From the introduction to the book:“Imagine you are watching patterns falling into each other inside such a toy kaleidoscope. After some time, you lower the tube and look around. Now you are experiencing the natural world of sound, touch, form, colour, smell and taste. This is a greater and more immersive world than the one inside the tube, is it not?
Here is some news for you. That greater, more immersive world outside of your little toy, filled by the wonders of nature, is kaleidoscopic, too. Everything of the creation reproduces itself; sprouts, and grows out of something that is already in existence. A bough of a tree branches off, plants propagate by seed dispersal, animals carefully pass on their genes, one generation of humans turning into the next. The basic rule of evolution is indeed kaleidoscopic: one thing leading to the other in successive resemblance but never exactly the same.”
Here is some news for you. That greater, more immersive world outside of your little toy, filled by the wonders of nature, is kaleidoscopic, too. Everything of the creation reproduces itself; sprouts, and grows out of something that is already in existence. A bough of a tree branches off, plants propagate by seed dispersal, animals carefully pass on their genes, one generation of humans turning into the next. The basic rule of evolution is indeed kaleidoscopic: one thing leading to the other in successive resemblance but never exactly the same.”
“The kaleidoscopic reality is equally apparent in our mental realities. Trains of feelings, thoughts, and memories merge into each other and express themselves as our ideas, actions, intentions, and so forth.[i] Societies, cultures, and history evolve in the same fashion. Both our outer and the inner actions grow out of what we already have experienced and done. This truth is universal; we feel we know the people, places and times we live in because they replicate themselves in recognisable ways. Yet, this is the interesting thing about our existential kaleidoscope: nothing is ever quite the same and in the long run everything changes a lot. If you would have the opportunity to meet your forefathers of, say, a hundred generations ago, you would probably think that they and their children had a lot in common whereas our ways of living, interests, ideas, etc. today are very different from theirs. This fact provokes our curiosity about the likely developments of future generations as well.