IUBio

Trolling for Geniuses (Yo! Picasso!)

Mentifex Maker of Minds mentifex at scn.org
Wed Jul 1 01:01:41 EST 1998


Brendan Macmillan (bren at molly.cs.monash.edu.au) wrote: [.]
> Ian Kemmish (ian at five-d.com) wrote: [..]
>: bjm10 at cornell.edu says... [...]


   When you were a child  and  you were like the boy Isaac Newton
walking on the seashore, you discovered minor challenges for your
mind.   While  your  ancestors  had  long since  emerged from the
primordial ooze,  you, impelled by the "wandering" idea contained
in  the word  "planet,"  were  dimly  following  the  negentropic
principle of escape to the stars by making rockets.

   As you grew up,  you searched farther and wider for challenges
worthy of your intellect.   You experienced  the "gravitation" of
strong intellects towards eternal mysteries:
      - the oldest things (paleontology; cosmogony);
      - the smallest things (particle physics);
      - the largest things (Heavy Metals; universes = ASTRONOMY);
      - the most complex things (ecosystems; organisms; brains).
Like Alexander weeping for no more worlds to conquer, you matured
and knocked down all the challenges that life had set up for you.

   What to do?   Take up  river-rafting?   Prove through your own
oeuvre that  "The Great Gatsby"  has been prematurely regarded as
The Great American Novel?   Live through your children?    Freeze
your body for resurrection when more exciting times have arrived?

   You are like the marauder in "Lawrence  of  Arabia," rummaging
among  the  train  wreckage  and  shrieking,  "Is  there  nothing
honorable in this place?"

   You seek meaning in life, but here are sands, ignoble things.

   Bored out of your wits, reading each astronomy magazine but no
longer feeling  the intense and awesome challenges of youth,  you
drift towards the mass of men leading lives of quiet desperation.

   But there is a GRAND CHALLENGE taunting you  and your species,
uttered by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche:

      Nunmehr werden jene  Auserkornen,  vor denen  die Ahnung
      einer solchen Pflicht aufzudaemmern beginnt, den Versuch
      machen,  ob sie ihr wie als ihrer groessten Gefahr nicht
      noch "zur rechten Zeit"  durch irgend einen Seitensprung
      entschluepfen  moechten:  zum Beispiel  indem  sie  sich
      einreden,  die Aufgabe sei schon geloest,  oder sie  sei
      unloesbar,  oder sie haetten keine Schultern fuer solche
      Lasten,  oder sie seien schon mit andern,  naeheren Auf-
      gaben ueberladen,  oder selbst diese  neue ferne Pflicht
      sei eine Verfuehrung und Versuchung, eine Abfuehrung von
      allen  Pflichten,  eine  Krankheit,  eine Art  Wahnsinn.
<PRE>
  /^^^^^^^^^^^\   Theorie des Denkens im Gehirn   /^^^^^^^^^^^\
 /  Sehkanal   \                    ________     /  Hoerkanal  \
|      /--------|-------\          / Syntax \   |  Gedaechtnis  |
|      | Wieder-|er-    |          \________/---|-------------\ |
|   ___|___     |kennt- |         Zwang| Spirale|    _______  | |
|  /       \    |nis  __|___        ___V___     |   /       \ | |
| /  Bild   \   |    /tiefe \------/ Wort- \----|--/  Wort   \| |
| \         /---|---/Begriffe\----/begriffe \---|--\         /  |
|  \_______/    |   \________/    \_________/   |   \_______/   |
</PRE>



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