22 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
What is Transhumanism
Transhumanism is a term used synonymously to mean “human enhancement.” It is an international cultural and intellectual movement that endorses the use of science and technology to enhance the human condition, both mentally and physically. In support of this, transhumanism also embraces using emerging technologies to eliminate the undesirable elements of the human condition such as aging, disabilities, diseases, and involuntary death. Many transhumanists believe these technologies will be ...Folksonomies: transhumanism
Folksonomies: transhumanism
05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Universe is One Great Machine
Look round the world, contemplate the whole and every part of it: you will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to end...Made up of smaller machines.
24 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Species Go Through the Same Stages as Individual Living B...
Just as in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, an individual comes into being, so to speak, grows, remains in being, declines and passes on, will it not be the same for entire species? If our faith did not teach us that animals left the Creator's hands just as they now appear and, if it were permitted to entertain the slightest doubt as to their beginning and their end, may not a philosopher, left to his own conjectures, suspect that, from time immemorial, animal life had its own constituent e...Folksonomies: religion philosophy
Folksonomies: religion philosophy
They grow, change, and die.
23 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Egotistical Man Doesn't Study Man
In an age of egoism, it is so difficult to persuade man that of all studies, the most important is that of himself. This is because egoism, like all passions, is blind. The attention of the egoist is directed to the immediate needs of which his senses give notice, and cannot be raised to those reflective needs that reason discloses to us; his aim is satisfaction, not perfection. He considers only his individual self; his species is nothing to him. Perhaps he fears that in penetrating the myst...Folksonomies: anthropology improvement
Folksonomies: anthropology improvement
Because he his concerned only with his immediate wants, not his betterment.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Men of Sciences as Experimentors or Dogmatists
Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course; it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers o...Folksonomies: science scientists
Folksonomies: science scientists
Francis Bacon describes them as ants and spiders and lays out a third way using the metaphor of the bee.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Francis Bacon on Mathematics
In the mathematics I can report no deficience, except it be that men do not sufficiently understand this excellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it. So that as tennis is a game of no use in itself, but of great use in respect it maketh a quick eye and a body ready to put itself into all postur...Folksonomies: mathematics
Folksonomies: mathematics
He likens it to tennis, not useful in itself, but teaches skills useful elsewhere in life.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Parable of the Scientist as Insect
Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers o...Scientists work like ants, spiders, and bees.