31 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Static Culture
The fantasies of Wells and Huxley were based on the
same idea, that a species adapting itself too perfectly to
a static ecological niche is doomed to stagnation and
ultimate extinction. Their nightmares describe a possible future for our species, if we succeed in building
around ourselves a protective cocoon that shields us
from the winds of change while our mental faculties
dwindle. A future of senile dementia is as possible for
the species as it is for the individual.
And yet, when I compa...Folksonomies: culture cultural change
Folksonomies: culture cultural change
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Life of a Scientist
I have had a fairly long life, above all a very happy one, and I think that I shall be remembered with some regrets and perhaps leave some reputation behind me. What more could I ask? The events in which I am involved will probably save me from the troubles of old age. I shall die in full possession of my faculties, and that is another advantage that I should count among those that I have enjoyed. If I have any distressing thoughts, it is of not having done more for my family; to be unable to...Quoting Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier. Who appreciates that his reputation will live on and he will die with his mental faculties, but regrets not having spent more time with his family.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Davy Sees Freedom in Human Fallability
The experience of ‘paralytic strokes’ (like his father’s), which destroyed ‘perception and Memory’ as well as physical motion, proved that the physical brain was the single centre of ‘all the Mental faculties’. Children were not magically endowed with intelligence and souls at birth. On the contrary: ‘A Child is not superior in Intellectual power to a common earthworm. It can scarcely move at will. It has not even that active instinctive capacity for Self-Preservation.’ Such...Children are no more advanced than earthworms and strokes demonstrate how we are a product of our brains, and this shows Davy that we are capable of infinite happiness and science is indefinitely perfectible.