“Natural vs Artificial”, “Man vs Nature” — those are real points of conversation. It’s important that we begin to see through that facade, to create new mythologies that don’t pose that kind of polarity, because it’s going to be a problem if people think it’s a real thing in the world.

How many articles are there now, about how computers and the internet are changing our brains, when actually we’ve been changing our brains for much longer than that — it’s only the most obvious, accelerated changes that are noticed, and the rest pass by as if they never happened. As if we were “natural” before computers, natural before the 1950s, before the 1800s? When? Where is the line? As if these artificial things are not a part of nature…

as if We Are not Nature Itself, Creating.

Stories like Avatar (or Fern Gully, if you like) have their points, and those are important. But we need new stories — stories that contain a different point of view: that of artifice as a manifestation of nature.

epistephilia:

ninefoldgoddess:

Banned TED Talk: Rupert Sheldrake — Science Set Free

“There is a conflict within science between science as a method of inquiry (based on evidence, reason, hypothesis & collective investigation), and science as a belief system, or a worldview. And unfortunately, the worldview aspect of science has come to inhibit the inquiry which is the very lifeblood of the scientific endeavor. Since the late 19th century, science has been conducted under the belief system which is essentially Materialism. And the sciences are now the wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Materialist worldview. I think that as we break out of it, the sciences will be regenerated. In my book Science Set Free (or The Science Delusion in some countries), we take the ten dogmas or assumptions of science, and turn them into questions. Seeing how well they stand up if you look at them… scientifically; and none of them stand up very well:


1. Nature is mechanical or machine like
2. All matter is unconscious
3. The laws or constants of nature are fixed
4. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same
5. Nature is purposeless
6. Biological heredity is material
7. Memories are stored inside your brain
8. Your mind is inside your head
9. Psychic phenomena like telepathy are not possible
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that works

“Every single one of these dogmas is questionable, and if one questions them, new forms of research, new avenues open up. And I think that as we question these dogmas that have held back science for so long, science will undergo a re-flowering, a renaissance. I have spent my whole career as a research scientist. But I think by moving beyond these dogmas, it can be regenerated and become, once again, interesting and life—affirming. … In an evolutionary Universe, why shouldn’t the laws themselves evolve?”

Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided? ›

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

[Artificial Intelligence] may well be the most vital of all commodities, surpassing water, food, heat and light. Without it, we will certainly not survive as a species.
…
One of our problems is data - masses of it. A few hundred years of scientific inquiry and the invention of the data-generating and sharing mechanism that is the internet has left reams of crucial information unused and unanalysed.
…
AI is not about sentient robots, but machines that mimic our organic intelligence by adapting to, as well as recognising, patterns in data. AI is about making machines understand.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

[In] common table salt, or NaCl[,] one of the elements is a metal, and the other is a poisonous gas.

zoom

{ How synthetic biology will change the world }

For example: scientists routinely wield microbes against disease, using computers to turn bacteria into microscopic drug factories rapidly assembled from off-the-shelf biological parts; crops ease world hunger and convert sunlight into biomass; and the cells of astronauts remember if they’ve been damaged by gamma rays, alerting doctors before cancer starts to grow.

Image via { University of Washington }

Complexity is a property of living organisms at all scales, and synthetic biology may help scientists disentangle “Darwin’s bank”.

With all the things cancer is trying to do to kill our patient, how does it remember it is cancer?

go read this:

Once there was no separation between physics and philosophy—indeed physics was called Natural Philosophy. For Newton the answer to Mr. Holt’s question was straightforward: The world exists because God made it, and as for God, He made Himself. Far more of the man’s work concerned biblical dating than what we would call science. “Newton was not the first of the Age of Reason,” John Maynard Keynes wrote. “He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.” Mr. Holt aims to reunite these two modes of thought, though his scientist and philosopher subjects generally talk past one another.

When we hear about a scientific breakthrough, the first question is always of practicality: “What are the practical applications?” Usually meaning something like: “What technologies will this allow us to create?” or “What will this cure?”

But, why isn’t the question about perception? Shouldn’t that be a priority — isn’t that how scientific inquiry began?

Why isn’t the question: “How will this allow me to improve my understanding of my world? How will this change my point of view? What does this tell me about nature, therefore, about the way I proceed through a life within the same, inescapable nature?”

{ Rule 30 }

&

Stephen Wolfram on
{Computation and the Future of Mathematics }

He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.

One hundred years from now, the role of science and technology will be about becoming part of nature rather than trying to control it. So much of science and technology has been about pursuing efficiency, scale and “exponential growth” at the expense of our environment and our resources. We have rewarded those who invent technologies that control our triumph over nature in some way. This is clearly not sustainable. We must understand that we live in a complex system where everything is interrelated and interdependent and that everything we design impacts a larger system. My dream is that 100 years from now, we will be learning from nature, integrating with nature and using science and technology to bring nature into our lives to make human beings and our artifacts not only zero impact but a positive impact to the natural system that we live in.