ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

EVOLUTION IN NATURE: LESSONS FOR YOUR LIFE. Nature did not have a plan to make a tiger, a horse or Man. It just happened along the way. Everything in this space-time Universe evolves; including your Life. Evolution is survival of the fittest. But it is not strength or intelligence that determines fitness for survival. It is the ability to adapt to the ever-changing environment. Those who are able to constantly adapt, survive. Because Evolution has no pre-determined plan n or a targeted path. Evolution is open-ended. It meanders along adapting to its ever-changing environment. It is affected by, and in turn affects the environment (and its inhabitants). [Coevolution and Feedback Loops]. In the same way, your Life is not pre-determined but meanders along, affected by events and people, and in turn affecting events and people in a feedback loop. What you will be tomorrow depends on what you do today. And what you do tomorrow makes you what you will be the day after tomorrow. ...

You would almost certainly have heard of Charles Darwin, and his theory of evolution in his book On the Origin of Species. But it is likely that you have never heard of his equally distinguished grandfather Erasmus Darwin. Erasmus also believed in evolution of species by natural selection, and in his case he summed it all up in the poem below, that describes how Life began in the seas, and developed into “breathing realms of fin and feet and wing” [of fish, mammals and birds.] Organic life below the shoreless waves Was born and nurs’d in ocean’s pearly caves; First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; These, successive generations bloom, New powers acquire and larger limbs assume; Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.

The purpose of Evolution and Natural Selection is to reward those characteristics in a species that enhance its ability to survive [and penalize those characteristics which are do not contribute to the survival quotient]. So the original giraffe’s neck grew longer and longer as Nature favored those giraffes which had long-neck genes. Because a long neck meant the ability to reach the leaves on the higher branches of the Acacia trees on which the giraffes fed, longer neck giraffes ate more, were healthier, and were more able to find mates. The genes which promoted the long necks were passed on, and over the generations, the necks of giraffes grew longer and longer. In general, animals evolved to have characteristics which enabled them to more successfully find food, find a mate, or adapt to the climate or geographical conditions of their environment. But Dogs are unique in that in they evolved to have characteristics that endeared them more to Man. Of course there were working dogs and ...

If, by 'God', you mean an old man with a long white beard, Sitting on a Cloud, then count me out... I have sometimes wondered what it means when people say they believe in God. I, myself believe in a God. But my definition of ‘God’ may be very different from others. When Einstein famously said , “ Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”, religious leaders promptly and gleefully seized upon these words as proof that the greatest brain in the Universe believes in God. However, there are also many other words said by Einstein, which should be mentioned: “ I don’t try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the Universe, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it”. “ I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be anthropomorphic [* i.e. anything that causes God to be moulded in the human image, in my opinion , a result of the vanity of Man: my words]What I see in Nature ...