With Warm-Bloodedness Comes Freedom

Pelorat said, "Tortoises are cold-blooded. Terminus doesn't have any, but some worlds do. They are shelled creatures, very slow-moving but long-living.”

"Well, then, isn't it better to be a human being than a tortoise; to move quickly whatever the temperature, rather than slowly? Isn't it better to support high-energy activities, quickly contracting muscles, quickly working nerve fibers, intense and long-sustained thought-than to creep slowly, and sense gradually, and have only a blurred awareness of the immediate surroundings? Isn't it?"

"Granted," said Trevize. "It is. What of it?"

"Well, don't you know you must pay for warm-bloodedness? To maintain your temperature above that of your surroundings, you must expend energy far more wastefully than a tortoise must. You must be eating almost constantly so that you can pour energy into your body as quickly as it leaks out. You would starve far more quickly than a tortoise would, and die more quickly, too. Would you rather be a tortoise, and live more slowly and longer? Or would you rather pay the price and be a quick-moving, quick-sensing, thinking organism?"

Notes:

...but it is costly, requiring much more fuel.

Folksonomies: evolution warm-blooded mammal reptile

Taxonomies:
/pets/reptiles (0.660004)
/business and industrial/energy/oil (0.348187)
/art and entertainment/books and literature/science fiction (0.264608)

Keywords:
tortoise (0.955869 (negative:-0.458686)), high-energy activities (0.859475 (neutral:0.000000)), blurred awareness (0.858533 (negative:-0.466002)), immediate surroundings (0.854258 (negative:-0.466002)), nerve fibers (0.852363 (negative:-0.415442)), temperature (0.647264 (positive:0.446311)), warm-bloodedness (0.643431 (neutral:0.000000)), Tortoises (0.546813 (negative:-0.329310)), Terminus (0.542795 (negative:-0.410789)), Pelorat (0.523113 (neutral:0.000000)), creatures (0.522484 (negative:-0.305404)), Freedom (0.522074 (neutral:0.000000)), muscles (0.521546 (neutral:0.000000)), fuel (0.521478 (negative:-0.396944)), worlds (0.519636 (neutral:0.000000)), organism (0.512397 (neutral:0.000000)), Trevize (0.508633 (neutral:0.000000)), sense (0.507928 (neutral:0.000000))

Entities:
Pelorat:Person (0.755804 (neutral:0.000000)), Trevize:Person (0.685338 (neutral:0.000000))

Concepts:
Human (0.929682): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Foundation's Edge (0.900103): dbpedia | freebase | yago
Nerve (0.884070): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Muscle (0.855233): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Energy (0.787337): dbpedia | freebase
Nervous system (0.767796): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Tortoise (0.693669): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Heat (0.662043): dbpedia | freebase

 Foundation and Earth
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Asimov, Isaac (2004-08-31), Foundation and Earth, Spectra, Retrieved on 2011-05-28
Folksonomies: science fiction gaia


Triples

03 JUN 2013

 Warm-Blooded Mammals as Free Life

Constant and Free Life > Example/Illustration > With Warm-Bloodedness Comes Freedom
Two thoughts on how advanced life has evolved to maintain a regulated internal state that makes it independent of its environment rather than subject to it.
Folksonomies: evolution syntropy
Folksonomies: evolution syntropy


Schemas

04 SEP 2011

 Big History

Memes about the history of the universe and the evolution of life on Earth to build into a timeline.
 12