Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World by Timothy Morton is a book of quasi-popular philosophy (hope you’ve at least skimmed your Heidegger and Kant) about the very big things that have come to dominate human existence: cancer, global warming, radionuclides, petrochemicals. Morton is the head of the English department at Rice University and a leader in the field of object-oriented ontology, affectionately known as OOO, a relatively recent philosophical movement that declares the human being just one thing among many things. Human consciousness, for OOO true believers, isn’t all that special, even if we are a thing that can write epic poems, perform Bach concertos, and run a mean pick-and-roll.
> We have long known that the world is beyond our control; Morton says that it is now beyond even our understanding. What’s worse, we made it that way by playing Prometheus for the last couple of centuries, estranging us from the ground beneath our feet
Morton writes that the “more data we have about lifeforms, the more we realize we can never truly know them.” We have sequenced the human genome, have cloned dogs, pigs, and even an ibex. But the basic stuff of life remains a mystery, as it always will. A tsunami comes, kills thousands. Sitting is the new smoking, they cry.
just another concession speech from modern science.
they went down the test tube of human knowledge.
atleast they are starting to become aware,
there is alot outside the UMWELT…
(w)onderdonk(ey)