Guy Murchie

Guy Murchie (Jr.) (1907 - 8 July 1997) son of Ethel A. and Guy Murchie (Sr) [ [http://www.fairwaysmanorhouse.com/history.htm History of The Fairways Manor House Bed and Breakfast] ] was a Chicago Tribune photographer, staff artist and reporter, who had served as a war correspondent in England and Iceland from 1940 to 1942. He was briefly married to Barbara Cooney (1944-1947) (two children - Gretel and Barnaby) [ [http://www.favimp.com/BBsample.html Favorable Impressions Barbara Cooney 1917-2000] ] He was a flight instructor and a practising member of the Bahá'í Faith. His books included "Men on the Horizon" (1932), "Song of the Sky" (1954), "Music of the Spheres" (1961) and "The Seven Mysteries of Life" (1978). Murchie also illustrated his books with etchings and woodcuts of his own making. The American Museum of Natural History awarded him the John Burroughs Medal in 1956 for "Song of the Sky".

In his "The Seven Mysteries of Life" all knowledge is organized around seven philosophical principles - ideas like transcendence and vitality, "In some sense, I have little doubt, that genes know what they are doing, for they are memory incarnate, letters of living purpose, the script of life in a material universe." "When you look at a planet whole, from outside, for the first time, certain things come clear that you never could be quite sure of before. One is a persistent feeling that all the inhabitants of that world must be related." - The Seven Mysteries of Life. Murchie invited those who saw themselves as spiritual or religious to appreciate the wondrous complexities of nature with the same sensibility that they used to celebrate their deities. His observations included that there are degrees of sex, rather than just the two opposite extremes and that beyond the acknowledged traditional five senses, up to a total of 32 other senses exist including the sense of time and the sense of fear. But one of his greatest contributions was in the concept of the superorganism. Murchie notes that often groups behave as an individual organism. He asks "Who runs an ant colony?" "How do ants decide to move their nest somewhere else?" Similarly bees of a beehive communicate (at least as far as directing their fellow bees to food) with a language which is made of dance steps (including sounds and smells). The ant colony and the beehive behave like a single organism with its own mind: a beehive metabolizes, has a cognitive life (makes decisions), acts (it can move, attack) and so forth. In this scenario, language can be viewed from a different perspective, as the mechanism that allows the organism to be one. Where does language come from is a question that does not only apply to humans, but to all species, each species having its own "language". Murchie further envisioned the Earth as a single organism. All living organisms, along with all the minerals on the surface of the Earth, compose one giant integrated system that, as a whole, controls its behavior so as to survive. And so do galaxies. After all, we are made of star dust. Life is inherent in nature. Murchie describes sophisticated geologic phenomena such as sand dunes, glaciers, fires, etc. as living organisms, as well as the life of metals and crystals. The question is not whether there is life outside our planet, but whether it is possible to have "nonlife".

Murchie also expounded on the properties of mind. He states that memory is ubiquitous in nature. For example, energy conservation is a form of memory (an elastic band remembers how much energy was put into stretching it and eventually goes back to the original position). Mind is a universal aspect of life and energy. Murchie believed that there is one huge mind, the "thinking layer" around the Earth, which corresponds to the noosphere. Individual consciousnesses are absorbed into the superconsciousness of a social group, which is part of a superconsciousness of the world. In Murchie's opinion, the world has a soul, analogous to Pythagoreans' "anima mundi" and to the Hindu concept that Atman equals Brahman.

Murchie further speculated on the origin of death. Death is an evolutionary advantage: immortal beings that did not change would be easy prey to environment changes. Death allows for regeneration and for creation of new species. Death is a tool for change and progress.

References

Primary Sources

*"The Seven Mysteries of Life" ISBN 0395957915
*"Music of the Spheres: The Material Universe from Atom to Quasar, Simply Explained" ISBN 0486218090
*"Song of the sky" ISBN 0871650304
*"The Soul School: Confessions of a Passenger on Planet Earth" ISBN 1564741052

External links

* [http://www.thymos.com/mind/murchie.html Guy Murchie: SEVEN MYSTERIES OF LIFE]
* [http://www.this-magic-sea.com/PERCEP32.HTM 32 Senses]
* [http://bahai-library.com/?file=murchie_pamphlet_reprint_article I am a Baha'i]