We yarn about the sentience of stones and the ancient Greek mistake of identifying “dead matter” as opposed to living matter, limiting for centuries to come the potential of Western thought when attempting to define things like consciousness and self-organizing systems such as galaxies. Western thinkers viewed space as lifeless and empty between stars; our own stories represented those dark areas as living country, based on observed effects of attraction from those places on celestial bodies. Theories of dead matter and empty space meant that Western science came late to discoveries of what
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