24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus

 War is the Price of Diversity

The state of the world today is not essentially different from the state of the world in 1948. We are still faced with the same choices that we were facing in 1948. On the level of fundamental principles, we are faced with a choice between unity and diversity. The unity of mankind, or the diversity of nations and political institutions. National sovereignty is the contemporary expression of the ancient human tradition which divided us into {202} tribes, each jealously guarding its independe...
Folksonomies: politics war diversity
Folksonomies: politics war diversity
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07 NOV 2014 by ideonexus

 Collective Mind from Olaf Stapledon

The designers of our species set out to produce a being that might be capable of an order of mentality higher than their own. The only possibility of doing so lay in planning a great increase in brain organisation. But they knew that the brain of an individual human being could not safely be allowed to exceed a certain weight. They therefore sought to produce the new order of mentality in a system of distinct and specialised brains held in "telepathic" unity by means of ethereal radiation. Ma...
Folksonomies: collectivism borganism
Folksonomies: collectivism borganism
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12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 The Ideal of Collaboration

In a University we are especially bound to recognise not only the unity of science itself, but the communion of the workers in science. We are too apt to suppose that we are congregated here merely to be within reach of certain appliances of study, such as museums and laboratories, libraries and lecturers, so that each of us may study what he prefers. I suppose that when the bees crowd round the flowers it is for the sake of the honey that they do so, never thinking that it is the dust which ...
  1  notes

We think of scientists at universities and laboratories as working for a greater good, but, in reality, they are like bees in a hive gathering honey without thought to the larger picture.

05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 Humans are Equal

While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more ennobled by mental cultivation than others—but none in themselves nobler than others. All are in like degree designed for freedom.
Folksonomies: equality racism ethnicity
Folksonomies: equality racism ethnicity
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And designed for freedom.

29 MAY 2012 by ideonexus

 Nature Works in Increments

Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap. For example she could not produce a horse if it were not preceded by all the other animals on which she ascends to the horse's structure as if on the rungs of a ladder. Thus every one thing exists for the sake of all things and all for the sake of one; for the one is of course the all as well. Nature, despite her seeming diversity, is always a unity, a whole; and thus, when she manifests herself in a...
Folksonomies: evolution science
Folksonomies: evolution science
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All living things rely on the chain of all other living things before them.

25 APR 2012 by ideonexus

 The Link Between Smoking and Cancer

The risk of developing carcinoma of the lung increases steadily as the amount smoked increases. If the risk among non-smokers is taken as unity and the resulting ratios in the three age groups in which a large number of patients were interviewed (ages 45 to 74) are averaged, the relative risks become 6, 19, 26, 49, and 65 when the number of cigarettes smoked a day are 3, 10, 20, 35, and, say, 60—that is, the mid-points of each smoking group. In other words, on the admittedly speculative ass...
Folksonomies: history cancer smoking
Folksonomies: history cancer smoking
  1  notes

Risk increases with the amount smoked. Saved here for historical reference.

16 FEB 2012 by ideonexus

 Copernicus on Gravity

I myself consider that gravity is merely a certain natural inclination with which parts are imbued by the architect of all things for gathering themselves together into a unity and completeness by assembling into the form of a globe. It is easy to believe that the Sun, Moon and other luminaries among the wandering stars have this tendency also, so that by its agency they retain the rounded shape in which they reveal themselves, but nevertheless go round their orbits in various ways. If then t...
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He correctly surmises that the force pulls heavenly objects into spheres.

19 APR 2011 by ideonexus

 Science is the Knot Tying it all together

The creation was a concept—a connected set of concepts. There was the concept of a universal gravitation-reaching beyond the tree tops and the air to the ends of space. There was the concept of other universal forces in space, which ti to pull the moon away as a whirling stone pulls away fro: its string. And there was the concept which put an end to the four elements of Aristotle: the concept of mass, alike in t apple and the earth and the moon, in all earthly and heavenly bodies.** All t...
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Throughout the centuries, scientists postulate hypotheses, and later scientists connect them to others to form stronger, more universal theories.