Word: homo
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...central problem in arriving at an answer is how to measure intelligence. Homo sapiens has a hard time devising IQ tests for its own species, much less trying to assess the brains of others. One trap: interpreting animal behavior in human terms. Notes Theodore Reed, former director of the National Zoo: "The public perception of animal intelligence abounds with anthropomorphic fantasies...
Still, no animal species is likely to prove more intelligent than Homo sapiens. However, as Psychologist Colin Beer of Rutgers University puts it, "Human intelligence has made us dominant, but has also brought us great suffering. The balance sheet of the costs and benefits of intelligence has yet to be tallied...
...corrupted idea of Progress. The new U.S. Football League, which is playing its games in spring and early summer, has been nervously founded on a gamble about the sports fan's adaptability to different time zones. There is something spiritually dislocating, even depraved, about football in May. Still, Homo sapiens has adjusted to the idea of having ice hockey's Stanley Cup playoffs proceed at their glacial pace through the same month, so perhaps the content of seasons is just a matter of habit. When man sends colonies into space, he will be able to mount movable...
Some of these images reflect actual conditions, though rarely with much original analysis. But many common assumptions about undergraduate attitudes and campus life ignore the facts altogether. Homo harvardus deserves a fresh assessment...
...behavior is already known to be the result of certain chemical and physical laws in action, and even as he confidently predicts that science will, certainly within the next few decades, unravel almost all the mysteries of human behavior, he still holds onto a sense of wonder at Homo sapiens as some sort of gestalt, a sum greater than and transcending its component parts. And it is just this sense of wonder, he believes, which makes us human. There is, Konner stresses, something that goes by the name of the "human spirit," something which even science--if we are wary...