Thursday, September 23, 2010

Libri aut liberi

From Contexts of Optimal Growth in Childhood by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Persons who identify themselves with culture rather than with nature often prefer to leave their memes to posterity, instead of their genes. The Romans expressed this choice with the saying, libri aut liberi - books or sons - assuming that the energy that goes into creating cultural products must come at the expense of biological reproduction.

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