Bacteria, fungus, whale, sequoia - we do not know any life of which we cannot say that it emits information, receives it, stores it and processes it. For universal rules so incontrovertible that, by them, we are tempted to define life but we are unable to do so, because of the following countexamples. Crystal and indeed rock, sea, planet, star, galaxy–we know no inert thing of which we cannot say that it emits, receives, stores and processes information. Four universal rules, so uniform that we are tempted to define anything in the world by them but are unable to do so because of the following counterexamples. Individuals but also families, farms, villages, cities and nations–we do not know any human, alone or in groups, of whom we cannot say that they emit, receive, store and process information.
Michel Serres, Information and Thinking, 2017 # 10
Rocks, cities and mushrooms - Information flows
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- But who really owns land and nature? Humans have no more self-evident rights than grass, trees, and squirrels, not to speak of fungi and bacteria. Property, the conceit that state-backed human social relations give us absolute rights over things, does not go far in the realms of land and nature, wh …
What do you think?
What if certain capacities we used to attribute solely to humans are much more universal than we thought?
What does it mean if receiving and sending information is not restricted to humans?
How should we broaden our conception of knowledge and what could be the gain in it?
of our Imagination
