832
96.3 Two Embedded and Dialectical Paradigms
Yet, taken collectively amid the vast arrays of other organisms, we alone are scissored between two cultural paradigms formulated in very specific historic tapestries.
The first, the 230-foot long Bayeux,
13
70 scenes of conflict and terror embroidered
just a few years after the exploits of Norman the Conqueror (1064–1066); invaders,
excommunication, the mixed motives of the papacy, and the whole orchestra of violence. Versus that of the six woven tapestries from Flanders created by commission
of Antoine II Le Viste (1470–1534), friend of Charles VII, to celebrate the intoxicating elixir of love and the senses, as sensuously articulated in the mille-fleurs
style, between “La Dame” and a tranquil lion and devoted unicorn, both famously
at her side. (See the display in the Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris.)
Consciousness between species understands such works of art and knows their
abiding truths. How is it that we are adamantly left out of the equation, despite our
species having produced the individuals who made the art?
Our picture of such divisive reality, a berserker picture of evolution, taxonomy,
and phylogenetics, may not simply be a complication of consciousness; a flaw in the
mathematical space harboring, somewhere, the conscience, even as the picture postcards would all deny mayhem in favor of the Mona Lisa’s smile. Somehow unmiraculously, we perpetually fail to favor one constant over the other. While bad news
punctuates headlines, leaving the soft murmur of the peaceful largely unheralded,
the tallies of destruction will never outweigh the totality of quiet footprints of all
those who remained pacifist bystanders beside the fury. The ultimate abassadors of
this mode-of-being are trees (Fig. 96.1).
96.4 A Different Kind of Intelligence
Think of the Class Oligohymenophorea, Phylum Ciliophora, those lovely unicellular
ciliates, known as paramecia. With no true nervous system, they nonetheless learn
and build upon their powerful lessons. Scientific methods tell us this, but curious individuals push such enquiries, ultimately not for sadistic purpose, but out of no less a
love than that connecting that woven Lady and her two companions. Herein, the great
riddle. The paramecia show qualities of intelligent control typically associated with
other animals that only accomplish such output by neural assembly. In the singlecelled paramecia, according to Roger Penrose, are centrioles and gathering microtubules which, to the human senses, seem almost miraculous in their engineering
versatility. Their existence is dominated by inexorabilities that involve geometrical
cytoskeletal orientations, for example, Fibonacci sequencing for processing information akin to the same numerically delineated structures that do so in large mammals.
14
13 See https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/
14 See “The Shadows of the Mind,” by Roger Penrose, http://community.fortunecity.ws/emachines/
96 The Phylogenetic Conundrum
96.3 Two Embedded and Dialectical Paradigms
Yet, taken collectively amid the vast arrays of other organisms, we alone are scissored between two cultural paradigms formulated in very specific historic tapestries.
The first, the 230-foot long Bayeux,
13
70 scenes of conflict and terror embroidered
just a few years after the exploits of Norman the Conqueror (1064–1066); invaders,
excommunication, the mixed motives of the papacy, and the whole orchestra of violence. Versus that of the six woven tapestries from Flanders created by commission
of Antoine II Le Viste (1470–1534), friend of Charles VII, to celebrate the intoxicating elixir of love and the senses, as sensuously articulated in the mille-fleurs
style, between “La Dame” and a tranquil lion and devoted unicorn, both famously
at her side. (See the display in the Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris.)
Consciousness between species understands such works of art and knows their
abiding truths. How is it that we are adamantly left out of the equation, despite our
species having produced the individuals who made the art?
Our picture of such divisive reality, a berserker picture of evolution, taxonomy,
and phylogenetics, may not simply be a complication of consciousness; a flaw in the
mathematical space harboring, somewhere, the conscience, even as the picture postcards would all deny mayhem in favor of the Mona Lisa’s smile. Somehow unmiraculously, we perpetually fail to favor one constant over the other. While bad news
punctuates headlines, leaving the soft murmur of the peaceful largely unheralded,
the tallies of destruction will never outweigh the totality of quiet footprints of all
those who remained pacifist bystanders beside the fury. The ultimate abassadors of
this mode-of-being are trees (Fig. 96.1).
96.4 A Different Kind of Intelligence
Think of the Class Oligohymenophorea, Phylum Ciliophora, those lovely unicellular
ciliates, known as paramecia. With no true nervous system, they nonetheless learn
and build upon their powerful lessons. Scientific methods tell us this, but curious individuals push such enquiries, ultimately not for sadistic purpose, but out of no less a
love than that connecting that woven Lady and her two companions. Herein, the great
riddle. The paramecia show qualities of intelligent control typically associated with
other animals that only accomplish such output by neural assembly. In the singlecelled paramecia, according to Roger Penrose, are centrioles and gathering microtubules which, to the human senses, seem almost miraculous in their engineering
versatility. Their existence is dominated by inexorabilities that involve geometrical
cytoskeletal orientations, for example, Fibonacci sequencing for processing information akin to the same numerically delineated structures that do so in large mammals.
14
13 See https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/
14 See “The Shadows of the Mind,” by Roger Penrose, http://community.fortunecity.ws/emachines/
96 The Phylogenetic Conundrum