Word: existences
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...most striking tenet: human behavior is genetically based, the result of millions of years of evolution. Some sociobiologists go so far as to suggest that there may be human genes for such behavior as conformism, homosexuality and spite. Carried to an extreme, sociobiology holds that all forms of life exist solely to serve the purposes of DNA, the coded master molecule that determines the nature of all organisms and is the stuff of genes. As British Ethologist Richard Dawkins describes the role and drive of the genes, they "swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from...
...with a finding made independently by researchers in a widely divergent branch of science. Rutgers Biochemist George Pieczenik has discovered patterns in DNA coding that he sees as evidence of selection occurring at the molecular level (TIME, April 4). "What this means," he says, "is that the DNA sequences exist to protect themselves and their own information. It's not the organism that counts. The DNA sequences don't really care if they have to look like a lowly assistant professor or a giraffe...
...implicit demand seems to be that all customary standards, tastes, proprieties and practices must yield to the whims and oddities of the individual. Still other cases seem to envision the abolition of all exclusivity, whether its purpose is malign or not. Exclusive societies of professionals (lawyers, doctors, engineers) exist for perfectly decent reasons. And certain groupings of artists for different decent aims. Yet, federal funds were briefly withheld from a Connecticut school on the ground that its boys' choir, by existing, encouraged sexist discrimination-and never mind the unique musical reasons why boys have always been assembled into singing...
Black Caucus have a right to exist? Would the congressional Black Caucus have ceased to exist if instead of refusing him, it had admitted a white member? The only sensible answer to both questions is yes. The notion of a black caucus with white members is silly on its face. So is the notion of a Jewish club that admits non-Jewish members. For this reason alone, Presidential Counsel Robert J. Lipshutz's resignation from Atlanta's formerly Jewish Standard Club, in protest against its restricted membership, seemed somewhat strange. He was demanding, in effect, that the club...
...debate no one could win, meant to be more illuminating than persuasive. An audience of 200, largely summer seminarians and institute fellows, had a chance to offer their views. One black charged that "this is a discussion of the concept of nothing"; real democracy, he argued, did not exist anywhere. Some of the auditors criticized all three philosophers for being cautious and too far to the right; others asked whether civil disobedience should be taught in schools (answer: a qualified "sometimes" from Adler...