Labeled Parts Of A Viking Longship

This Side (3)

(18 dicembre) Tra le particelle che costituiscono la materia è in corso una interazione ininterrotta, di cui non è mio scopo investigare le caratteristiche, salvo dire che in certi punti essa assume una complessità a cui abbiamo convenuto di dare il nome di vita. In realtà non esiste alcuna differenza tra materia cosiddetta inanimata e materia cosiddetta animata; la nostra definizione deriva esclusivamente da noi stessi, basata, appunto, sulla constatazione di un livello particolare di complessità che notiamo in determinati oggetti (piante, animali).

usually give at this level of responsiveness on behalf of the senses, between which there seems to excel a feeling of subjective existence. This is what we call consciousness, which is both a prerequisite and the consequence of all other sensations, but it does not differ in any special way. This picture of the universe is ridiculously summary, but it has one advantage: it indicates quite clearly superfluous and illusory nature of special subject-object relations, that is, the two-dimensionality that is the basis for centuries of philosophy.

In questo continuum non vi è spazio logico nè per una particolare posizione delle varie individualità nè per interventi di natura soprannaturale. Che le cose stiano, più o meno, in questa maniera è sospettato dal tempo dei presocratici ed è stato espressso in modi diversi e frammentari attraverso l’intera storia del pensiero. In questi ultimi anni se ne sono avute tuttavia conferme sperimentali che eliminano ogni possibilità di dubbio, almeno sul piano logico.

I will only mention two, both the result of new branches of scientific research.

The first depends on the so-called cognitive psychology, which has shown that the sense of individual conscience is not, even in humans, is essential to life, it may be, as well as the other senses aside - experimentally or because of disease - or transferred from one individual to another, without causing interruption of mutual responsiveness between the sense of individuality 'and the outside world.

He particularly impressed with the experience of a young but already well-known scholar of neuroanatomy, Jill Bolte Taylor, a professor at Harvard, which was hit by a massive cerebral stroke, has lost its sense of individuality, but set them lentamenterecuperato as was the case a partial reorganization of its neural circuits. Thanks to its special expertise in psychological, it could minutely describe both processes, the forward, with the loss of personality, and the return flight, as they occurred or shortly thereafter. Then he described them in a book ("My Stroke of Insight," Plume, New York ).

The other set of studies belongs to synthetic biology, a field of study to generate vital events in the so-called inorganic matter, so far, it is limited to the microbial level, but success in this field already has a principle of immense value.

Last May, the world's leading exponent of experimental genomics, dr. Craig Ventner, author of the first deciphering the human genome, and a group of students have announced the creation of artificial genome of a bacterium with elements of inorganic chemistry, and its transplantation in a bacterium of a different species, this biological machine continued to function . The experiment prompted the American administration to subject the whole field of research to a committee on bioethics, which has nevertheless given the green light for the continuation of the experiments.