Some interesting quotes to think about, on top of my nature photos.
Dr. Michael Levin
Quotes to think about #7
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17 responses to “Quotes to think about #7”
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Awesome series of photos, always appreciate Godzilla, thought provoking quotes, thank you for sharing Mike, cheers
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The photos with the interesting quotes provide insight into what motivates so many of us to study life in its array of beautiful and diverse forms. Thank you for sharing your artistry. It enriches and expands the imagination.
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Love these words. Need to turn all of this into music
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And I thought it was a stegosaurus… Wonderful quotes. Thank you.
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This is cool. This could be an interesting direction for your presentation decks. It has that keynote feel – great backdrops for YouTube presentations etc. thanks for all your content – your platonic push has had a major influence on my work.
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I find the Freud quote a little slippery, and wonder if you might be able to help me make sense of it.
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So, I’m no Freud expert, but I think he’s talking about the narcissistic character of newborns – they are all about “me” and have no capacity to care about anyone else’s needs. He’s saying that cancer cells, which do have some important embryo-like properties, also share this aspect – they are selfish, not caring about the rest of the organism, not knowing that their selfishness won’t actually solve their needs.
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In one of your talks, Micheal, you characterize cancer cells as narcissistic in the sense that they see everything outside themselves as outside and only their own boundary as inside— so nothing outside actually matters to them. A human body does the same thing, only it draws its boundaries around its own edges.
This more than metaphor of what is coded as inside and outside is a powerful one: the idea that humans have drawn these “narcissistic” boundaries— of self, community, belief system, nation-state — leading to what can easily be characterized human ideological cancers…
I know this is not the work you are doing but it’s impossible not to see the links. So many links to Buddhist thought as well (being careful not to understand Buddhist thought as exclusive 🙂
Pondering how one might best find inoculations for ideological cancers (belief in an inherent self?)? As beings limited in time, space and consciousness/awareness/intelligence, is it even possible??
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Indeed many links to Buddhist thought:
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24/5/710
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37394111/
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Thank you for posting professor, lovely pictures. And each quote is the beginning, middle and end of an eternal story. As Planck and others knew so well.
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Made a worm glyph inspired by the Whitehead quote –
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19f0Y22R7lqf3SM0Zb4kBRp7D8MKt9dOX/view?usp=sharing
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Thank you for this ‘gift’ this morning!
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What do you think about Panpsychism?
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Michael I really needed some time to get through this very personal work of yours and appreciate the depth of some of your favorite quotes.
I first heard from you that all binary distinctions must fall short and to me the Leibniz quote is utmost intruiging in this context ( could’nt find the original citation so far), almost like a philosophical conjecture that the universe must in fact be one if there are no boundaries anywhere: Not between inside and outside, nor between mind and body, life and death, dead matter and concious organisms, you, me and platonic space. Infinity all over the place and it appears to be selfconcious, pure transendence, likely not provable in a formal sense (Goedel and self reference) yet open to be experienced by those who connect the dots and quiet the wandering mind. -
Hello Michael,
From whence the Freud quotation?
Very best wishes,
Aidan
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Daniel Craig sent it to me: page 50 of a publication called ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ (https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_Beyond_P_P.pdf).
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Thank you very much, Michael.
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