Man's radio ear 'hears the whisper of remote galaxies...'
"The wheel of the web brought the analogy home clearly. Man, too, lies at the heart of a web..."
Prologue to the
Philosophers' Domain
the unknown,
X



Loren Eiseley, 
Man's radio ear 'hears the whisper of remote galaxies...Like the orb spider, man lies at the heart of it, listening.' "The spider was a symbol of man in miniature..."

in The Unexpected Universe

Physics showed us that our perceptions show us very little of what we are looking at.


We are an evolved species that has recently acquired the ability to destroy itself and most of the other species that have evolved on this planet
We've gone a half century without nuclear war...
. . . and carry out that destruction in a time measured in days or years rather than  millennia or millions of years.

What do these landmark equations really mean?
F = ma    S = k lnW    E = mc2     Dpx´Dx³ h/2p

What does she see?  What will she see when she's older?
'To a child I shall give wings...'
Matilda W. Dillon, facing down the killer...ask her about it.

What do we want to see?

We have developed profound abilities to imagine alternatives to what we see and experience

... but we haven't always avoided the self-deception that convinces ourselves that wondrous things we can imagine are real, when in fact they are not yet achieved.

We have faith in what we know.
"Now we know."

How do we live together?

We have discovered democracy, one mode of living together in groups. 

...but there is always that tempting vision that the  "perfect democracy" would be one that includes only ourselves—or at least one where everybody else is just like ourselves—a world in which those miscreants who disagree with us have no say.  How nice if it bestows all its benefits to only ourselves.  We discover such egocentrism when very young.  How far can we see beyond egocentrism?

An O4R (ex-)president in the Solipsism Simulator
Is man at heart any different from the spider, I wonder...    "Is this the perfect world?"
Nuclear holocaust?  Environmental catastrophe?  Collapse of democracy?
What must we do next?
What might we do next?

What can we do?

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Look for quotes from Loren Eisley, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Richard Feynman, et al in the mouse-hover pop-up boxes. 
And some pictures can be clicked on to see the point elaborated.