2 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2022
    1. Mechanical and vitalist systems existed concurrently, and although it might seem easy to distinguish them,when we come to look at most specific characters and their thought, the distinctions appear blurred

      Mechanical philosophy and vitalism were popular and co-existed on a non-mutually exclusive spectrum in the seventeenth century.

      Mechanical philosophy is a philosophy of nature which arose broadly in the 17th century and sought to explain all natural phenomenon in terms of matter and motion without relying on "action at a distance" or the idea of a cause and effect that occurred without any physical contact or direct motivation.

      René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, and Marin Mersenne all held mechanistic viewpoints.

      See also: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_philosophy

      Link to: - spooky action at a distance (quantum mechanics)

  2. Jul 2021
    1. To the extentthat people accommodate themselves to the faceless inflexibility ofplatforms, they will become less and less capable of seeing thevirtues of institutions, on any scale. One consequence of thataccommodation will be an increasing impatience withrepresentative democracy, and an accompanying desire to replacepolitical institutions with platform-based decision making:referendums and plebiscites, conducted at as high a level as possible(national, or in the case of the European Union, transnational).Among other things, these trends will bring, in turn, theexploitation of communities and natural resources by people whowill never see or know anything about what they are exploiting. !escope of local action will therefore be diminished, and will comeunder increasing threat of what we might call, borrowing a phrasefrom Einstein, spooky action at a distance.

      This fits in line with my thesis to make corporations and especially corporate executives and owners be local, so that they can see the effect that their decisions are having.