Opus 21: Descriptive Music for the Lower Kinsey Epoch of the Atomic Age, a Concerto for a One-man Band, Six Arias for Soap Operas, Fugues, Anthems & BarrelhouseWylie, Philip
Philosophy
Opus 21: Descriptive Music for the Lower Kinsey Epoch of the Atomic Age, a Concerto for a One-man Band, Six Arias for Soap Operas, Fugues, Anthems & Barrelhouse
Wylie, Philip
Authors -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Patients -- Fiction; Philosophy -- Fiction
"The cause, the pattern, the existence of it in animals and man,
the physical laws and forms of the universe, and the instincts of
living things that match those laws and forms. What's the difference
between the laws of instinct--the great drives of life taken with
the opposed drives that balance them and the harmony possible in a
person who understands these--and other laws? The attraction and
repulsion of electrical energy, for instance? We do not regard _them_
as 'mutually exclusive.' What are you going to say about a question
like Schrodinger's? He shows that one fragment of one atom hitting
another atom in a gene will change the nature of the resulting being.
I'd add that the instincts may change, too. Schrodinger shows you that
what we know of energy lies at the heart of what we know of form. You
can also see that form lies at the heart of what we know of behavior
and of consciousness. When they understand the laws of the energy in
atoms--they'll probably have a brand-new parallel, like that of other
natural laws, for instinctual laws. They may even have a potential new
insight into instinct. For how can anybody who notices the perfect
instinctual pattern that corresponds with every living form, and who
sees these forms evolving in awareness down the aeons, doubt that the
universe has purpose or wonder what its purpose is? Unfortunately, in
this putrid day and age, new discoveries in many fields are military
secrets--so we, the people, won't be told them."
"You sound extremely bitter about that."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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