At the 1998 conference on technology and lifestyle, Galaxy Hitchhiker Guide Author Douglas Adams once proposed the concept of a sensory puddle. “I woke up one morning and said, “This is a fun world where I found myself – a funny hole where I notice myself – do I think I’m rather neatly fit?” “No matter how many intelligences it may have somehow achieved, this puddle doesn’t recognize that its shape was determined by its environment, nor does it seem to recognize just the number of factors whose very existence is contingent. When you think about it, this is a world of puddles, and the rest of us just live in it.
Of course, the rest of us are in the same situation. in The above 70 minute big videoevolutionary developmental biologist Sean B. Carroll Starting with a variety of factors that happened to converge to enable complex life on this planet, we look at our existence on Earth. “For our species to exist, a huge number of things had to be done right, and for each of us to exist individually,” he says.
One important event was the impact of an asteroid that “resets” life on Earth 66 million years ago, causing the planet’s gentle cooling. Another event was a structural movement that pushed together what we know as the Asian and Indian subcontinents. The consequences of these and other unlikely outbreaks were the “biosphere” where we and all other extant species live today.
What do you and I especially do? As Carol says here and in his book, both of us A series of lucky events: Planets, life, and your coincidenceswe should feel guaranteed. In human reproduction, two parents come together and say, “That lucky sperm can make it and combine it with that egg in that moment. Our own existence can be difficult to internalize, like Adams’ sensory puddles, as our own existence is everything we know to date. Even “just as the sun rises into the sky, the air gets hotter, and gradually the puddles become smaller and smaller,” “dang desperately at the notion that everything is okay, as this world was meant to have him.” The story has a lesson for mankind, something that hasn’t become so urgent in the last 27 years.
Related content:
Discover Space Journey, a multimedia project that explores the position of humanity in the epic history of the universe
The History of the Earth (all 4.5 billion years) 1 hour: 1 million years per second covered
Big History: David Christian covers 13.7 billion years of history in 18 minutes
Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth Commander Chris Hadfield: Viral Book Trailer
Who is there?: Orson Welles tells a documentary asking if there is extraterrestrial life in space (1975)
Carl Sagan presents mini-courses on Earth, Mars, and what goes beyond our solar system: For children and adults (1977)
Based in SeoulColinmarshallWrite and broadcasting stationTS about cities, languages, and culture. His projects include the Substack Newsletter Books about citiesAnd the bookThe Stateless City: Walking through 21st century Los Angeles.Follow him on social networks previously known as Twitter@colinmarshall.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
