Just reading the latest Edge magazine, and see a review by Stewart Brand of Kevin Kelly’s – “Speculations on the Future of Science”.
I’ve mentioned many times the vaue of recursion, often when people get hung up on cyclical logic, as if it is automatically a dead end, begging some question or other. Most recently I referred to the evolutionary value when something (like a brain) works on itself, and evolves intelligence, many of these thoughts driven by reading Hofstadter (who as I type is speaking at Tucson 2006). I see reading Brand’s piece on Kelly, that he’s talking about the evolutionary recursion of science working on science – science’s self-modification. That’s science as in new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovering knowledge, ie philosophy (of science at least).
Interestingly in the same Edge edition there is a piece by John Horgan reviewing the reconcilliation of scence and religion (referring to the same Event I mentioned involving Dawkins and McEwan). Nothing earth shatteringly original, but an intelligent summary including his atheistic involvement with the Templeton Foundation.