AaB,,BbC, CcD and circular ceiling-hole
abcd to be the "unintended features" with "unexpected/unselected
affordances" rather than vice-versa, and the "decorative elements"
carved on the styles to be their adaptive fitness function (how
effectively can I apprehend and worship my elemental dieties? and the
emergence of a celestial-worshiping cult *from* the architectural
artifacts began with the exaptation/cooption of the "spandrels"?


One might (and since I'm in an expansive and speculative mood, I will)
suggest that the Octopus' eye might just have come up out of an
exaptation of the light-sensitivity of the molluscular ancestor that
developed photosensitivity on it's skin-membrane provide adaptive
camouflage against *sighted* predators whose own eyes evolved out of
different adaptive paths.   I forget how many (anecdotally) different
parallel evolutionary paths are touted to have lead to "eyes"... i think
molluscs themselves have a number of significantly different "types" of
eyes (pit, pinhole, lensed, etc) ...   how many spandrels and how much
exaptation or cooption might have played in all those routes to
"vision"?   Perhaps an expansive (if not exhaustive) analysis of
morphological features/lineages might expose that exaptation of
spandrels is a significant contributor to diversity.  (maybe this is
already understood and agreed upon?)  (and probably mollusc scholars
know how the various eyes came to be without my "just so" stories).

maunderingly,

 - Steve

> The spandrel is the place on the wall, whether it is decorated or not. 
>
> image.png
>
> The decorations are what can mislead you to thinking the architect
> went out of their way to create the spandrels. But the spandrel
> exists as a byproduct of trying  to do two other things: 1) Have a
> square-topped structure, 2) support the structure with a dome. 
>
> Similarly, natural selection should be /expected /to produce many
> structures as a result of selection for unrelated factors. Just
> because a structure is common in a species doesn't mean that structure
> itself has been selected for, even if the structure - once present -
> has become elaborated in fancy ways. With this concept in hand,
> evolutionary biologists and evolutionary psychologists should be very
> cautious about asserting that common traits are adaptive. Even things
> you can show to have resulted from selection (rather than genetic
> drift or other processes) could still be mere byproducts of the
> intersection of other adaptive traits. 
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 12:20 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
> <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
>
>     correction (arches/domes *vs spandrels*) are duals
>>
>>     If we accept that contrivance or one like it, then the two types
>>     of elements (arches/domes) are duals. 
>>
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