Sunday, December 6, 2009

Natural vs. Artificial

From Abstruse Goose (keep scrolling; it's a long one):

I absolutely agree; the point of differentiation is fairly weak. A hand-woven blanket is no less natural than honey; both are made by naturally occurring organisms using materials gathered from their environment. I'm not very well read on the honey-making process, so I don't even know which is more complex. The only real difference I can see is humans make intermediate objects; we make machines that build other machines that make the blankets. I guess if we find bees building wax golems we'll have to reevaluate.

On my way to D.C.; take care of the 'net until I get back.

1 comment:

  1. Buckminister Fuller used to regect the word "artificial". If you can make it, he said, it's not artificial. Or maybe it was Linus Pauling.

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