It's not really my idea, but I had come to this conclusion maybe 1-2 years ago on my own. He calls what I am talking about the Gaia Hypothesis (1). He uses empathy as his primary hypothesizing system, again something I've been doing now for a while and I wrote an essay on the matter which is in the process of publication. Empathy here has a different connotation than you might be thinking. It is almost synonymous with imagination. Empathy could mean that you are pretending to be an influenza virus in a respiratory droplet and are watching as the host sneezes you out and you land on a different host's shoulder. It could also mean, as is the case with the Gaia, that you are the Earth and operating like a cell or machine, have various functions of homeostasis (among which is humans but other things are included). So empathy here is imagination, not pretending to be someone else as it is normally utilized. This is interesting to think about. Empathy clearly has survival advantage, but it can be used in these other ways which give rise to entire branches of science. Essentially though, empathy is best suited for what it evolved to do, predict the actions of other individuals. How useful could it possibly be when applied to what appears to be completely different situations? And is empathy the seed of imagination/creativity? I'll see what some of my neurology and neuroscience books say, but from what I remember of them, this question is not addressed.
1) Lovelock, J.E. (1965). "A physical basis for life detection experiments". Nature 207 (7): 568–570. doi:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
First I think we need to define “empathy”. If empathy is “synonymous with imagination” than the question whether empathy is the “seed of imagination” is logically unsound (i.e., is imagination the seed of imagination?). This may seem facetious, but it will honestly help me answer your questions better.
ReplyDeleteAlso, we may need to tease out the difference between using empathy/imagination to manipulate other (imagining how they operate to take advantage) versus using empathy/imagination to facilitate cooperation.
It can be used for any end, good or bad. I didn't proofread this before I posted; empathy is not synonymous with imagination but it may be the fore-father to imagination. I believe imagination may have evolved from empathy (empathy here taking on the emotional connotation which is probably more familiar to you and others).
ReplyDeleteI really just posted this to show that this guy has a neat way of conducting his science.