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“When the pancreas fails to produce insulin, there is no shame in taking synthetic insulin to compensate for its lost function. Many people do not feel the same way about regulating mood with antidepressants (for reasons that appear quite distinct from any concern about potential side effects). If this bias has diminished in recent years, it has been because of an increased appreciation of the brain as a physical organ.”
― The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
― The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
“I am trying to stress a point which they do not sufficiently emphasize, or tend to overlook altogether-namely, that the organism is not a mosaic aggregate of elementary physico-chemical processes, but a hierarchy in which each member, from the sub-cellular level upward, is a closely integrated structure, equipped with self-regulatory devices, and enjoys an advanced form of self-government.”
― The Ghost in the Machine
― The Ghost in the Machine
“Wherever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically structured, for the simple reason that without such structuring of complex systems into sub-assemblies, there could be no order and stability-except the order of a dead universr filled with a uniformly distributed gas.”
― The Ghost in the Machine
― The Ghost in the Machine
“Hierarchies are 'dissectible' into their constituent branches, on which the holons form the 'nodes'. The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises is called its 'depth', and the number of holons on any given level its 'span'.”
― The Ghost in the Machine
― The Ghost in the Machine
“But by meditation I do not mean a practice or exercise undertaken as a preparation for something, as a means to some future end, or as a discipline in which one is concerned with progress. A better word may be "contemplation" or even "centering," for what I mean is a slowing down of time, of mental hurry, and an allowing of one's attention to rest in the present—so coming to the unseeking observation, not of what should be, but of what is.”
― The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
― The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
Giannis’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Giannis’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
455 books
|
188 friends
1,381 books
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173 friends
224 books
|
71 friends
1,260 books
|
88 friends
55 books
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55 friends
69 books
|
11 friends
16 books
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13 friends
18 books
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1 friend
More friends…
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