Ecology and evolution are deeply intertwined. Just as the death and decay of organisms provide raw materials for subsequent generations, so too the deaths of species spawn new possibilities for future generations of species. Without extinction, there would be insufficient ecological space for evolution to explore alternative solutions and diversify into new life forms. When initially faced with some change to their native environments, species don’t grimly stay put and evolve into new forms better suited to the transformed conditions. They move, tracking the old habitat. In general, it’s only when the old habitat disappears that species are forced to adapt or die. Mass extinctions—the dying off of multiple, distantly-related lineages over vast areas in a short span of time—occur when one or more external forces wipe out a range of habitats, cutting off opportunities for tracking habitats. Over the past half-billion years, there have been five major mass extinctions, with the dinosaurs wiped out in the most recent of these. We now face the sixth mass extinction, which threatens to tear apart the fabric of the biosphere, with drastic consequences for most life on this planet, including us. In better times, species losses tick along at a barely discernable rate—perhaps one every five years. At present, somewhere between 50 and 150 species disappear every day, never to be seen again.... This time around, a single species—Homo sapiens—has become the external force driving the decimation of millions of other species. Yes, we are the asteroid now colliding with the planet.
Scott D. Sampson, Dismiss dinosaurs as failures...and pave a path to a bleak future
Showing posts with label humanity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humanity. Show all posts
Thursday, August 09, 2018
Labels:
animals,
biodiversity,
change,
chaos,
climate change,
complexity,
death,
decline,
dinosaurs,
earth,
evolution,
humanity,
Ignorance,
life,
modernity,
science,
singularity
Thursday, April 05, 2018
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know; nor any people so confident, as those who entertain us with fables.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
Balkans human duplicity,
belief,
history,
humanity,
Ignorance,
Montaigne,
psychology
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
There isn’t anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can’t believe it.
Mark Twain, as quoted in The Consciousness Deniers, Galen Strawson (NYRB, March 13, 2018)
Mark Twain, as quoted in The Consciousness Deniers, Galen Strawson (NYRB, March 13, 2018)
Labels:
belief,
consciousness,
discernment,
faults,
humanity,
humans,
Ignorance,
Mark Twain,
mistakes
Friday, February 23, 2018
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Monday, January 08, 2018
At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see.
Philip Larkin, The Old Fools
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see.
Philip Larkin, The Old Fools
Labels:
age,
awareness,
contemplation,
death,
existence,
humanity,
identity,
insult,
life,
melancholy,
old age,
Philip Larkin,
poetry,
prophecy,
seasons,
thermodynamics
Sunday, October 22, 2017
We are, as we have always been, dangerous creatures, the enemies of our
own happiness. But the only help we have ever found for this, the only
melioration, is in mutual reverence. God’s grace comes to us unmerited,
the theologians say. But the grace we could extend to one another we
consider it best to withhold in very many cases, presumptively, or in
the absence of what we consider true or sufficient merit (we being more
particular than God), or because few gracious acts, if they really
deserve the name, would stand up to a cost-benefit analysis. This is not
the consequence of a new atheism, or a systemic materialism that
afflicts our age more than others. It is good old human meanness, which
finds its terms and pretexts in every age. The best argument against
human grandeur is the meagerness of our response to it, paradoxically
enough.
Marilynne Robinson, New York Review (November , 2017)
Marilynne Robinson, New York Review (November , 2017)
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Voices in My Head
[W]hat a meditative poem contributes to the history of consciousness is a
reenactment in real time of the volatile inner life of a human being.
Such a poem does not present itself as plot or character portrayal or
argument, but rather ... as a hypothesis .... and include[s] waverings, self-contradictions,
repudiations, aspirations, and doubts; they are not offered as a
philosophical system.
Helen Vendler, The New York Review of Books (February 23, 2017)
Helen Vendler, The New York Review of Books (February 23, 2017)
Saturday, October 08, 2016
Modern media ... have always been based on the reselling of human attention to advertisers.
Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review (October 27, 2016)
Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review (October 27, 2016)
Labels:
advertisement,
capitalism,
civilization,
culture,
decline,
economy,
future,
history,
humanity,
illusion,
information,
internet,
media,
modernity
Thursday, December 31, 2015
It is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for,
and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.
Thucydides (Book Four), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides (Book Four), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Monday, October 19, 2015
Human beings ... may be divided simply into those who know they are acting and those who do not. True philosophers belong to the first group. The second encompasses, among others, utopian capitalists and Communists, the fanatics of the religious wars of the seventeenth century and the jihadists of the twenty-first.
David Bromwich, "Are We ‘Exceptionally Rapacious Primates’?", The New York Review of Books (November 5, 2015)
David Bromwich, "Are We ‘Exceptionally Rapacious Primates’?", The New York Review of Books (November 5, 2015)
Labels:
fanaticism,
humanity,
naked apes,
philosophy,
religion
Wednesday, October 07, 2015
Why
are we so often awake? What is the purpose of being awake? I mean,
besides for ten minutes of eating, a little bit of romance. Once that’s
over, why are we not immediately again asleep?”
Rivka Galchen, Usl at the Stadium (The New Yorker, October 12, 2015)
Saturday, March 14, 2015
[R]elying on the Internet for facts and figures is making us mindless sloths.... a study in Science ... demonstrates that the wealth of information readily available on the Internet disinclines users from remembering what they’ve found out.
Sue Halpern, "How Robots & Algorithms Are Taking Over," New York Review (April 2, 2015)
Sue Halpern, "How Robots & Algorithms Are Taking Over," New York Review (April 2, 2015)
Labels:
algorithms,
artificial intelligence,
culture,
future,
humanity,
inequality,
modernity,
morality,
power,
robots,
society,
technology
Wednesday, February 04, 2015
All human rules are more or less idiotic, I suppose. It is best so, no
doubt. The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if
we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.
Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Ullrich told me about a small boy who was dying of neuroblastoma. “His mother made it very clear to him that she would see him again in Heaven someday. ... But he was worried about how he would find her. So they made a plan to meet in the front left corner of Heaven."
Jerome Groopman in The New Yorker, "Lives Less Ordinary" (January 20, 2014)
Jerome Groopman in The New Yorker, "Lives Less Ordinary" (January 20, 2014)
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Christmas time ... a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable,
pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long
calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one
consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of
people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers
to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on
other journeys.
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Monday, October 14, 2013
O place, O form,
How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming!
Blood, thou art blood.
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming!
Blood, thou art blood.
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
Labels:
appearance,
humanity,
illusion,
love,
misery,
premonition,
Shakespeare,
sin,
wisdom
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up.
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
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