Of all the creatures I've beheld none are so vile, beautiful, tormented,
ignorant, wise, enlightened, enslaved and emancipated as the one called
'man'. Perhaps the being most likely to do /anything/?
I think it is human nature to be independent and social, we have tooling
suited to the task and are driven toward those ends. Our independent
existential suffering is alleviated and subdued by interaction with
other human beings and participation in social communities.
This page was rather informative and interesting too:
http://www.onelife.com/evolve/manev.html
Heh, my fiancee tells me that my brow ridge was bred out long ago. :p
Just a few bits I found interesting from the discussion in your link.
"this Martian would, if he were rational, conclude that the structure of
the knowledge that is acquired in the case of language is basically
internal to the human mind; whereas the structure of physics is not, in
so direct a way, internal to the human mind. Our minds are not
constructed so that when we look at the phenomena of the world
theoretical physics comes forth, and we write it down and produce it"
-CHOMSKY
"If we really want to develop a theory of scientific creation, or for
that matter artistic creation, I think we have to focus attention
precisely on that set of conditions that, on the one hand, delimits and
restricts the scope of our possible knowledge, while at the same time
permitting the inductive leap to complicated systems of knowledge on the
basis of a small amount of data. That, it seems to me, would be the way
to progress towards a theory of scientific creativity, or in fact
towards any question of epistemology." -CHOMSKY
"it is important to stress-and this has to do with your point about
limitation and freedom-that were it not for these limitations, we would
not have the creative act of going from a little bit of knowledge, a
little bit of experience, to a rich and highly articulated and
complicated array of knowledge. Because if anything could be possible,
then nothing would be possible." -CHOMSKY
"On the other hand, one of the tasks that seems immediate and urgent to
me, over and above anything else, is this: that we should indicate and
show up, even where they are hidden, all the relationships of political
power which actually control the social body and oppress or repress it."
-FOUCOULT
" It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours
is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both
neutral and independent; to criticise and attack them in such a manner
that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely
through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.
...its true solidity is perhaps where one doesn't expect it. ...this
domination is not simply the expression in political terms of economic
exploitation, it is its instrument and ... the condition which makes it
possible ... if one fails to recognise these points of support of class
power, one risks allowing them to continue to exist; and to see this
class power reconstitute itself even after an apparent revolutionary
process." -FOUCOULT
On 2/13/2010 1:37 PM, Molly wrote:
"All studies of man, from history to linguistics and psychology, are
faced with the question of whether, in the last instance, we are the
product of all kinds of external factors, or if, in spite of our
differences, we have something we could call a common human nature, by
which we can recognise each other as human beings."
What is human nature?
http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm
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