Saturday, February 28, 2009

We are not special

"Your world is not that special. Your planet is not located at the center of the universe. Neither is your star, or your galaxy. Perhaps most disturbing at all, as telescopes have revealed to us the enormity of space, both astronomy and geology have revealed the breathless expanse of time. We are not just insignificantly small items living in a vast ocean of space; we're living in a moment so brief that it's barely a single tick of a clock that's already run through millennia without us, and will not pause when we are gone."

"No, you are not that special. And yet, you are a wonder, absolutely unique and irreplaceable. Your species is a wonder, gifted with physical and mental resources that provide boundless opportunity. Your planet is a wonder, swarming with life in infinite variety and complexity. Your universe is a wonder, based on laws so precisely balanced that the slightest variation in any of them might have caused everything -- space, time, and everything that moves through both -- to never have appeared."

Source

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Charles Darwin

I only recently learned that Charles Darwin's seminal work "The Origin of Species" has a longer title. The book's full title is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Wikipedia states that, "The scientific theory of evolution has continued to evolve since Darwin's contributions, but natural selection remains the most widely accepted scientific model of speciation."

Isn't it odd that no one refers to the final eleven words of the title? Is it another example of political correctness? The answer is...Yes, of course. Here's some quotes.

Wikipedia article is here.