"...you don't need hard radiation for mutation to occur; thermal quantum processes will do the same less rapidly." (p. 73)
I didn't know that. But it figures. Change is constant even if slow.
Argens tells the Ai Chun that what thinking animals have in common is more important than any differences in bodily shape. Aristotle: "Man is a rational animal." English law: "Murder is the unlawful killing of a reasonable creature..." (Our laws already protect aliens.)
The Ai Chun disagree. They have existed unchanged with no surviving biological enemies in an apparently unchanging world for over a billion years. They build and stockbreed and have even bred one bipedal species for intelligence. Finally, believing in reincarnation, they think that they themselves had created the whole universe in an earlier life. They do not remember why they had created Yonderfolk or Earthmen but their entire world-view - and self-view - is threatened by any claim either to exist independently of them or to have originated in a vaster and more complicated universe. In particular, the galaxy, seen only at night, is too bright for their eyesight and therefore is their equivalent of the Devil. I detect a contradiction here but world-views of this kind do generate contradictions.
The Ai Chun remind me of the Party in 1984, wielding absolute power in their own domain and denying anything external to themselves.
3 comments:
Arguments which make sense to -you- are utterly alien to those with a different set of preconceptions.
We each have to examine our own preconceptions. That is what philosophy is about. One of my fellow philosophy graduate students at Lancaster University was a theologically conservative Presbyterian from Belfast who followed his Master's degree with theological training and went into the Ministry. (In fact, are you reading this, Alan?) I once said to him, "There are Christians with whom dialogue is impossible." He replied, "I know." Alan and I were philosophers. Some of us co-religionists are not.
When I was doing some later professional training, a fellow student was asking me some challenging questions. I began to respond, "There are assumptions in what you are saying..." He interrupted with "But there are assumptions in what you are saying!" and clearly thought that that was a sufficient response. I had to continue, "But I am trying to get at the assumptions to look at them..."
"...you don't need hard radiation for mutation to occur; thermal quantum processes will do the same less rapidly."
See also 'Reactive oxygen species'. These damage DNA & RNA, and are produced by both ionizing radiation and as a byproduct of oxygen metabolism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_oxygen_species
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