RE: Evidence
September 10, 2013 at 1:54 pm
(This post was last modified: September 10, 2013 at 1:55 pm by Tonus.)
(September 9, 2013 at 7:00 pm)Max_Kolbe Wrote: Yes, I think that is what I was trying to get at. Scientists who ask how are probably also asking why, too. It seems to be part of being human to ask why.
It seems to me that there are two different ideas here. As Mister A wrote, "why" could simply be another way of asking "how," such as the old example of the child who asks endless "why is that" questions. He doesn't seek any greater meaning behind the color of the sky; he's simply curious.
The other "why" seeks a purpose, not a reason. For a species of thinking creatures who often died before they had grown old, there may have been a very strong desire for there to be something more than the short and brutal existence that was typical. Even a relatively short future that would be spent in a world without pain and suffering would seem like, well... heaven. Ascribing a purpose to an otherwise brief and seemingly pointless life was probably inevitable among those ancient people.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
