3. In making the distinctions between physical, biological, and cultural evolution, I do not mean to deny their physical basis, but rather to imply that the three possible endpoints of cosmic evolution are physical, biological, and cultural…11. L. J. Henderson, The Fitness of the Environment (New York: MacMillan Company, 1913), reprinted with an Introduction by Harvard biologist George Wald (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1970), p. 312. The complexity of Henderson’s ideas on the…
John C. Greene
historian · 2 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
John C. Greene appears as a theorist of evolutionary frameworks who distinguished between physical, biological, and cultural evolution as discrete yet physically grounded endpoints of cosmic development. He's invoked here to scaffold arguments about how systems evolve across different organizational registers—a distinction that matters for thinking about machine learning and AI as forms of cultural evolution operating through biological substrates. The reference is brief and conceptual rather than extensively elaborated, suggesting Greene provides foundational terminology for distinguishing the domains the seminar is trying to hold together.
Mentioned in 1 reading
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Bernard Lightman 1Camille Flammarion 1Herbert Spencer 1J. R. Moore 1James Strick 1John Fiske 1Michael J. Crowe 1Richard Anthony Proctor 1Robert Stawell Ball 1Simon Schaffer 1Carl Sagan 1Eric Chaisson 1Harlow Shapley 1Hugh Odishaw 1John Billingham 1John Wilson 1Joshua Lederberg 1Lloyd V. Berkner 1Otto Struve 1Peter J. Bowler 1