E então, um judeu pequeno de nariz grande e pele pálida,
Pobre mas satisfeito, ensimesmado e reservado,
Um espírito subtil mas vazio, menos lido do que celebrado,
Escondido sob o manto de Descartes, o seu professor,
Aproxima-se do grande Ser com passos cuidadosos:
Desculpe-me, diz ele, falando num sussuro,
Mas penso, aqui entre nós, que Vossa Excelência não existe.
Voltaire - sobre Espinosa
"É triste notar que poucos filósofos de qualidade, velhos ou novos
prestaram homenagem pública a Espinosa no século que se seguiu à sua
morte, e que nenhum assumiu o papel de discípulo ou continuador. Nem
sequer Leibniz, que leu e parece ter apreciado os escritos de Espinosa
antes da sua publicação, e que teria sido a mente mais qualificada da
época para explicar o seu significado. Mas não o fez. Escondeu-se como
todos os outros e adotou uma posição de crítica circunspecta. Os grandes
cérebros das Luzes fizeram o mesmo. Em privado, diziam-se iluminados
por Espinosa; publicamente, atacavam-no."
António Damásio, Ao Encontro de Espinosa
Espinosa
da pornografia
O
que a indústria da pornografia está a fazer é a destruir a capacidade
dos homens para a intimidade. Não são apenas as mulheres as vítimas
desta indústria. Já Naomi Wolf anda a 'pregar' isto. É um assunto muito
grave que daqui a nada irá tornar-se uma questão de saúde pública se
ninguém fizer alguma coisa.
"I
want to suggest, that in our society, women have two choices: you're
either fuckable or you're invisible. And that's why the gym is full of
40 year old women who are aging out of fuckability. Fuckability has a
shelf life. [...] We haven't always had a porn industry. The
porn industry began in 1953 with the first edition of Playboy. That was
the first time ever that a magazine aimed to be pornographic in the
sense that it delivered facilitators for male masturbation. [...] What is ludicrous about this third wave
feminism is that they take this lack of choice [hyper sexualization]
(because this is the only choice) and have the cheek to call it female
empowerment. [...] How do you expect a 13 or 14 or 15 year old girl to negotiate this [hyper sexualization] alone?"
Gail Dines
Filmes a ver:
The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality & Relationships — info
Lars and the Real Girl — info
do hermético
O maior pecado que um especialista pode cometer quando fala com outro é
explicitar o assunto, 'descer o nível', o que é insultuoso. Por isso,
quando se trata de clarificar um assunto, os especialistas cometem
sempre erros. Não se apercebem de que não partilham pressupostos comuns.
E chegam-se a tremendos campos de conflito, consequência de
mal-entendidos de base, bastante simples a um nível mais baixo.
Existe um diferença profunda entre a tradição universitária anglófona e a
europeia. Na Europa continental, os professores falam do alto das suas
cátedras, nas suas torres de marfim, debitando a sua sapiência, e o
aluno toma notas e não faz perguntas; se são difíceis de entender e
inacessíveis, melhor para eles — compensa. É assim que se consegue uma
reputação — sendo-se obscuro. O mesmo não se passa na tradição
universitária de língua inglesa, pelo menos com tanta intensidade. Não
sei qual é a relação com a ciência, mas vê-se que essa atitude também
influencia a escrita não científica, semicientífica ou filosófica dos
cientistas do continente europeu. Jacques Monod e François Jacob
constituem dois exemplos. Aspiravam a ser filósofos da Europa
continental, o que os levou a águas mais escuras e profundas do que
aquelas em que eram capazes de nadar.
Daniel C. Dennett, in A Terceira Cultura
A Terceira Cultura
George C. Williams - evolutionary biologist
Stephen Jay Gould - paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science
Richard Dawkins - ethologist, evolutionary biologist
Brian Goodwin - mathematician and biologist
Steve Jones - geneticist
Niles Eldredge - paleontologist
Lynn Margulis - biologist
Marvin Minsky - cognitive scientist
Roger Schank - artificial intelligence theorist
Daniel C. Dennett - philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist
Nicholas Humphrey - psychologist
Francisco Varela - biologist, philosopher, and neuroscientist
Steven Pinker - experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist
Roger Penrose - mathematical physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science
Martin Rees - cosmologist and astrophysicist
Alan Guth - theoretical physicist and cosmologist
Lee Smolin - theoretical physicist
Paul Davies - physicist, writer and broadcaster
Murray Gell-Mann - 1969 Nobel Prize in physics
Stuart Kauffman - theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher
Christopher G. Langton - computer scientist
J. Doyne Farmer - physicist, interested in chaos theory, complexity and econophysics
W. Daniel Hillis - inventor, scientist, engineer, entrepreneur, and author
Codex Seraphinianus
.jpg)
Autismo / Alimentação / Antibióticos
Studies on Bacteriology of Autism
In most cases symptoms of autism begin in early infancy. However, a subset of children appears to develop normally until a clear deterioration is observed. Many parents of children with "regressive"-onset autism have noted antecedent antibiotic exposure followed by chronic diarrhea.
Proprionic acid ou E280 (aditivo usado no pão, bolos e queijos)
ainda o ácido propanóico.
Heaven hates ham
Este texto, retirado do livro, 'Deus não é grande', de Christopher Hitchens, foi lido por Salman Rushdie na homenagem póstuma a Hitchens.
"music is in the present but it's also in the imagination and in memory" *
"Actually I think that 'Time' is the one thing that cognitive psychology has totally neglected, along with movement. But time is the fatal one. And I think the fact that linguists study the structure of language as text and don't consider the temporal patterns involved. That means they can't relate to other forms of human movement. [...] We have an intuitive desire to share creativity and this is all transmitted by rhythms of body movement of one kind or another. And I'd like to emphasize that the cultural knowledge is passed on as a poetic process which can be made rational for practical purposes."
