chemistry week 11

Would you agree that "to live is to know"?
I think it depends on the definition of knowing. We know things in our body that we don't know in our conscious mind. So in that way, yes, I would agree with Maturana and Varela that to live is to know. But I certainly don't think that this knowing is articulated clearly in our conscious mind. Cognition can be so subtle and seems to be so intricately entwined with the environment that we don't even know it is a form of cognition. This makes me think, by a rather circuitous route, of the evolution of dogs. We think they are serving us, but really we are serving them - they are a "social parasite". We do not "know" this, but we act accordingly. See this link for more information about the evolution of dogs: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/beta/evolution/truth-about-dogs.html

Memory and magic- how might you view things differently now?
I will certainly pay better attention at the next magic show I attend. The research on magic and memory and the human brain perhaps some relevance in the matter of "to live is to know". When we watch a magic trick we think one thing is happening but in actuality a completely different outcome than expected. As the article says, psychologists are using this information to see how our minds interpret the world around us. "Magicians are manipulating your consciousness. They are showing you something impossible... They're getting you to construct a narrative, which simply isn't true". So this makes me wonder, then, how living can be knowing. It seems plausible that living systems are constantly in the process of becoming themselves byt knowing the environment which, in turn, structures our mind. But if the environment can so deeply deceive us, how are we to know anything. We are at the mercy of our mind which doesn't necessarily interpret the environment "correctly". If this is the case, do we know anything?