LIFE ON EARTH
Taking the Big Bang as the starting point of the universe, at that point in time there were only inorganic quality patterns, that is to say, physical forces. Since then, at successive stages of this universe’s history, plants and animals have evolved from inorganic patterns; societies have evolved from biological patterns; and intellect has evolved from societies: “The universe is evolving from a condition of low quality toward a higher one and in a static sense these two are not the same” (Letter from Robert Pirsig to me, 23rd March 1997). As the cosmologist Edward Kolb once wrote, “In perhaps nature’s most miraculous transformation, the universe evolved the capacity to ponder and understand itself.”
WHAT IF IDEAS AND THINKING WERE NOT A RESULT OF LIFE BUT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
SHELDRAKE:
"The concept of genetic programmes is based on an analogy with the programmes that direct the activities of computers. It implies that the fertilized egg contains a pre-formed programme which somehow specifies the organism's morphogenetic goals and coordinates and controls its development towards them. But the genetic programme must involve something more than the chemical structure of DNA, because identical copies of DNA are passed on to all cells; if all cells were programmed identically, they could not develop differently. So what exactly is it? In response to this question, the idea can only disintegrate into vague suggestions about physico-chemical interactions somehow structured in time and space; the problem is merely restated."
"The concept of genetic programmes is based on an analogy with the programmes that direct the activities of computers. It implies that the fertilized egg contains a pre-formed programme which somehow specifies the organism's morphogenetic goals and coordinates and controls its development towards them. But the genetic programme must involve something more than the chemical structure of DNA, because identical copies of DNA are passed on to all cells; if all cells were programmed identically, they could not develop differently. So what exactly is it? In response to this question, the idea can only disintegrate into vague suggestions about physico-chemical interactions somehow structured in time and space; the problem is merely restated."
