The 1973 television series, The Ascent of Man, by the British mathematician and science historian, Jacob Bronowski, is approaching its 50th anniversary. Its intelligent commentary on the evolution of science in human civilization is still relevant today. However, events in the last few years have imbued Bronowski’s erudite praise of our scientific accomplishments with an unsettling irony.
Continue reading The Quadra Project: The Descent of ManTag Archives: Sixth Extinction
The Quadra Project: Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity is the ability of the human brain to adapt to new kinds of learning, a subject studied by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University. In an interview with Clare Wilson in New Scientist magazine (15 May 2021), he makes the passing comment that, “Mother Nature is taking a sort of gamble with humans, in that she drops our brains into the world half-baked and lets experience take over and shape them. Our babies have much less well-developed brains than other animals do at birth. All in all, this has been a successful strategy. We’ve taken over every corner of the planet, invented the internet—even gotten off the planet to the moon.”
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The Quadra Project: Challenging the way people think about forestry
Prior to embarking upon a literary career in 1985, Ray Grigg taught English, literary history, fine arts and comparative world religions in British Columbia’s High School system. Since then, he has written a long list of books on Taoism, Zen and environmental issues. Grigg was also the author of a column called ‘Shades of Green,’ which ran in the Campbell River Courier-Islander for 15 years. A little over half a year ago, he started writing a series of articles called ‘the Quadra Project.’
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The accelerating pace of Species becoming ‘at Risk’
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently released a survey that showed the total number of marine species at risk within the Salish Sea doubled between 2002 and 2015. While the Discovery Islands are within the study area, the EPA study did not list specific locations. So Cortes Currents asked Max Thaysen, President of the Friends of Cortes Island, about the species of risk in our area.
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There is little time left to change, says Suzuki
According to CHEK News, hundreds of people marched from Centennial Square to the steps of the B.C. Legislature on Saturday, November 20th. The “Funeral for the Future” was organized by Extinction Rebellion Vancouver Island, and featured Dr David Suzuki as a speaker.
“No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threat will be lost,” said the former host of the Nature of Things. “We are in a sixth spasm of species loss. In May, a United Nations report announced a million more species are in imminent danger of extinction … There’s no mystery to why species are vanishing so rapidly. We are the cause. There are too many of us demanding too much from Mother Earth.”
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