Mais
e mais
The Playground / metodologias
"Kant's
idea that play is the antithesis of reason, that reason must triumph
over imagination and philosophy and science over art, is a continual
ghostly presence in Freud. The Kantian hierarchy fit well with Freud's
scientific temperament. Science is ideally a discipline of remove, in
fact, the scientists are supposed to vanish in the third person
objectivity of the observation or experiment. The
I/You dialectic may be an object of study, but it's not part of the
epistemological drama. When the cure in question is one enacted through a
form of dialogue: two people alone together in a room, the remove, what
came to be called neutrality, is an insistence that dispassionate
reason guide the analyst no matter how messy and wild, no matter what
the doings on the tummelplatz become."
Siri Hustvedt: "Freud's Playground: Some Reflections on the Art and Science of Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity"
And... In the first person...
... assuming
the givens of existence. Sharing experiences. Closeness. Self
revelation on the part of the therapist. Breaking barriers. Confidence,
humbleness and honesty.
The Waste Land
The Waste Land
I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
“They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!
“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
II. A Game of Chess
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
“Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
“What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
“I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
“What is that noise?”
The wind under the door.
“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
Nothing again nothing.
“Do
“You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
“Nothing?”
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent
“What shall I do now? What shall I do?”
“I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
“With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?
“What shall we ever do?”
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
III. The Fire Sermon
The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
“This music crept by me upon the waters”
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
“Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”
“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’
I made no comment. What should I resent?”
“On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.”
la la
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest
burning
IV. Death by Water
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
V. What the Thunder Said
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
belo
A sua fisionomia não me seduz, não o acho bonito. Sempre achei a sua voz
algo agreste para os meus tímpanos. Mas... admiro a sua humildade, a
sua vontade insaciável de saber, a sua inquestionável sensibilidade, a
sua inteligência, a sua forma de envelhecer. Um gajo sereno e igual a si
próprio. Ela, não a conheço.
Narrativas
"What I'm saying is why one story and not another. This is really important. This is not a joke. I mean, the Cohen brothers can say, 'oh well we figure out the ending'. But why that story? Why any story? Theoretically one is completely free. What I am saying is that the constrictions on the story are essentially emotional, dream like, a fabula, that in some strange way pre exists. It's in the human being before the work of art even comes out. Because how do I know when I write something and I go, 'that's it!' ? That's right!? How the hell do I know? Because it's emotionally resonant for me." (minuto 1:00:01 +/-)
Siri Hustvedt
na mouche
"Being an outsider has disadvantages. I am unaffiliated with the institution that would stamp me with the impressive credentials other speakers offer up as proof of their years of toil. Their grants and postdocs and research centers and honors and generally auspicious status.
Being an outsider has its advantages as well, however. In my case there is no question of advancement inside an institution. My motive is curiosity and nothing else. An abiding curiosity of what it means to be human."
Siri Hustvedt
Match Point
"People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck it goes forward and you win. Or maybe it doesn't and you lose."
Criatividade: um recurso ou um fardo / O que vem com o pacote
"Observemos um inquérito recentemente feito a várias dezenas de professores primários por psicólogos do Skidmore College. Quando inquiridos sobre se queriam ter crianças criativas na sala de aula, todos os professores responderam afirmativamente. Mas quando foi pedido a esses mesmos professores que classificassem os alunos em diversas escalas de personalidade, os traços mais directamente associados ao pensamento criativo (como 'exprimir-se livremente') eram também os mais associados aos alunos 'menos preferidos'. As crianças que sonham acordadas e improvisam podiam ser imaginativas, mas era difícil ensiná-las e obtinham piores resultados nos testes normalizados. Em consequência disso, eram regularmente rejeitados e desincentivados. Os investigadores resumiram os seus tristes dados: 'Os juízos feitos para a escolha do aluno preferido estavam negativamente correlacionados com a criatividade; os juízos feitos para a escolha do aluno menos preferido estavam positivamente correlacionados com a criatividade."
Jonah Lehrer, in Imagine
A Rough History of Disbelief
 |
| Jonathan Miller |
"Infact, intelligence, which was once seen as the antecedent cause of all things, is, in itself, almost certainly, a biological phenomenon. Far from being the initiator of things, we are now beginning to recognize that intelligence is a relatively late arrival in the universe. Like the limbs and organs which, until Darwin, were visualized as the products of the intelligent design, it's becoming increasingly likely that intelligence itself is the product of natural selection. Inconceivable without the existence of the brain. Even the idea of the soul, which the faithful fondly visualize as the colonial outpost of an imperial power on high, will, I'm sure, shortly be explained as the autonomous product of local brainwork."
Jonathan Miller, aqui
Imaginação por metro quadrado
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| Sillicon Valley |
Em que medida a proximidade física afeta a qualidade da investigação científica?
Isaac Kohane
"De facto, os melhores estudos eram constantemente produzidos por cientistas que trabalhavam a uma distância de dez metros uns dos outros, ao passo que os piores trabalhos provinham habitualmente de colaboradores situados a mais de um quilómetro." [...] 'Se queremos que as pessoas trabalhem juntas de forma eficiente, estes dados reforçam a necessidade de criar arquitecturas e instalações que sustentem interações físicas frequentes', afirma Kohane. Por outras palavras, as nossas ideias novas mais importantes não chegam através de um ecrã. Pelo contrário, surgem de conversas triviais, de demasiados cientistas a partilhar o mesmo espaço."
Jonah Lehrer, in Imagine
E mais ainda, aqui.
