
The Systems View of Life

The Beginning of Infinity
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By the eighteenth century, a new ideology was taking form, especially in Britain, that “greed is good” (to use a recent summary formulation), because greed spurs a society’s efforts and inventiveness. By giving vent to greed, the logic goes, societies can best harness the insatiable ambitions, great energies and ingenuity of their citizens. While g
... See moreJeffrey D. Sachs • The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions
This liberalism relies upon the idea that consciousness is not a thing but an activity; that its elemental constituent is not some soul-like substance but the activity of understanding; that it knows itself and the world only imperfectly, through its reflections on the world and itself; that its freedom is a matter of degree and a function of its u
... See moreMatthew Stewart • An Emancipation of the Mind
Locke’s breakthrough — unimagined even by Christian thinkers as formidable as Thomas Aquinas — was to combine the classical view of natural law with the concept of inalienable rights. In his Two Treatises of Government (1689), Locke identified these rights as “life, liberty, and property.” He drew from the Scriptures, as well as from Cicero, to arg
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