Real time is the wheel reinventing itself.
Emergence has in an orderly way moved from protons to philosophers. At this level there is a kind of closing of the loop, because philosophers think about big bangs, protons, and all the other hierarchies connected by emergences. The emerging world turns inward and thinks about itself. As George Wald once said, a physicist is the atom’s way of thinking about atoms.
— Morowitz (2002, 183-4)
All human creation comes back to that point of transition when we begin manipulating existence guided by the partial revelation of that very existence. We only create a sense of good and evil as well as norms of conscionable behavior once we know about our own nature and that of others like us. Creativity itself – the ability to generate new ideas and artifacts – requires more than consciousness can ever provide. It requires abundant fact and skill memory, abundant working memory, fine reasoning ability, language. But consciousness is ever present in the process of creativity, not only because its light is indispensable, but because the nature of its revelations guide the process of creation, in one way or another, more or less intensely. In a curious way, whatever we do invent, from norms of ethics and law to music and literature to science and technology, is either directly mandated or inspired by the revelations of existence that consciousness offers us. Moreover, in one way or another, more so or less, the inventions have an effect on existence as revealed, they alter it for better or for worse. There is a circle of influence – existence, consciousness, creativity – and the circle closes.
— Damasio (1999, 315-16)
You must reap before you can sow. (Else where will you get your seeds?)