[ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design.

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of
natasha at natasha.cc
>.

 

Quoting spike <spike66 at att.net>:

>>. Darwin is god.

>.And what about Mendel?

I am a big fan of Mendel too.  {8-]

>.Bty, if evolution as progress suggests a self-directed evolution, then
where do you place Darwin.  Natasha

It would take me a while to list all the reasons why I think so highly of
Darwin, but I will just touch on a couple points.  We have science
popularizers who are not professional scientists themselves, but who are
dedicated enough to learn and understand the state of the art in some
science, then explain it to the rest of us.  Good examples would be Ed
Regis, James Gleick, our own Damien Broderick.  There are top shelf
scientists who cannot write their way out of a wet paper sack, such as,
Murray Gell Mann for instance and plenty of others.  But in this short life,
we are given a few soaring talents who are both top scientists and excellent
writers: Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, for instance, but Darwin was the best of
the best.

Consider the lyrical beauty of the last paragraph in Origin of Species:

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of
many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting
about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that
these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and
dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by
laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth
with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction;
Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life,
and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a
Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing
Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus,
from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which
we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals,
directly follows. 

Whoooooo!  Now THAT is writing!  Now watch how the master reels it in:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that,
whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of
gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most
wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

The poetic beauty!  That passage soars with eagles!  That man really had it
all: expressive writing skills, observational talent, patience, persistence,
self-discipline, generosity with credit, attentiveness to minute detail,
brilliant intuition, creativity, courage, love of truth, every good thing I
can imagine a science writer having, he had all that and much more of it
than anyone else.

 

spike








 

 

 

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