Archive for September, 2020

Rot and decay and compost bring us back to the beginning of living things through the end of living things (and to fungus too). The continuity of nature again isn’t harmonious and large chunks of nature (like the fungal) were long treated as not worthy of study or care. Merlin Sheldrake’s new book goes into […]


Moynihan’s book sets out to be a hypergeneaology. Classical genealogy questions the fundamental structures of human history that claim to be the result of rational arguments – ‘capitalism is widespread and robust because it works so well’ (Marx says no) – ‘western civilization is so advanced because we have mastered our own minds (Freud says […]


There’s a particularly weird but important episode in the history of biology which involves the picture above. If I could have been in massia in person the idea would have been to do some paper crafts to try and make this comparison (between a vertebrate and an invertebrate easily to visualize). In 1830, spurred on […]


Why dimensionality of nature? Nature (in my head anyways) is a continuous field of forces (gravitational, chemical, biological, electrical etc). In spirit, this is not so far off from the over used hippy/ecological mantra – ‘everything is connected.’ But the difference is the emphasis on the word ‘thing.’ I think there are limits to thinking […]


There was a wonderful moment where the astronomer Carl Sagan said “if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.” The joke of course being that nothing made from scratch (made without assistance) is really made from nothing, but that all forms of making (or baking) involve stuff […]