647
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_70
Chapter 70
Of Malignant Variables
70.1 A Distinctly Agitated Preoccupation
“And so we grope our disconsolate way into the next century,” writes Gunter Grass
in his Headbirths or The Germans Are Dying Out.
1
“All of a sudden,” writes Sophie
Cabot Black. “It’s not the loneliness/But the disappointed path back.”
2
And finally,
in a similar tenor, the ever unpredictable Emil Cioran suggests that “From so much
agitation, so much dynamism and ado, we escape only by aspiring to the repose of
the inorganic, the peace at the heart of the elements… Each of us is the product of
his past ailments and, if he is anxious, of those to come.”
3
To be thusly anxious is to
participate in the grand spectacle of variables. As conscious beings, we are also the
unwitting objects of cognition, of counterfeit conclusions, surrogacies and proxies
intended to extend our visitation, false positives that signal the fallacies of such
thinking, and a forced resolve that is actually the exasperation of existence which
knows itself to be ultimately doomed
4
(Fig. 70.1).
Science wrestles with poetry. Too many finely honed details and mood swings
become the-thing-in-itself, losing track of the forest. Emerging from the depths of a
chemical equation, like those associated with the complicated mineral group of
Tourmaline [(Na,Ca)(Mg,Li,Al,Fe
2+
,Fe
3+
)3(Al,Mg,Cr) 6 (BO 3 ) 3 Si 6 O 18 (OH,O,F) 4 ]
5
or
the physiological factors enabling the Golden Bamboo Lemur (Hapalemur aureus)
1 Translated by Ralph Manheim, A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
New York and London, 1980, p. 68.
2 From the poem, “Higher Ground,” in her volume, The Misunderstanding of Nature, by Sophie
Cabot Black, Graywolf Press/Saint Paul, 1994, p. 37.
3 E.M.Cioran, The Fall into Time, Translated From The French By Richard Howard, Introduction
By Charles Newman, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1970, p. 128.
4 See The Hypothetical Species: Variables of Human Evolution, by M .C. Tobias and J. G. Morrison,
Springer, New York, 2019.
5 See “The Chemical Formula of Tourmaline,” Minerals.net, https://www.minerals.net/tourmaline_
chemical_formula.aspx#targetText=The%20formula%20of%20the%20Tourmaline,chemical%20
formula%20of%20all%20minerals, Accessed August 24, 2019.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_70
Chapter 70
Of Malignant Variables
70.1 A Distinctly Agitated Preoccupation
“And so we grope our disconsolate way into the next century,” writes Gunter Grass
in his Headbirths or The Germans Are Dying Out.
1
“All of a sudden,” writes Sophie
Cabot Black. “It’s not the loneliness/But the disappointed path back.”
2
And finally,
in a similar tenor, the ever unpredictable Emil Cioran suggests that “From so much
agitation, so much dynamism and ado, we escape only by aspiring to the repose of
the inorganic, the peace at the heart of the elements… Each of us is the product of
his past ailments and, if he is anxious, of those to come.”
3
To be thusly anxious is to
participate in the grand spectacle of variables. As conscious beings, we are also the
unwitting objects of cognition, of counterfeit conclusions, surrogacies and proxies
intended to extend our visitation, false positives that signal the fallacies of such
thinking, and a forced resolve that is actually the exasperation of existence which
knows itself to be ultimately doomed
4
(Fig. 70.1).
Science wrestles with poetry. Too many finely honed details and mood swings
become the-thing-in-itself, losing track of the forest. Emerging from the depths of a
chemical equation, like those associated with the complicated mineral group of
Tourmaline [(Na,Ca)(Mg,Li,Al,Fe
2+
,Fe
3+
)3(Al,Mg,Cr) 6 (BO 3 ) 3 Si 6 O 18 (OH,O,F) 4 ]
5
or
the physiological factors enabling the Golden Bamboo Lemur (Hapalemur aureus)
1 Translated by Ralph Manheim, A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
New York and London, 1980, p. 68.
2 From the poem, “Higher Ground,” in her volume, The Misunderstanding of Nature, by Sophie
Cabot Black, Graywolf Press/Saint Paul, 1994, p. 37.
3 E.M.Cioran, The Fall into Time, Translated From The French By Richard Howard, Introduction
By Charles Newman, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1970, p. 128.
4 See The Hypothetical Species: Variables of Human Evolution, by M .C. Tobias and J. G. Morrison,
Springer, New York, 2019.
5 See “The Chemical Formula of Tourmaline,” Minerals.net, https://www.minerals.net/tourmaline_
chemical_formula.aspx#targetText=The%20formula%20of%20the%20Tourmaline,chemical%20
formula%20of%20all%20minerals, Accessed August 24, 2019.