"alien"/alternate perspectives (science & models)

[James N Rose <***>]

I used a biological scenario at the beginning
of my opus "Understanding the Integral Universe"
that seems appropriate to mention herenow.

It called into question paradigms & models & extant
information sets.  Once a thought space of ideas
gets established, the first thing to recognize about
that is that it emerged for utilitarian purpose and
satisfaction of all four Aristotelian causes ... within
the scope of information and knowledge and application
at hand.

In otherwords .. you can't fault a system for being what
it is simply because you have added information that
such a system uner observation might not have had ; or, 
if it was there, that it went unrecognized.

Alternatively, there is no guarantee that an external
analysis - any exo-analysis - is superior to in-vivo capacities.

My example was this analogy to human exo-examinations/pronouncements
proceedure and thought efforts:


Suppose you were a visitor to this planet 66 million years ago -
a moment in time before the eradictation of dinosaurs from the
earth in their dominant forms of that era.  You are an exo-biologist
studying this novel world with all its indiginous flora & fauna.

You classify and evaluate all its dominant species and note the immense
geologic longevity they exhibit.  Would your analysis -ever- lead you
to conclude that the life forms and extant gaia of the planet - everything
major that was in front of your eyes and experience - was as -nothing-
compared to the genetic potential present inside small 'insignificant'
rodent creatures hiding underground and in the underbrush?

Could you project with any 'scientific' factuality the possibility
that the dominant fauna would give way and that higher potentia
existed in currently 'unimportant' and unuseful species?

Could you have then ... could any person alive today .. have the
foresight and scope of mind to realize that no extant dis-regard 
of 'the insignificant' is a the highest and best worldview?

We cavalierly throw into extinction life forms that 'aren't important
to our life-view or immediate use'.  We value immediate survival and
living style in lieu of understanding that any model, every model,
is egoistically selfish and that at most we can take a stand 
of generosity toward life and species that made be important
in some precious long distant future whenwhere we may or may not be
important any more.  Only, such future or futures will never have
a chance to 'become' if we eradicate their antecedents, their 
predecessors.

How many 'final causes' co-exist in unrecognized silence?  How many 
opportunities fall to the whim of immediate selfishness?  (Even as
all immediate integrities are worthy to some degree in their own 
right.)

Generalizing about models is important, as long as you don't forget
that second-order analysis.  It's just as, if not more, important.

Jamie