Friday, April 23, 2010

Optimal Conditions

Icarus was warned of flying too high (lest the Sun melt the wax used to construct his wings) or too low (lest the waves catch him) - but this could be an allegory about Man's place in the Cosmos.
Maybe this is the problem with CERN.
Maybe we have not evolved to the point of being able to handle the results of such a reaction.
Maybe there is a limit to what we are supposed to know or what can do.
Our current understanding of bacteriophages may enable us to infect viruses. A similar theory could aid in the creation of prions made to replicate harmful or beneficial proteins.
But maybe this is going too small.
Maybe colloidal silver, copper or gold is on a scale too small for our control.
Maybe the ability to change humans on the genetic level is not a problem we'd like to solve.
Maybe it's the scale of the molecules and not the substances themselves which are the causes of the problem.
Even when we push our limits only slightly past our natural habitations - we have a need to create entirely new environments to sustain us.

High Speed flight requires special suits and breathing apparatus to enable us to function.

Climbs to heights higher than that one is used to can cause elevation sickness.

Deep sea exploration requires man made environments.
I'm all for knowledge - but only on a scale which we are evolved to handle.

7 comments:

CNu said...

nature abhors a gradient - ours extends from the solar (5800 Kelvin) to the outer space (2.7 Kelvin) range of variation.

life is gradient breakdown.

mind is gradient perception.

matter-energy-information homeodynamism.

the essential trick of "self" organization is accomplished through the auspices of the "other".

complex systems are "other" organized, not "self" organized.

the tendency of systems to organize comes from the gradients in their immediate surroundings, not from their own internal components.

our purposefulness is an offshoot of the thermodynamic tendency to come to equilibrium. complex systems, including our complex system - arise in order to bring our gradient-rich surroundings to equilibrium.

Kit (Keep It Trill) said...

"Even when we push our limits only slightly past our natural habitations - we have a need to create entirely new environments to sustain us."

So true, and at the expense of Mother Earth.

uglyblackjohn said...

But with an infinite range for temperature - wouldn't this range still appear to be static to someone (something) beyond our environment?
Is it only homeodynamic because we can only perceive what is within our environment?

Is Neo represenaitive of only one man or of mankind itself?
Is he the part of humanity which goes beyond that which the Earth can sustain and is need of "sacrifice".

@ Kit - Almost makes the GAIA hypothesis sound plausible.

CNu said...

GAIA is not an hypothesis. Instead it is an awful and regrettable popular misnomer for a broadly misunderstood statement of fact.

It would be well worth your while to look back at what James Lovelock was doing as an independent consultant for NASA when he articulated the very conservative and forthright statement of fact that has been dragged into the imaginal gutter of anthropic superstition.

The highly exaggerated popular, conventional, new-age notion of GAIA has nothing whatsoever to do with Lovelock's fact-based description of geophysiology and the atmospheric traits signifying living vs. non-living planets.

CNu said...

But with an infinite range for temperature - wouldn't this range still appear to be static to someone (something) beyond our environment?

No.

Is it only homeodynamic because we can only perceive what is within our environment?

Say what?

Is Neo represenaitive of only one man or of mankind itself?

He's an anomaly..,

Is he the part of humanity which goes beyond that which the Earth can sustain and is need of "sacrifice".

The pod people are the sacrifice - their sole purpose for existence is to give rise to the occasional anomaly. Natural selection acts so as to filter out the many to preserve the remaining few, those few ever more efficiently able to use environmental energy to "purposefully" reduce their gradients.

CNu said...

Atmospheric gases, surface rocks and water are regulated by the growth, death, metabolism, and other activities of living organisms.

"Gaia" is simply symbiosis as seen from space - all organisms are touching because all are bathed in the same air and the same flowing water.

uglyblackjohn said...

Yeah SeeNew... I'm still going over some of your last posts and the related sources to try to gain a better understanding.