Networks

*photo from http://thefaithfulscribe.blogspot.com/, originally from Paul Statmet's website. Check them for a lot more that's connected to mycelium.
1.

I heard a mycologist on TED.com describing how fungi evolved to be the earth's communication and monitoring system by passing information - about humidity or temperature, for example - organically through the netted mat of mycelium which spans the whole earth beneath our feet. He then likened this to the internet, people and vegetation communicate information in analogous ways, and these networks are emergent consequences of the earth's existence and might be its means to self-preservation. The earth is in some sense a living being with self-regulating systems, similar to the humans which populate it.
In this scheme we are all as nodes in an electric circuit through which current merely passes. This type of thinking where some kind of purpose is attributed to a higher level recalls James Lovelock's Gaia concept in which the living portion of the earth, Gaia, is alive and we are a part of the cells composing its "body".
But doesn't it also seem to echo past and present thinking in religious circles and lie somewhere outside the boundaries of current science? We are no longer just beings thinking and acting on our own account, but part of a larger sphere, subjects and manifestations of a higher order. Not only us, but mushrooms too. I don't know if this is knowledge or nonsense, but think about it next time you cook risotto.

Response to Dan Dennett

This "science" of memetics which Dan Dennett is talking about, what does it actually consist of? In his chapter on memes Dawkins says something that can pretty much be summed up in one tiny sentence: ideas are passed from one host mind to another. And he suggests that, like genes, they may strive for their own survival. So how does this amount to a science? "Memes", unlike genes, do not necessarily combine in systematic ways, and they can appear out of nowhere: these "toxic ideas" which Dennett is talking about presumably haven't existed forever, they appeared spontaneously in the imagination of a given individual.
In many ways I agree with what Dawkins and Dennett have to say, but their throwing around of the term "science" and their attempts to apply it across the board - to ideas, to religion, to anything- is, frankly, unscientific. It has been the consensus of philosophers, up till now at least, to deal with God in the realm of metaphysics. That very term means "beyond physics": beyond science. Trying to analyse religion through science or vice versa is just chalk and cheese mate, rats and pyjamas.