12 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
Two Kinds of Science-Fiction Innovations
Most common are the fictions that begin with Jules Verne, and concern the single artifact—a submarine, flying machine, or death ray—and its consquence for all of humanity. These extraordinary voyages—to use Verne's term—play along the fault line between what we think we are and what we can do. Nemo is no accident, or a tragic figure, but the natural consequence of the intersection between present-day humanity and extraordinary technology. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey plays on the same themes, a...Folksonomies: futurism science fiction
Folksonomies: futurism science fiction
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notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
The Race Where Children are Fathered by the Tribe
The key to the understanding of this race is, I believe, its strange method of reproduction, which was essentially communal. Every individual was capable of budding a new individual; but only at certain seasons, and only after stimulation by a kind of pollen emanating from the whole tribe and carried on the air. The grains of this ultra-microscopically fine pollen dust were not germ cells but "genes," the elementary factors of inheritance. The precincts of the tribe were at all times faintly ... 1 notes
notes22 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Museums are Cathedrals
Museums are, in a way, the cathedrals of the modern world, places where sacred issues are expressed and where people come to reflect on them. A museum is also a kind of bridge between the academy and the public. 
1 And a bridge between the academic elite and the public.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Universities have Replaced Cathedrals
We thought of universities as the cathedrals of the modern world. In the middle ages, the cathedral was the center and symbol of the city. In the modern world, its place could be taken by the university. In the modern world.
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
We Have Hunter-Gatherer Brains
For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty. 1 notes
notesAttempting to work in a modern world where some hoard their comforts and other go without.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Birth of the Modern
The so-called 'scientific revolution', popularly associated with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but reaching back in an unmistakably continuous line to a period much earlier still. Since that revolution overturned the authority in science not only of the middle ages but of the ancient world—since it ended not only in the eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics—it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance a...Folksonomies: enlightenment modernism
Folksonomies: enlightenment modernism
1 notes
notesAside from the Enlightenment, all other periods of European history are worthless in understanding how we got to the modern era.
01 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The Impact of Scientific Ignorance on Society
As a society, we walk a tightrope between limbo and extinction.
We’re on a threshold of survival, in a society threatened as never
before to find the way, with less and less margin for error. The
decades ahead to the year 2000 and beyond, as were the decades
just past, can be either interrogative, presumptuous, or insane.
And we have to create our own flight plan, because this Earth
didn’t come with one telling us how to get to the future safely.
The winds of change are blowing across this l... 1 notes
notesAnticipating the future is the lesson of the past, and the modern world is increasingly disenchanted with the technological progress that makes life possible.
23 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
1933 Humanist Manifesto
The time has come for widespread recognition of the radical changes in religious beliefs throughout the modern world. The time is past for mere revision of traditional attitudes. Science and economic change have disrupted the old beliefs. Religions the world over are under the necessity of coming to terms with new conditions created by a vastly increased knowledge and experience. In every field of human activity, the vital movement is now in the direction of a candid and explicit humanism....
1 Original humanist manifesto, defining humanism's 15 affirmations.
