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- a course.
- #go https://www.capracourse.net
- sounds amazing! let's see :)
- #pull frijof capra patterns of connection systems and cybernetics
- spring
- "Welcome to the Capra Course! The lectures will be posted on this page. The first lecture will be released on Wednesday, February 23, 2022, and a new lecture will be released every Wednesday thereafter. By the time the course is completed, there will be 12 lectures released in total."
- "After the last lecture is released on May 11, 2022, all 12 lectures will be accessible until June 22, 2022. The course will then be closed and alumni will be transferred to our Alumni Network."
- "Please watch the video for each lecture, read the lecture summary, and then head on over to the Forum for discussion."
- "You may begin by making connections with other students in the course any time using the forums or by reading the introduction to The Systems View of Life in preparation for the course."
- forum https://spring.capracourse.net/forum/
- lecture 1 systems thinking
- lecture 2 the web of life
- lecture 3 order and complexity in the living world
- lecture 4 the systems view of evolution
- summary https://spring.capracourse.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Lecture-4-Summary.pdf
- prebiotic evolution
- lipid walls acted as proto membranes, formed bubbles
- within simple bubbles that tended to let some compounds selectively in and keep them in, those compounds collisioned and interacted much more often than without
- yields network chemistry, highly non linear
- ()non linear dynamics, complexity theory figures prominently.)
- competition for nutrients yielded evolutionary pressure
- universal ancestor is thought to have come into existence around ~3.5B years ago
- colonized essentially our whole environment, making future life possible
- #push the systems view of evolution
- prebiotic evolution plus new understanding of biological evolution
- rather than seeing evolution as the result of random mutations, the central focus is on the creativity unfolding of life in forms of increasing complexity of increasing diversity
- the dynamics of life's creativity
- #push history of evolutionary thought
- #push charles darwin
- based his theory on two core ideas:
- all living organisms are related by common ancestry
- beagle
- Darwin knew not of a remedy to a problem of his theory: he thought heredity worked so that offspring received 50% of the traits of each ancestor, their offspring 25%, theirs 12.5%, etc.
- Darwin saw this as a flaw as it showed that positive traits would disappear very quickly after arising and being selected by chance.
- Mendel of course discovered the units of heredity, genes.
- Mendel wrote to Darwin ()!), and allegedly Darwin didn't read the letter because it was in German and had too much math on it (!).
- radical shift in biological thought: from being to becoming (a shift towards change)
- holistic view
- #push neodarwinism
- evolutionary variations result from random mutations, being random genetic changes, followed by natural selection.
- #push systems view of evolution
- recognizes three major avenues of evolution:
- random mutations == genetic mutations
- most mutations are harmful, few lead to positive variations
- note that one bacteria can become billions in just one day
- horizontal genetic transfer == gene trading
- bacteria freely trade genes, swap genes with each other
- global trading of genes (!)
- lynn margulis
- some microbiologists argue that bacteria should not be categorized into species
- during the first 2 billion years of evolution, only bacteria were around
- bacteria bootstrapped it all, established the global system
- #push bacteria also invented:
- bacteria freely trade genes, swap genes with each other
- symbiogenesis
- evolution through symbiosis
- lynn margulis as well
- hypothesis: long term symbiosis involving bacteria and other microorganisms as hosts/guests led to complex life
- acquiring genomes
- compares organisms to corporations
- random mutations == genetic mutations
- all three of the previous produce changes that need to be integrated into the physical and chemical environment; if the integration of new genetic information doesn't work, the organism can't survive -> there's natural selection
- epigenetic network
- real life example: in human life you make plans (you have a plan for your night), plans need to adapt to random occurrences (people you run into; other events out of your sphere of control). evolution works the same way.
- recognizes three major avenues of evolution:
- #push david brower narrative: compresses 4.5B years (the age of the earth) into the six days of biblical creation
- sunday midnight creation
- tuesday 8am first bacterial cells
- thursday midnight planetary system
- friday 4pm sexual reproduction invented
- saturday all visible forms of life evolved
- 1.30am first marine animals
- 9.30am first plants come ashore
- 16.50 great reptiles, roam for five hours
- 17.30 first mammals
- 22 first primates
- 23 first monkeys
- 23:40 great apes appear
- 23:56 homo habilis
- 23:59:30 homo sapiens begins to evolve
- 23:59:49 humans
- less than one second before midnight: written history
- australopithecus afarensis
- big brains seem to have yielded all these innovations four million years ago:
- homo habilis two million years ago
- homo erectus
- homo sapiens 250k years ago
- cro magnon -- anatomically identical to us. fully developed language. brought about an explosion of technological and artistic innovations.
- lascaux cave
- chauvet cave
- 300 paintings of high artistic achievement and with a narrative
- cro magnon -- anatomically identical to us. fully developed language. brought about an explosion of technological and artistic innovations.
- #push charles darwin
- lecture 5 mind and consciousness
- summary https://spring.capracourse.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Lecture-5-Summary.pdf
- gregory bateson
- #push santiago theory
- humberto maturana
- francisco varela
- a new conception of the nature of mind and consciousness is an implication of the systemic understanding of life
- it goes beyond the cartesian division.
