Read Online Final Fantasy and Philosophy: The Ultimate Walkthrough by William Irwin, Michel S. Beaulieu - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William Irwin, Michel S. Beaulieu
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cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.” The upshot of this remark is that the mechanisms that make up Gaia are not simply causal mechanisms that interact like the parts of a car engine. Rather, Lovelock is claiming that Gaia’s mechanisms work together to actively seek or look for optimum environmental conditions for life. That is, on Earth, physical and chemical processes interoperate to maintain and promote the conditions for life on the planet. This is much like saying that the various parts of your car’s engine tune themselves automatically for best performance and that the parts of your car repair themselves. The car example highlights the fact that the Gaia concept being proposed by Lovelock is organicist, not purely mechanistic. Recall that organicism is the position that parts cannot exist independently of a whole. Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis is an organicist concept because it suggests that every individual living thing is a part of the whole Earth system and cannot exist apart from that system.
Are the Bad Guys Bad but Right?
In The Spirits Within , the hard-nosed General Hein skeptically asks Dr. Cid, “Did you come here to talk about some Gaia theory? To tell us that the planet is alive? That it has a spirit? That’s a fairy tale.” Hein is right. Dr. Cid does seem to think that the planet has a living spirit, and in the absence of clear evidence, we probably should share General Hein’s skepticism. But should we extend that skepticism to the Gaia hypothesis proposed by Lovelock and Margulis? Perhaps not. It isn’t clear that the Gaia hypothesis is anything like Dr. Cid’s conception of Gaia. Unlike Dr. Cid, Lovelock and Margulis don’t suggest either that the Earth has a spirit or that it is alive. They certainly never argue that the Earth has a spirit, and the hypothesis of planetary homeostasis need not commit them to the idea that the Earth is alive. Lovelock and Margulis might remind us that just because living things are good examples of homeostasis, this does not imply that every instance of homeostasis is a living thing.
So despite first appearances, Lovelock and Margulis have a little more in common with Professor Hojo than with Dr. Cid. I am sure that neither has Hojo’s appetite for diabolical schemes and twisted experiments, but like Hojo, Lovelock and Margulis are attempting to understand the physical and chemical processes that maintain planetary homeostasis. Likewise, in his research on Materia, Jenova, and the Cetra, Hojo is attempting to identify underlying physical and chemical causal mechanisms and processes. Admittedly, Hojo does not seem to share Lovelock and Margulis’s organicist approach, but, at the same time, neither is engaged in research that proposes anything like Dr. Cid’s radical holism. Hojo’s approach to science is like that of most real-world scientists. He takes an approach that is mechanistic and reductionistic. Most scientists find reductionism and mechanism attractive because they have been remarkably successful approaches to understanding the natural world.
Yet despite these successes, there have always been philosophers and scientists who have reservations about reductionism and mechanism. In Final Fantasy VII , we see this reservation expressed in the radical holistic conception of the Lifestream as an actual living thing with a soul. But in the sciences and philosophy, reservations, about reductionism and mechanism are not typically expressed with general arguments for the existence of souls or spirits within. It is more common to make the narrow, simpler argument that living processes and cognition are not straightforwardly mechanistic or reducible. That is, to argue that after mechanistic and reductionist explanations are exhausted, there remains something still to explain. For example, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some argued that living biological processes could not be
Are the Bad Guys Bad but Right?
In The Spirits Within , the hard-nosed General Hein skeptically asks Dr. Cid, “Did you come here to talk about some Gaia theory? To tell us that the planet is alive? That it has a spirit? That’s a fairy tale.” Hein is right. Dr. Cid does seem to think that the planet has a living spirit, and in the absence of clear evidence, we probably should share General Hein’s skepticism. But should we extend that skepticism to the Gaia hypothesis proposed by Lovelock and Margulis? Perhaps not. It isn’t clear that the Gaia hypothesis is anything like Dr. Cid’s conception of Gaia. Unlike Dr. Cid, Lovelock and Margulis don’t suggest either that the Earth has a spirit or that it is alive. They certainly never argue that the Earth has a spirit, and the hypothesis of planetary homeostasis need not commit them to the idea that the Earth is alive. Lovelock and Margulis might remind us that just because living things are good examples of homeostasis, this does not imply that every instance of homeostasis is a living thing.
So despite first appearances, Lovelock and Margulis have a little more in common with Professor Hojo than with Dr. Cid. I am sure that neither has Hojo’s appetite for diabolical schemes and twisted experiments, but like Hojo, Lovelock and Margulis are attempting to understand the physical and chemical processes that maintain planetary homeostasis. Likewise, in his research on Materia, Jenova, and the Cetra, Hojo is attempting to identify underlying physical and chemical causal mechanisms and processes. Admittedly, Hojo does not seem to share Lovelock and Margulis’s organicist approach, but, at the same time, neither is engaged in research that proposes anything like Dr. Cid’s radical holism. Hojo’s approach to science is like that of most real-world scientists. He takes an approach that is mechanistic and reductionistic. Most scientists find reductionism and mechanism attractive because they have been remarkably successful approaches to understanding the natural world.
Yet despite these successes, there have always been philosophers and scientists who have reservations about reductionism and mechanism. In Final Fantasy VII , we see this reservation expressed in the radical holistic conception of the Lifestream as an actual living thing with a soul. But in the sciences and philosophy, reservations, about reductionism and mechanism are not typically expressed with general arguments for the existence of souls or spirits within. It is more common to make the narrow, simpler argument that living processes and cognition are not straightforwardly mechanistic or reducible. That is, to argue that after mechanistic and reductionist explanations are exhausted, there remains something still to explain. For example, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some argued that living biological processes could not be
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