Approximate Mechanisms

Some thoughts relating to being human (or existing as any sort of evolved biological organism):

Consider a piece of paper and imagine it being folded into a triangular shape with many layers. The properties of interest here is that the piece of folded paper would be relatively hard and pointy. In fact, one can probably use it to drill through a nice block of butter or soft cheese. Given that the paper triangle can perform the said drilling task, one can now abstract the paper triangle as a "drill". But if one were to try using it to drill through a steel plate, nothing but disappointment would emerge from the process. At this point, one might say that the paper triangle is a very imperfect/poor/stupid "drill". But there is obviously another way of approaching the issue: the paper triangle wasn't specifically meant for drilling through things in the first place, and the mere fact that it can in certain cases (and thus can be abstracted as such) doesn't imply that this is its natural function. What is obviously happening here is that the paper triangle can 'approximate' a diamond drill.

Now lets apply this analogy to humans, what can a human being be abstracted as? Some of the following has been considered by various individuals in the past:

- The human being is a rational animal
- The human being is a mating machine like all other animals
- The human being is an 'imperfect' image of a perfect being
etc

Lets think about each of these in the context of the analogy above:

The human being is a rational animal:

off the bat, one can see the problem with this assertion, human beings are rarely rational. But human beings can also be rational, so what exactly is going on here? Are human beings imperfect/poor/stupid rational animals? One can certainly look at things this way, but another approach is obviously to say that the human system can 'approximate' a being that is perfectly rational.

The human being is a mating machine:

What about people born deformed without reproductive organs? Again, human beings can approximate systems meant for reproduction.

The human being is an 'imperfect' image of a perfect being:

Now this is interesting, because almost lays out the problem, but I would assert that there is one issue here: the human being can approximate many different mutually exclusive beings.

etc etc...

So now one might ask: if a human being is merely something that can approximate other specific things, what exactly is the actual form of the human being? After all, the paper in the original story can approximate a drill, but it has the original form (and thus intend purpose) of being something to write on. I would contend that in fact, this question is somewhat misguided, a being doesn't have to have ANY original form in order to approximate other things which do have some specific form. Consider the following image:

One can see that the black lines approximate a circle, but one can now ask: what is the original form of the black lines? What were they for? What are they representing in actuality? And the answer here is: nothing specific.