689
or none that can be proved, by theorems that cannot exist in the void and that does
not have a name. Laws of thermodynamics are simply inconsequential when it
comes to the imagination of any organism, including human.
Yet, so repeatedly removed from any reality, the vague vagueness is somehow
subject, like substantiated instinct, to the selective pressure of a pressure with no
name, no reality, no identity whatsoever. These empty gasps are on to something,
and so we might adduce without prejudice or hope the fact of selection favoring
vagueness, selection upon which there is wide agreement that obeys no common
ground, no collective assertion, only a solitudal consensus unto itself. No reverberation in the entire Universe—though with laws of energy and causality, mirrors and
rockets, and mathematical chimeras we believe we know much of that Cosmos—
and still a vague sense of the vague. In terms of natural selection, we might think of
Robinson Crusoe as a clear field experiment. To what extent has Daniel Dafoe’s
creation (first published on April 25, 1719, and likely modeled after Scottish castaway Alexander Selkirk’s time on the island of Más a Tierra) changed over the
course of 28 years in random exile, if at all? Taking into fullest account all the variables? (Fig. 75.2).
75.2 Kin Altruistic Superorganisms
It is by this mystery that, perhaps, something, some thing, can occur. We are free to
imagine what it is, even while freedom itself, free will, freedom to relate to oneself,
remains a contested realm more etymology than reality (like the word sustainability, from the seventeenth-century bearable), to its disambiguated iterations in such
instances as the 2019 Urgenda v. The Netherlands Dutch Supreme Court decision
regarding a near immediate, mandated reduction of global greenhouse gasses by
25% throughout the Netherlands;
2
the fact that Burlington, Vermont, has for several
years been powered entirely by renewable energy sources; or an equally far- reaching
interpretive concept, instinct with biological implications, of ecological suicide,
most notably as deciphered in a range of microbial self-destructions now believed
to involve collective consciousness within kin altruistic superorganisms.
3
This latter catalyst, whether in Paenibacillus sp. or Homo sapiens, challenges
and elucidates Darwin’s most fundamental statements pertaining to natural selection, as described in Chap. IV of his The Origin of Species: “Therefore, during the
modification of the descendants of any one species, and during the incessant struggle
of all species to increase in numbers, the more diversified the descendants become,
the better will be their chance of success in the battle for life”.
4
2 See https://www.urgenda.nl/en/themas/climate-case/Accessed December 24, 2019.
3 See “Ecological suicide in microbes,” by Christoph Ratzke, Jonas Denk and Jeff Gore, Nat Ecol
Evol 2, 867–872 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0535-1, 16 April 2018.
4 Sixth Edition, John Murray, London, 1886, p. 103.
75.2 Kin Altruistic Superorganisms
or none that can be proved, by theorems that cannot exist in the void and that does
not have a name. Laws of thermodynamics are simply inconsequential when it
comes to the imagination of any organism, including human.
Yet, so repeatedly removed from any reality, the vague vagueness is somehow
subject, like substantiated instinct, to the selective pressure of a pressure with no
name, no reality, no identity whatsoever. These empty gasps are on to something,
and so we might adduce without prejudice or hope the fact of selection favoring
vagueness, selection upon which there is wide agreement that obeys no common
ground, no collective assertion, only a solitudal consensus unto itself. No reverberation in the entire Universe—though with laws of energy and causality, mirrors and
rockets, and mathematical chimeras we believe we know much of that Cosmos—
and still a vague sense of the vague. In terms of natural selection, we might think of
Robinson Crusoe as a clear field experiment. To what extent has Daniel Dafoe’s
creation (first published on April 25, 1719, and likely modeled after Scottish castaway Alexander Selkirk’s time on the island of Más a Tierra) changed over the
course of 28 years in random exile, if at all? Taking into fullest account all the variables? (Fig. 75.2).
75.2 Kin Altruistic Superorganisms
It is by this mystery that, perhaps, something, some thing, can occur. We are free to
imagine what it is, even while freedom itself, free will, freedom to relate to oneself,
remains a contested realm more etymology than reality (like the word sustainability, from the seventeenth-century bearable), to its disambiguated iterations in such
instances as the 2019 Urgenda v. The Netherlands Dutch Supreme Court decision
regarding a near immediate, mandated reduction of global greenhouse gasses by
25% throughout the Netherlands;
2
the fact that Burlington, Vermont, has for several
years been powered entirely by renewable energy sources; or an equally far- reaching
interpretive concept, instinct with biological implications, of ecological suicide,
most notably as deciphered in a range of microbial self-destructions now believed
to involve collective consciousness within kin altruistic superorganisms.
3
This latter catalyst, whether in Paenibacillus sp. or Homo sapiens, challenges
and elucidates Darwin’s most fundamental statements pertaining to natural selection, as described in Chap. IV of his The Origin of Species: “Therefore, during the
modification of the descendants of any one species, and during the incessant struggle
of all species to increase in numbers, the more diversified the descendants become,
the better will be their chance of success in the battle for life”.
4
2 See https://www.urgenda.nl/en/themas/climate-case/Accessed December 24, 2019.
3 See “Ecological suicide in microbes,” by Christoph Ratzke, Jonas Denk and Jeff Gore, Nat Ecol
Evol 2, 867–872 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0535-1, 16 April 2018.
4 Sixth Edition, John Murray, London, 1886, p. 103.
75.2 Kin Altruistic Superorganisms