How does Epistolution Explain Sleep?

The epistolution proposal sees the configuration of an organism as an embodied conjecture about a niche. In other words, the body is an anticipation of the rhythmic stimuli that are being presented by the niche during a lifespan. It sees learning as the sensitivity of that conjecture to changes in these rhythmic patterns. This embodied conjecture is composed of many overlapping networks nested within one another. Because these networks are nested, when one of them changes, it affects all of them. This explains why the repair process cannot be managed on-the-go, as a piecemeal repair of just one finger or just one kidney. The whole biological system is interconnected and interrelated. If all the networks of the body take instruction from the niche, and they work together as a unit to produce embodied intelligence, then they must all change together, in a coordinated process, to embody a new conjecture about the niche they inhabit. So during sleep, every network is either “reinforced” or allowed to stochastically mutate, depending on whether or not the niche has stimulated the operation of that network or not. This is the epistolution formula. This process bears a lot of resemblance to the original Lamarckian theory of inheritance, whereby use or disuse of a structure determined functional change. Lamarck’s theory was dismissed because of experiments which tested not functional change but dysfunctional change, such as lopping the tails of mice and so forth, changes which were not inherited and would have served no use if they were inherited. Epistolution is not a theory of inheritance or a substitute for neo-Darwinism, but rather a supplement to the genetic explanation that makes it more complete. It is only a theory of evolution in the sense that it predicts acquired functional change under the selective pressure of an ecological niche. It is a theory of intelligence, a theory of how learning might be embodied in organisms as a holistic process.