Immortal Curiosity

Notes on Zoological Philosophy, by J.B. Lamarck-

Chapter 7-

• Concerning the influence exerted by the environment on the various living bodies exposed to it. It is in all times and places operative on living bodies.
• The state in which we find any animal is, on the one hand, the result of the increasing complexity of organisation tending to form a regular gradation; and, on the other hand, of the influence of a multitude of very various conditions ever tending to destroy the regularity in the gradation of the increasing complexity of organisation.

11 /26/2005
Notes and thoughts from Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell, chapter 6, Star Trek or Not.

The world’s population plotted through time is a measure of our technological ability to preserve life. During recorded history, this measure has only increased. Of course, there are certain exceptions: the Black death etc. within the last 200 years, population growth has become exponential. Currently, the world population doubles every 40 years. Other measures of technological growth include power consumption and the number of scientific articles published. All three of these measures cannot continue to grow at the same rate that they are now. So what are the possibilities?

Towards a Universal Characteristic, 1677.

“Number is therefore, so to speak, a fundamental metaphysical form, and arithmetic a sort of statics [from OED: “Originally, the science relating to weight and its mechanical effects, and to the conditions of equilibrium as resulting from the distribution of weight. In modern use, the branch of physical science concerned with the action of forces in producing equilibrium or relative rest, in contradistinction to Dynamics in its older sense as the science of the action of forces in producing motion. In recent terminology, Statics and Kinetics (= the older Dynamics) are the two branches of Dynamics.” ] of the universe, in which the powers of things are revealed.”

The Phenomenon of Man (my edition)
by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, trans. Bernard Wall; Perennial, 1965.

~Introduction, by Sir Julian Huxley-

The Bodily Dimension in Thinking, by Daniela Vallega-Neu. SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy, 2005.