A biophilosopher is: “Someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and understands that we have become the process itself, through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and anticipate the future, and to choose from among alternatives” (Jonas Salk, Wikipedia). Rediscovering Jonas Salk Jonas Salk, a quintessential Long Now scholar, half a century ago correctly extrapolated trends that we’re only now experiencing, particularly along the lines of realizations about world population trends, mid to long term: He went into more detail … including his feeling that a sharp rise and an expected leveling off in the human population would take place and eventually bring a change in human attitudes: “I think of biological knowledge as providing useful analogies for understanding human nature…. People think of biology in terms of such practical matters as drugs, but its contribution to knowledge about living systems and ourselves will in the future be equally important…. In the past epoch, man was concerned with death, high mortality; his attitudes were antideath, antidisease”, he says. “In the future, his attitudes will be expressed in terms of prolife and prohealth. The past was dominated by death control; in the future, birth control will be more important. These changes we’re observing are part of a natural order and to be expected from our capacity to adapt. It’s much more important to cooperate and collaborate. We are the co-authors with nature of our destiny.” It’s encouraging to be reminded of the unquestionably rational and noble genesis of such ideas, having learned about such analogies as they pertain to economic systems in the context of human circulatory systems.
-
Posted to michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us
Who is a Biophilosopher? #OpenScience
- Tags:
- All Posts
- goodness
- truthiness
- society
- bio
-
Posted to michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us
The Delectable Dysfunctional Death Diet
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=1149
Yummy, yummy! Let’s gobble down that delectable dysfunctional death diet! Oh yeah, baby! Go right on ahead and take sides with the 18th century industrialist foody fashionistas; or, maybe consider this and this and ask whether MORE HEALTHY YEARS is enough of a motivator to change human behavior.
- Tags:
- All Posts
- truthiness
- snarkiness
- bio
1





