Giordano Bruno Observations of the Sun
The meaning is the more excellence, as it is the less vulgar, and you will see that it is single, unified, and not strained. You must consider that although the sun appears different with respect to different regions of the earth according to time and place, nevertheless with respect to the entire globe it acts always and everywhere in the same way, for in whatever point of the ecliptic it may find itself, it causes winter, summer, autumn, and spring, and the entire earthly globe receives the...
notes...and it's effects on the Earth.
Causality as a Conceptual Tool
Causality itself is an evolved conceptual tool that simplifies, schematizes, and focuses our representation of situations. This cognitive machinery guides us to think in terms of the cause—of an outcome’s having a single cause. Yet for enlarged understanding, it is more accurate to represent outcomes as caused by an intersection, or nexus, of factors (including the absence of precluding conditions). In War and Peace, Tolstoy asks, “When an apple ripens and falls, why does it fall? Becau...
1 John Tooby on how causation is a way we simplify the world to more easily understand it, but it can also over-simplify.
Think of Everything as Already Broken
In his book Thoughts without a Thinker, psychiatrist
Mark Epstein recounts this teaching
by the Thai meditation master Achaan Chah.
“You see this goblet?” Achaan Chah asks.
“For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy
it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably,
sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to
it. But when I put this glass on the shelf, and the
wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off
the table and it fal... notesA liberating perspective.
Study is More Efficient Than Contemplation
吾嘗終日而思矣，不如須臾之所學也。吾嘗跂而望矣，不如登高之博見也。登高而招，臂非加長也，而見者遠；順風而呼，聲非加疾也，而聞者彰。假輿馬者，非利足也，而致千里；假舟楫者，非能水也，而絕江河。君子生非異也，善假於物也。[Translated] Once I spent an entire day in thought, but it was not as good as a moment of study. Once I stood on tiptoe to gaze into the distance, but it was not as good as climbing to a high place to get a broad view. Climbing to a high place and waving will not make your arm any longer, but you can be seen from farther away. Shouting down the wind will give your voice no added urgency, but you can be heard more distinctly. By borrowing a horse and carriage you will not improve your feet, but you can cover a thousand li. By borrowing a boat and paddles you will not improve your ability in water, but you can cross rivers and seas. The noble person is by birth no different from others, but he is good at borrowing from external things.
Pollyanna VS Sod's Law
It's easy to see that predators (animals that kill and then eat other animals) are working for the downfall of their prey. But it's also true that prey are working for the downfall of their .fedators. They work hard to escape bei and it they all succeeded the predators would starve to death. The same thing holds between parasites and their hosts. It also holds between members of the same species, all of whom are actually or potentially competing with on another. If the living is easy, natural... notesEvolution favors the paranoid mind.
The Species Missing from Islands
Native
Missing
Plants
Land mammals
Birds
Reptiles
Insects and other
Amphibians
arthropods (e.g., spiders)
Freshwater fish
[...]
Further, when you look at the type of insects and plants native to oceanic islands, they are from groups that are the best colonizers. Most of the insects are small, precisely those that would be easily picked up by wind. Compared to weedy plants, trees are relatively rare on oceanic islands, almost certainly because many trees have heavy seeds that neither fl...The fact that the species that exist on islands could only have migrated there versus the ones that do not exist are evidence of evolution.
We Settle into a Comfortable Identity as Adults
She still felt seasick occasionally, especially when the wind got up and the ship plunged heavily over the crests of the graygreen waves, and then it was Pantalaimon’s job to distract her from it by skimming the waves as a stormy petrel; because she could feel his boundless glee in the dash of wind and water, and forget her nausea. From time to time he even tried being a fish, and once joined a school of dolphins, to their surprise and pleasure. Lyra stood shivering in the fo’c’sle and ... notesThe idea of the daemon, which changes shape, trying on different forms as a child, is a great metaphor for the masks and roles we wear growing up until we settle into who we are.
The Perspectives Game
I got a kick, when I was a boy, [out] of my father telling me things, so I tried to tell my son things that were interesting about the world. When he was very small we used to rock him to bed, you know, and tell him stories, and I'd make up a story about little people that were about so high [who] would walk along and they would go on picnics and so on and they lived in the ventilator; and they'd go through these woods which had great big long tall blue things like trees, but without leaves a...A game Feynman played with his father, describing a fantastic scene, and the object of the game was to figure out where it was taking place and from what perspective.
