There's an analogy I like to bring up. I don't remember where I heard it, but It would be great to find a better articulation, but here it goes. Gregor Mendel

There's an analogy I like to bring up. I don't remember where I heard it, but It would be great to find a better articulation, but here it goes. Gregor Mendel is called "father of modern genetics" for his work on plant hybridization and discoveries in the area of hereditary traits. He's called that because he described "invisible factors" producing "traits." We would now say that he discovered genes and their expression. Around the same time Charles Darwin produced his great works on evolution. He was also essentially relying on invisible factors inherited from previous generations producing discernible traits in subsequent generations. He went beyond that and hypothesized about how constant sexual and natural selection would allow certain traits to be more common in the species as a whole. Both of these men were essentially studying and describing genes, geneplexes & DNA. But, DNA was unknown to them. They knew that traits are handed down from one generation to another. But, if you asked them what the physical form of these traits was, they would have no answer. DNA & Genes were not observable to them. They had placeholders in their mind. I guess they new that the seed produced by the parent plant contained the traits, but they might have also used "spirit" or "essence" as their placeholder. We are at this stage when it comes to cognition. We don't know what a thought, memory or emotion looks like. We don't know what their physical form is. We know it has something to do with neurons and the brain, but we don't really know the how and what. There is an obvious hole in our knowledge. It' missing in discussions like this.