Today's muse, we humans think we are in control, that we are the ones "inventing", but are we really the preeminent tool creators and users that we think we are? Perhaps we are the tools, but to what purpose?
A friend pointed me to an article the other day that takes a geophysical perspective of calling the earth a "living super-organism". While this was strictly a geophysical view, if this view was to be expanded to include biology, I suspect we might be able to step back and see the geophysical life cycle, and planetary biological life cycle operating in unison, and symmetry. The challenge of integration here is both scale and impact. Most biological time frames, even when figured on a macro-level e.g., mammals rather than humans etc..., are dwarfed by geophysical life cycles. And second, as much as we see human/biological planetary impact, this impact is dwarfed by the impact of geophysical life cycles.
Certainly human/biological planetary engineering skills are growing, and it does cause one to wonder if there is some grand design here, will the "planet" need these human tools at some point in the future? I am reminded of all the symbiosis we see in nature, particularly underwater. Perhaps we should worry less about our ability to destroy our own planet, and worry more about what our planet has in store for us.
A friend pointed me to an article the other day that takes a geophysical perspective of calling the earth a "living super-organism". While this was strictly a geophysical view, if this view was to be expanded to include biology, I suspect we might be able to step back and see the geophysical life cycle, and planetary biological life cycle operating in unison, and symmetry. The challenge of integration here is both scale and impact. Most biological time frames, even when figured on a macro-level e.g., mammals rather than humans etc..., are dwarfed by geophysical life cycles. And second, as much as we see human/biological planetary impact, this impact is dwarfed by the impact of geophysical life cycles.
Certainly human/biological planetary engineering skills are growing, and it does cause one to wonder if there is some grand design here, will the "planet" need these human tools at some point in the future? I am reminded of all the symbiosis we see in nature, particularly underwater. Perhaps we should worry less about our ability to destroy our own planet, and worry more about what our planet has in store for us.
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