Enchanted by the Sun: The CoEvolution of Light, Life, and Color on Earth

Description

The Long Now Foundation's monthly series Seminars About Long-term Thinking
http://longnow.org/seminars/02012/nov/28/enchanted-sun-coevolution-light-life-and-color-earth/

Peter Warshall presents
Enchanted by the Sun: The CoEvolution of Light, Life, and Color on Earth

For 3.8 billion years, life has lived in a bath of solar radiance. The Sun’s illumination outlines which objects are appealing, bland, or repellant. Its powers of desiccation, blistering, bleaching, and revelation govern a balance between beauty and danger. Its flood of photons shapes light-harvesters (“eyes”), pigments, and surfaces---stretching planetary aesthetics to include "invisible light" (ultraviolet, infrared, and polarized). From euglena to Matisse, all creatures dwell in a variety of luminance locales---dramas of biospheric brightness, color mixes, and rebellions against darkness (such as fireflies and luminescent fish). The most recent rebellion has been human-devised lamps that impact everything from the artistic-military complex (camouflage and mimicry) to the materials, techniques, and display of paintings, electronic imaging, and growing plants.

This 55-minute journey travels from unicells to octopi to op-art, with a dose of PR for “planetary color webs” and their influence on awareness, desire, self-direction, memory, contemplation, and curiosity.

Armed with a PhD in Biological Anthropology from Harvard, Peter Warshall has shaped watershed theory and practices, conservation biology, relations with Indian tribes in the Southwest, and refugee activities in Africa. For a decade he was the editor of the Whole Earth Review.

Seminar hosted by Stewart Brand
http://www.longnow.org/people/board/sb1/

Long Now Members get complimentary tickets
https://longnow.org/membership/

Live Audio Stream of the Seminar for Long Now Members
http://longnow.org/live/

There will be a reception at The Long Now Museum & Store following the Seminar
http://www.longnow.org/contact/

About the Series:
The Seminars About Long-term Thinking were started in 02003 to build a coherent, compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking, to help nudge civilization toward Long Now's goal of making long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare.

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http://longnow.org/seminars/02012/nov/28/enchanted-sun-coevo...

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