Better thinking: about technology, organisms

Better thinking: about technology, organisms

The quality of our thinking is a central concern of anthroposophy. Steve Talbott has had a distinguished career within the technology world, bringing attention to the ways we think. His newsletter NetFuture deals with "Science, Technology, and Human Responsibility." Some years ago he joined forces with the Nature Institute, and as he says in his latest issue, "virtually all my efforts are currently focused on the project I have entitled, 'What Do Organisms Mean? Toward a Biology Worthy of Life.'" In 2008 Steve and his Nature Institute colleague Craig Holdrege published an outstanding study, Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering. Craig now has a new book out, Thinking Like a Plant: A Living Science for Life. You can read an except, "Rooted in the World," or order online. As epigraph to "Rooted in the World" Craig has placed these lines from Schiller: Do you seek the highest, the greatest? The plant can be your teacher: what it is without volition you can be willfully—that’s it! Out in the mountains, the seed of a pine tree may fall into a crack in a bare rock face. With a little airborne soil and moisture, it can germinate, grow and split the rock. Something containing and oppressive is being built in our world; but individuals willing to be vilified and jailed are thinking, willfully, in a manner somewhat like those pine seeds.