08 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Individual Cannot Escape Reliance on Society
The individual cannot escape his dependence on society even when he acts on his own. A scientist who spends his lifetime in a laboratory may delude himself that he is a modern version of Robinson Crusoe, but the material of his activity and the apparatus and skills with which he operates are social products. They are inerasable signs of the cooperation which binds men together. The very language in which a scientist thinks has been learned in a particular society. Social context also determin...Everyone is connected to everyone else, no matter how secluded. Even our motivations, to become a CEO or a Scientist, stem from the society in which we are born.
22 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
What People Can Achieve Grows Exponentially
The mathematics of cooperation of men and tools is interesting. Separated men trying their individual experiments contribute in proportion to their numbers and their work may be called mathematically additive. The effect of a single piece of apparatus given to one man is also additive only, but when a group of men are cooperating, as distinct from merely operating, their work raises with some higher power of the number than the first power. It approaches the square for two men and the cube fo...Folksonomies: civilization collaboration
Folksonomies: civilization collaboration
When they collaborate.
14 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Devil's Definition of "Brain"
BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on. In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office. Folksonomies: humor definition
Folksonomies: humor definition
So highly honored that it is exempt from the cares of office.
14 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Difference Between Vegetable and Animal
Thus it might be said, that the vegetable is only the sketch, nor rather the ground-work of the animal; that for the formation of the latter, it has only been requisite to clothe the former with an apparatus of external organs, by which it might be connected with external objects.
From hence it follows, that the functions of the animal are of two very different classes. By the one (which is composed of an habitual succession of assimilation and excretion) it lives within itself, transforms i...A lovely description.
13 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Constant and Free Life
Constant, or free, life is the third form of life; it belongs to the most highly organized animals. In it, life is not suspended in any circumstance, it unrolls along a constant course, apparently indifferent to the variations in the cosmic environment, or to the changes in the material conditions that surround the animal. Organs, apparatus, and tissues function in an apparently uniform manner, without their activity undergoing those considerable variations exhibited by animals with an oscill...Mammals and other animals that maintain a constant environment within themselves are free of the changes to the world outside them.
07 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
The Advancement of Science Out of the Amateur
To-day, science has withdrawn into realms that are hardly understanded of the people. Biology means very largely histology, the study of the cell by difficult and elaborate microscopical processes. Chemistry has passed from the mixing of simple substances with ascertained reactions, to an experimentation of these processes under varying conditions of temperature, pressure, and electrification—all requiring complicated apparatus and the most delicate measurement and manipulation. Similarly, ...An observation from 1906.