Word: darwinism
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Last winter machete-wielding locals protested a government ban on sea-cucumber fishing by blocking the entrance to the Charles Darwin Research Station in Puerto Ayora and the headquarters for the national park that encompasses 97% of the islands' land area. The invaders held workers captive for four days, harassed scientists and threatened to kill tortoises. In a more serious uprising last month, the headquarters and research station were occupied for two weeks, along with the airport in the provincial capital of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno--this time by residents angry about the government's refusal to consider their demands...
...birds, 42% of the land plants, 70% to 80% of the insects and 17% of the fish live nowhere else in the world. Among them: giant tortoises, Galapagos penguins, waved albatrosses, flightless cormorants, Galapagos fur seals, seagoing iguanas, three types of rice rat, Galapagos bats--and 13 species of Darwin's finch, whose variously shaped beaks, perfectly adapted for the foods they subsist on, were used by the scientist to illustrate his theory of evolution...
...world. The reproductive behavior that helped us survive as a species may no longer be beneficial. DON C. SCHMITZ Tallahassee, Florida What we crave is people--the closeness of relatives, the cup of sugar a neighbor hands over the fence and the unexpected guest for dinner. These are not Darwin's so-called social instincts but the valuable fruits of peace and contentment. They are never gained by quick phone calls, handshakes, cards, promises to get together or the intrinsic closeness of the nuclear family. They are gained by reaching out. MARY MERRIMAN CATES Grosse Ile, Michigan...
Part of Miller's point is that the instinctive but ultimately fruitless pursuit of More--the 60-hour workweeks, the hour a month spent perusing the Sharper Image catalog--keeps us from indulging what Darwin called "the social instincts." The pursuit of More can keep us from better knowing our neighbors, better loving our kin-in general, from cultivating the warm, affiliative side of human nature whose roots science is just now starting to fathom...
...Harvard, my religious devotion some-howbegan to slip away. Once, Id' sung soprano inSingapore's Wesley Methodist Church and felt Godwas listening when I sang my favorite hymn,"Surely The Presence of the Lord is in ThisPlace." Darwin had always given me something tothink about, though, and taking E.O. Wilson'sclass on evolutionary biology my first semesterinadvertently gave me greater pause. And inChaucer section, discussing the socialmachinations of the Church in the Middle Ages onlyfanned the fires of doubt. There was more to itthan that, of course, but certainly I was growingdiscouraged. Going to services at Harvard-Epworth,the only...