- rené descartes based his thought on a fundamental division between res cogitans (the thinking mind) and res extensa (matter, the extensive thing)
- mind as an intangible entity poses the question of how it interacts with matter
- rené descartes based his thought on a fundamental division between res cogitans (the thinking mind) and res extensa (matter, the extensive thing)
- mind and consciousness are not things, they are processes
- gregory bateson mental process
- independently humberto maturana had similar ideas w.r.t. cognition
- francisco varela worked with him and developed his insights into a theory known as santiago theory of cognition
- cognitive science is a transdisciplinary approach
- the process of knowing and the process of life are one and the same
- cognition is the activity involved in the self generation and self perpetuation of living networks
- the self organizing activity of a living system at all levels is mental activity
- the interactions of a living organism with its environment are cognitive interactions
- life and cognition are inseparably connected at all levels of life
- cognitive activity is immanent in life
- cognition does not require a brain/nervous system
- plants, bacteria which don't have nervous systems are all constantly involved in cognitive activities (as they perceive, react)
- it goes beyond the cartesian division.
- (...) see screenshots / transcribe
- lecture 9, 10, 11 all great
- lecture 12 systemic solutions
- energy crisis
- many possible solutions
- two false solutions, non-systemic
- clean coal is essentially an advertising slogan for new, unproven techniques for carbon capture
- hope that nuclear power could replace coal, but the risks were underexplored.
- in the book fritjof capra summarizes seven inconvenient truths about nuclear power
- creates significant greenhouse gases
- uranium supplies are very limited
- construction time of plants is too long
- waste storage problem remains unsolved
- nuclear power and nuclear weapons are inextricably linked
- new generation reactors have the same problems and are too late
- nuclera power is not viable commercially
- in the book fritjof capra summarizes seven inconvenient truths about nuclear power
- #push plan b by lester brown
- shows strategies building on existing technology, working examples from around the world
- eradicating poverty and stabilizing population
- stabilizing climate
- restoring the earth's ecosystems
- reinventing fire by amory lovins
- focus is narrower than brown's
- "to create a clear and practical vision of a fossil fuel free future backed up by quant analsys and to map out a path towards that future"
- massive savings in energy and cost
- hope is that business could get behind the cost savingssss
- the third industrial revolution by jeremy rifkin
- renewable energy sources
- hidrogen
- fossil fuel free future] (~ ffff)
- electric vehicles
- smart grids
- government agencies focus
- widely distributed grids enabled by the internet
- renewable energy sources
- global food crisis
- similar to and interlinked with the energy crisis
- two basic types of food systems
- industrial production: energy intensive, centralized, fossil fuel based
- traditional practices: distributed, organic
- chemical agriculture was hailed as a new era, and it was actually seen as a green revolution, but...
- massive use of fertilizers/pesticides changed the whole fabric of agriculture
- single crop monoculture took over, led to soil depletion and escalating use of pesticides
- high energy use resulted in great concentration in very large farms
- gmos
- long session on this and genetic engineering in the book
- the main objective in genetic engineering seems to have been to increase the sales of chemicals :(
- #push agroecology
- organic farming, permaculture, sustainable argriculture
- variety of crops, rotated
- instead of chemical fertilizers, a focus on manure and organic material from previous crops
- it embodies ecological principles which have been tested by evolution
- soil is actually alive: there are billions of organisms in every cm3
- diversification and intercropping
- agroforestry
- "agroecology (is/might be) able to raise agricultural productivity in ways that are economically viable, ecologically sound and socially uplifting"
- soil that is organically managed is a carbon store (as it's full of life)
- carbon sequestration in soil and plants is currently the only known and proven technology to draw down co2 from the atmostphere and in the long run stabilize climate
- #push ecodesign
- david orr
- "ecological design is the careful meshing of our human purposes with the larger patterns and flows of the natural world"
- eco design principles reflect those that are found in nature to support life
- "what can we learn from nature" (instead of what can we extract from it)
- some examples from two areas
- organic cycles
- coffee production + mushroom production + livestock + ...
- technical cycles
- between manufacturers and consumers
- (maybe related to repair movement?)
- people want services, not products
- the manufacturer could "own" devices, be responsible to recycle all components at the end of life of a device
- urban ecodesign
- ~60 cities have adopted the curitiba model
- modern car free environments
- urban villages
- high density structures combined with ample green spaces
- david orr
- system solutions in this lecture seem to provide ample evidence that we have the tools to build a sustainable future -- what we need is political will and leadership
- energy crisis
- conclusion
- leadership means facilitating the emergence of novelty
- often asked: "will there be enough time to save human civilization", "can we have hope for the future"?
- the most inspiring answer to this comes from václav havel
- a meditation on hope itself
- written while imprisoned under the soviet regime
- "The kind of hope that I often think about I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don't. It is a dimension of the soul and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it will turn out."
- the most inspiring answer to this comes from václav havel