Building Block Childhood

As a child, I knew the planets before I could write. My children’s book hero was the brave ant Ferdinand. I loved all creepy crawlies, but I was also an avid Lego builder. That’s probably why I studied engineering instead of biology.

Can thermodynamics be interesting at all?

Physics and biology met in my head when I studied thermodynamics as an undergraduate. Thermodynamics describes not only how power plants work but also the fundamental forces that drive the material world. The second law of thermodynamics states that all temperature differences equalize, and everything ordered eventually becomes disordered. And yet, there is evolution! Why is there an evolution towards more complicated, ordered structures? This piqued my curiosity. I was interested: How do such ordered things as crystals, bubbles, clouds, water vortices, and planetary systems evolve in the inorganic world? Is there an „inorganic evolution“?

Historic Failures and Debugging

During my time at the university, there were intense political and social changes. In East Germany, it was taught that society would inevitably evolve, albeit with effort and toil, toward an ideal state where no more injustice would exist. That sounds good. It would be nice if that were the case, wouldn’t it? Where does this prediction come from? Why doesn’t everything just automatically get better and better? Is it because of people? Or does it somehow get better with mankind? Man is only schematically grasped in the theses on markets and in Marx’s theories. But people with the most complex piece of matter on their shoulders behave in a complex way. This has to be considered when thinking about society’s development.

What are human behaviors? How do these behaviors emerge? Through culture and evolution. So, to understand contemporary societies, we have to look deep into the past, into the times when humans came into being. But since humans did not suddenly appear but are only modified animals, we must also look at how animals became what they are. And with this knowledge, we return to today’s societies and begin to analyze. What is evolutionary, and what is cultural? Things that evolution has implanted in us, we cannot change. We can only learn how to deal with them. Cultural and political items, on the other hand, can be changed and influenced. Efforts to improve the world will fail or even cause catastrophes if those who act cannot distinguish the evolutionary given from the cultural given.

Maybe I can make a small contribution to help you better distinguish between these things.