Tito wrote:-
Quote:
|
Ayn Rand often said that people would start calling her outdated after she died.
|
Outdated possibly yes –but criticism of her views were expressed while she was alive.
&
Quote:
|
The implications of global warming don't alter logical philosophy.
|
You are falsely assuming that ‘logical philosophy’ is immutably correct.
As for :-
Quote:
:
Originally Posted by Ayn Rand
In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. From the most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture things; his well-being depends on his success at production. The lowest human tribe cannot survive without that alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that fire was the property of the gods which Prometheus brought to man. The ecologists are the new vultures swarming to extinguish that fire."
|
What a load of W & P. Full of theistic epistemology of which the logical foundation has been shown to be highly flawed.
I prefer a different philosophical prospective :-
Humanity evolved the ability to use tools, including fire, and which enabled it to survive in ecological niches where almost physiologically identical species (e.g. other great apes), could not. A classic example of adaptive evolution. However, as with all newly evolved species, they can become dependent on the factor(s) which gave them that evolutionary advantage in the first place. Particularly so if the species doesn’t evolve further to become independent of those initial factors i.e. stagnate & die. When that dependency is discovered to be threatening to the species survival in any way, (for example by lack of availability, or 'overgrazing' aka over use of resources), the probable outcome is distinctly un-advantageous in evolutionary terms. Cf the Dodo effect.
So it is with fire in humanity’s case. It has been discovered that the over-use of fire now threatens the survival of the species – so therefore humanity, having the intelligence to understand all of the implications of using tools (cf, spears / guns / nuclear rockets) – needs now to ‘adapt’ (further), to survive.
Humanity and evolutionary successors will always be dependent on additional 'energy' sources, but we supposedly have the intelligence to realise that (well some of us have).