Just finished this excellent and surprising science fiction book. It explores several different themes – our ability to start anew on a new planet, our inherent nature, our relationship to nature and plants (!) and the growing suspicion that we are always doing someone else’s bidding. It is also beautifully written, with living characters and original ideas.

One of the themes that will stay with me is how nature always plays a dominance game, and that the darwinian struggle in some way is a ground truth that we have to understand and relate to. I have always felt somewhat uneasy with that conclusion, but I think it ultimately is because there is a mono-semiosis assumption there: all things must be interpreted in light of this fact. They must not, and Burke highlights how dominance strategies may evolve into altruistic strategies, almost in an emergent fashion. I found that striking, and important.

Overall, we should resist the notion that there are ground truths that are more true than other things, truth is a coherence space of beliefs and interpretations. Not in a postmodern way, but in a much more complicated way — this is why I often return to the wittgensteinian notion of a ”form of life”. Only within that can sense be made of anything.

(Is this not also then a ”ground truth”? You could make that argument I suppose, but at some point you just reach not truths but the event horizon of axiomatic necessity. We are not infinite and cannot extend reason infinitely).

So – a recommended read, and an interesting set of issues and questions.