I JUST KNOW IT'S TRUE, EVEN IF WE CAN'T EXPLAIN IT:

A very natural reaction: Lost in the evolutionary debate is Darwin's most basic lesson: the value of observing nature. (Simon Barnes, November 8, 2005, LA Times)

ENDLESS forms most beautiful. That's what gets to me. That's what gets to just about everybody. And that's also what gets to the greatest people who have ever looked out of a window and marveled at the sight of a bird, a buzzing fly, a bee. Not just the beauty: but the endlessness. So many: I had not thought life had created so many.

And so I was filled with a desire to open the eyes of the world to the endlessness: to the dizzying beauty of a planet that works by bringing us one different creature after another. Birds are the easiest; so I wrote "How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher" because birds are not only for the specialist and the expert: They are there to lift the hearts of everybody with eyes and ears and a willingness to use them. And I dedicated the book to the greater glory of life. How many different kinds do you see on your bird feeder? What are they? Why are they? What is the point of these creatures, and the way they live, and the world they live in?

With a single glimpse out of the window, we are plunging headlong into the deepest question that humans can ask. This is life: But what is it for? This thrilling question is available to anyone with eyes and ears. So many birds, so many different kinds. What does it all mean?

Endless forms most beautiful. The phrase comes from the last page of "On the Origin of Species," the book that changed the world. An Englishman, Charles Darwin published it in 1859, and people have been furious with him ever since. If there's one thing people hate more than a pack of lies, it's a pack of truth. [...]

THE way that evolution works — not the question of whether or not it does, because this is fact — has been at the forefront of scientific debate for the last two or three decades.

Darwin was a brilliant naturalist and a very bad philosopher.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 7, 2005 11:44 PM