The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be that his head wasn't screwed on quite right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.

Natural Selection is a remarkable theory. As widely applicable as general relativity, no mathematics is needed to catch its essential features. As applicable as GR? Well, yes. GR is a theory designed to apply to bizarre realms of black holes, binary neutron stars and gravitational lensing. However, it also applies to our familiar world. All of Newtonian mechanics is retained in GR.

Similarly, NS is a theory (that is, a model of how the world works) designed to describe the mysterious origin of species and the (almost) magical creation of complexity in the universe. It also applies more generally. It isn't only life that evolves. Technology evolves. Ideas (memes) evolve. Instead of wasting time on Dawkin's God screed, readers would be better advised to read his lyrical "Ancestor's Tale", or even more potent "Extended Phenotype".

Giberson's book, and the Salon Atoms & Eden series in general, are themselves examples of evolution in action. The writers of most of the letters in this thread would have been executed for heresy in the not so distant past :-) The world changes - it evolves. Our physical evolution has proceeded over many millennia. Why do we expect that the world of God or Man should evolve much more quickly?

Of course, NS acts on the next generation, not this one. Churches are among the few human institutions that think intergenerationally. This is the ultimate cause of the friction with scientific thought. Many other institutions will vanish before either Church or Science. Rather than wish for each other's demise, each will have to reach an accommodation. It isn't surprising that today's demagogues can't be convinced. It isn't they who must be educated.

It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
"It came without packages, boxes or bags!"

Disney has built a vast empire on ascribing human characteristics to animals. The question isn't whether we're different from our cousin species. The question is how we're the same. Rather than perceiving anthropomorphic features in animal faces, it is clear that many of those things we regard as most definitely human actually arose long before the genus Homo.

While thumbs and humor get a nod, it is to our vaunted intelligence that these arguments always turn. Dumb mutts. Stupid cows. Gould and Gardner, humans both, have written on why the notion of "intelligence" is a useless fiction. Silly humans.

Our extended phenotype includes remarkable things. Our self-actualization knows no bounds. Our reach exceeds our grasp. None of this bears on the question of the uniqueness of other species.

All species are created special - not specially created.

A phenomenon is what we observe.

As Marcus Aurelius says:

"Ask yourself, what is this thing in itself, by its own special constitution? What is it in substance, and in form, and in matter? What is its function in the world? For how long does it subsist?"

(Also Hannibal Lector to Agent Starling in "Silence of the Lambs".)

By contrast, Hirsch's cultural literacy asserts that shared context is a requirement for any conveyance of knowledge. Taken to its extreme, this says that a common understanding requires no grounding in truth at all. "I cannot tell a lie..." There was no cherry tree at all.

What these contrasting points of view themselves share is some notion of purpose underlying communication. Why do we seek knowledge in the first place? The historical import of electronic media will only be proven by events long after the fact. Grandchildren are the ultimate peer review. Dialectic leads to synthesis. Consensus is not compromise.

Noumenon is the thing itself.

The answer hasn't changed. Don't trust hearsay. Don't trust vested interests. Do trust evidence. In general, trust "statements against penal interest". That is, if a Republican is worried about Iraq, be afraid.

Since virtually everything in the MSM is hearsay, don't believe a damn thing they say. I pick up a newspaper. For that small fraction of the stories on subjects in which I'm expert, the paper is invariably wrong in large or small details. What does that say about the stories I'm not an expert on?

Extrapolation is an uncertain business. Where exactly do they get the estimate of 9 billion souls by 2050, forty years in the future? Forty years in the past, the human population was less than half of what it is today. Population grows by compound interest - doubling over a constant interval. A conservative approach would be to assume the same growth rate and effect policies to mitigate. We're not talking something mysterious - population is just compound interest.

Every problem we have scales with - or faster than - population growth.

Click on my name for an earlier letter on this subject.

The tragedy of the commons is stalking us big time.