File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1998/lyotard.9812, message 76


Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 01:41:56 -0800
Subject: New science


Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:

"Science, technology and capitalism (STC) have become the unholy
triumvirate that today rules not merely the West, but the entire world.
This bastard child STC has usurped the throne and declared itself
legitimate. It acts in a way that is literally hyper-orgasmic; growing
and developing according an ever increasing rate of change.  STC
proceeds by exponential equations that approach the limit to infinity."

-AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT-

hugh bone replies:

Agreed.  I'll send an essay on Globalism to anyone who wants it.

But science is only the messenger.  What humans learn of phenomena
such as brain function at molecular level and the complexity of 
genetics forces new ideas.  

Should the Globe become a happy world of self-determined,
self-supporting, and independent small communities, Pandora's Box would
still be open and philosphers would need to explain to each other the
probable consequences of these newly revealed complexities.  Much of
this new knowledge was not known to Lyotard or anyone else until quite
recently.

The materialists are right of course.  The living body is material and
when
it dies the mind dies, and the more or less immortal atoms which
composed it go elsewhere.  

But what are transactions?  For example, gravity, which controls planets
at a distance without visible means of contact? 

And how does information tell material what it is supposed to do?  Make
a new human animal for instance.


   

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