At 14:17 03/06/2003 -0400, Arthur wrote:
Robert,
Don't know about Gaia being 'new-agey.' I was thinking more in terms of James Lovelock's notion that 'earth, in all its interactions and transformations, added up to a single giant living system.'
arthur
I would make one change. An additional word. Random.
Don't know about Gaia being 'new-agey.' I was thinking more in terms of James Lovelock's notion that 'earth, in all its interactions and transformations, added up to a single Random giant living system.
Or, according to Laotze, we could be in a dream.
Or, according to Sir Martin Rees, British Astronomer Royal, this corner of the universe could be a simulation. Here's a snitch from a recent talk he gave in Bath:
<<<<
One thing which struck me recently, and I found it a really disconcerting concept . . . even in our universe . . . there is the potential for life to develop far beyond the level it's reached on earth today. We are probably not the culmination of evolution on earth; and the time lying ahead for the earth is as long as the time that's elapsed to get from single-celled organisms to us. Life could spread in a post-human phase far beyond the earth.. . .
And then of course the question arises: . . . Could we ourselves be products of the mind of some other species who's running a simulation? Indeed, if the simulations outnumber [all possible universes], as they would if one universe contained many computers making many simulations, then the likelihood is that we are 'artificial life' in the usual sense.
[These ideas] lead to the extraordinary consequence that we may not be part of reality, but a simulation. The possibility that we are creations of some supreme, or super-being, blurs the boundary between physics and idealist philosophy, between the natural and the supernatural, and between the relation of mind and universe and the possibility that we're in the matrix rather than the physics itself.
Simulations are indubitably real.
Of course it's preferable if one knows "how it stands" in one's relation to the simulation.
It doesn't take anything New Agey or Buddhistic etc.: There was a Mission Impossible episode in which a politician (an East European Communist Party apparatchik, of sourse...) was kidnapped by the IM team and taken on a long rail trip --L in a warehouse where they had mechanical stuff to simulate the train moving in the night.
Different topic: Are we to imagine that possibly our current free-fall global capitalism might not be the highest possible life form in the multiverse? The George W Bush and Margaret Thatcher are not the highest possible life forms? And, on the eighth day, God initiated the Free Market, and he was thereafter able to retire for all eternity, since all would henceforth be for the best in this best of all poswible worlds (The Lisbon Earthquake of 17?? was an AlQaeda plot....).
\brad mccormick
>>>>
Keith Hudson
-----Original Message----- From: Robert E. Bowd [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 3, 2003 11:01 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] Gaia Hypothesis...
Hello Brad:
Don't know about Gaia being 'new-agey.' I was thinking more in terms of James Lovelock's notion that 'earth, in all its interactions and transformations, added up to a single giant living system.' I have always sensed this was Ray's perspective, if I have been reading him correctly.
Edmund O'Sullivan's excellent book (2000) "Transformative Learning - Educational Vision for the 21st Century" [OISE/UT Press] further develops this premise. Philosophically, the book has a strong spiritual component, but I wouldn't classify it as 'new-agey.'
Your tongue-in-cheek wit was noted. So far my polyps are fine. But who knows... I am middle-agey.
Regards, BB
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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