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How to Sidetrack Oneself, Demonstrated

For several years, while I was still warm and functioning, I co-taught an interdisciplinary course with a biologist.  At the heart of the course was the question of what evolution is, and what its consequences have been.

[Oh, dear Lord, let me indulge in one of my pet peeves, right now!  Have you noticed that almost everyone has lost the ability to state a question indirectly?  Indirectly?  That is to say, to refer to a question; not to ask it directly.  I just did that:  "At the heart of the course was the question of what evolution is, and what its consequences have been."  What people almost universally say these days would be something like this:  "At the heart of the course was the question of what is evolution,  and what have been its consequences."  If, as I am doing, you are writing that sentence, you have to punctuate it like this:  At the hear of the course was this question:  "What is evolution, and what have been its consequences?"  But if you want to report what the question was, you have to swap the places the nouns and verbs take, because you are not directly asking the question; you are reporting it.  Well, there you are:  evidence for a misspent life!]

Let us return to the question of what was that course about.

(You did catch that, didn't you?)

When the Cosmos series came out, we decided to incorporate the film series into the course, to show that everything has evolved--the cosmos itself--and not just the biological life that is a part of everything that is.  It always seemed to me that Carl Sagan's narration of what has happened, and how we are a part of it, was the high point of the whole course.

Now Neil deGrasse Tyson is the narrator for a remaking and updating of the Cosmos programs.  He is splendid, but Carl Sagan forever captured my heart, even earlier, when first I read, The Dragons of Eden.  As religious fundamentalists did with the original series, they have turned their indignation upon the new Cosmos series.  They want equal time to talk Turtle Talk; you know, that the earth rests on the back of a 6,000 year old turtle, and that if you sail too far west, you will fall off the edge.  No big bang!  No finches evolving on separate Galapagos islands!  No human ancestors!  No new flu viruses!  No millions and billions of years!  Just gods and demons and a recent creation and the appearance of incredible age, the appearance of genetic inheritance, the appearance of all kinds of sensible things, but the fact of heaven above, and a magic turtle on whose back we ride the salty sea!  Maybe that Coyote is the creator.  Maybe that Thor is hammering out the thunder, or that it is a Hebrew god speaking on Mt. Sinai, or. . . .

Personally, I am partial to that turtle.  I think he deserves air time alongside Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the Dragons of Eden before him.

There you have it again:  a scientific series that asks how did things happen, and how did we get here?

(You did catch that, didn't you?)

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