EVOLUTION

Science is defined as “a state of knowing”, with knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding, and sometimes defined as a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested though scientific method. Science, simply stated, is the use of past observations to predict the future – which soon becomes the past whose observations are used to predict the new future – which soon becomes …………

Science is an endless activity. Each field of scientific knowledge has mushroomed in volume and complexity during the last half of the 20th Century. This dramatic increase in information and observational data available to the specialized scientific thinker has great impact upon positive advances in understanding, and the introduction of new theories and laboratory techniques in every science. However, it has complicated, and made the task of the philosopher or general scientist, the “jack of all trades” type theorist, more cumbersome if not impossible to maintain an up-to-date detailed knowledge and understanding of multiple sciences. It would be difficult to emulate Leonardo Da Vinci today, but we do have our Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan and others who somehow do successfully cross the boundaries of various sciences and integrate their accumulated knowledge to their thoughts and ideas in their own specialty scientific endeavors.

Although I write of science and scientists, my quest began as a search for understanding of my own personal behavior, but grew to form questions more related to philosophy than science. Philosophy is a way of looking at knowledge which we already have. It involves the organization, interpretation, clarification and possibly criticism of what is already whining the realm of the known and experiences. The instruments by which the philosopher does his work are concepts and words and their organized forms in language. The philosopher is a wise man who is in love with wisdom; takes a comprehensive view; has sufficient breadth of outlook to see things in perspective, and thus to assess their true significance; has insight knowing that things are not always what they appear to be; and is a seer whose view lifts him from purely immediate and common concerns to the wider possibilities of the world ideally and imaginatively conceived.

One word of the English language that I find difficult to define and communicate via the written word is think. Think has multiple meanings in dictionaries depending on usage. Ultimately, it involves mental electro-chemical brain activity. Thinking; brain electro-chemical activity devoid and independent of all sensory input best describes the usage of the word that I want to impart to you. Of course, brain electro-chemical functioning is a constant and infinitely ongoing process during our waking hours, and may even occur during our sleep. But most of the time our sensory inputs, including your present utilization of the sight sense inputting electro-chemical signals at this very moment, are directing or controlling and definitely affecting your thoughts. Thinking that I am trying to express to you generally requires one to be alone and at rest with all the senses in a somewhat passive state. Daydreaming is a word describing a similar type of thinking, but somehow occurs even though one may not be alone and/or the senses are active.

I want you to grasp the meaning of the thinking of which I write, because my intent is that the eventual utilization of the information I present herein will inspire you to think! I was inspired to invest a great deal of my truly only resource, time, to devote to the acquisition of knowledge and the process of thinking because of my reading and studying the words and ideas and theories written and expressed by the most valuable members of our species, whose writing inspires multitudes to engage in that process of thinking. To me, being interested in why we behave as we do eventually encompasses questions of existentialism and epistemology; the greatest aspiratory thinkers were Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin. We all live and thrive on the back of the giants of yesteryears who though the communication of our species most valuable tool, language as previously stated, enrich or enhance our day-to-day living experiences.

I began the search for the knowledge that would enable me to better understand my personal behavior believing that I would find my answers by reading and studying books, articles, and scientific journals from the field of science called Psychology, the science of mind and behavior. This field of science generally concludes that we are the sum of our experiences, and that we behave as we do because of lifetime experiences and environment. One of the major proponents and leaders of this understanding of human behavior was B.F. Skinner, a scientist and writer whose works I became familiar with as a young man. As powerful as many of his experiments and theories were, they did not totally enlighten or convince me of the validity of his understandings related to the field of organism behavior. That reluctance to accept the premises of Skinner and other psychologists was probably the outgrowth of the knowledge acquired by my familiarity with the thoughts and studies of writers such as Dr. Desmond Morris, Robert Ardrey, Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox. These scientists studied and wrote in the science called Ethology, a branch of knowledge dealing with human ethos and with its formation and evolution, and the science called Zoology, a branch of Biology (a branch of knowledge that deals with living organisms and vital process) concerned with the classification and the properties and vital phenomena of animals. Soon thereafter I found a need to better understand the mechanisms of Genetics, the study of the biochemical basis of heredity which led me to the most important theory that would provide insight to my behavorial and existential questions. That theory, which I believe should be considered to be a science, is Evolution, which is a hypothesis that the various types of animals and plants have their origins in other pre-existing types, and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations. A close examination of teleological argumentation uncovers no reason to believe that a rigorous causal order will not eventually emerge as the foundation of Evolution.