My canine companion, Darwin, reached his eleventh year in January and living in the urban environment of Vancouver, BC, I've had countless encounters with ordinary people about evolution through the simple expedient of calling my dog.

My sense is that reason, which many of us celebrate as one of the tastiest and most nutritional fruits growing on the tree of human civilization, is not the operative force here. Emotions rule. People seemt to turn away from what represents danger or even just unfamiliarity, and somehow the 'godless' and yet powerful world of science and technology seems dangerous and foreign. How can this be? My suspicion is that many people mistake science for the often brutal and arbitrary world of capitalism, with its many depredations. Another possibility is they were daydreaming during biology class (if they were lucky enough to have had some biological schooling)and feeling under-informed, they unconsciously opt for the familiar comfort of the supernatural nostrums of their family, just as people find what connection and comfort they can in their small family in this increasingly atomised and transitory social environment. Yet another possibility is that many people have not learned how to look closely and consistently at life in the wider world around them. Too caught up in the minutae of their own 'here & now' people are unable to see the process all this is - everything a variety building on varieties of common antecedents flowing through space, time and our imaginations.

You raise a truly fascinating and important question, Chet, because to those touched by the breadth, depth and power of the concept of evolution - cosmic, geological, biological, social and even personal, the world comes alive with warm meaning and fresh possibility, interconnecting everything in potent and lovely ways. For those to whom 'evolution' represents some kind of danger, there is only a recourse deeper into the disconnections of magical thinking. Looking at this fascinating question from a deeper perspective we can ask, 'why is adapting to this (to those who see it) obviously more fecund and productive world view resisted by so many when the ability to pose and share such questions at all is created by the very process so many wish to deny?
Geoff Hoare | 04.15.05 - 4:59 pm | #

On the subject of evolution, the following is really cool:
http://www.newscientist.com/arti...le.ns? id=dn2732
Anthony | 04.15.05 - 9:35 pm | #