Maureen et al.,

I don't think there are any agreed upon standards for defining
evolutionary grades in the political arena.

Gene Hunn.

On Wed, 7 Jun 1995, Maureen Ellis wrote:

> Having been a scientist all my adult life (30 years now), I think what is
> challenged here is not science, but the political application of it.
> Human politics remains at an evolutionarily primitive level. Last I
> heard from my anthropologist colleagues, the baboons are more socially
> advanced than we are. The idea that we have to choose between rational
> thought and spiritual perception is being used by petty people who hold
> offices in high places. At this point in time, we cannot apply
> scientific methodogy to "proving" the existence of a sentient creator.
> For most of us, the evidence is all around us: the order and beauty of
> the cosmos, the dreams, achievements, and sense of the "I" in us and
> perhaps in one or more other species on our planet, the glorious
> diversity of life. As a scientist, I try to understand and add to the
> knowledge base what appears to be real and regular in the universe.
> That may be the best and highest responsibility of a sentient and
> technological species such as ourselves. The word 'responsibility' needs
> to be spelled in capital letters here. ALL of us, whether a professional
> info gatherer or not, are responsible for how the information is to be used!
>
> Our species seems to go through sorting processes on a regular basis.
> Our current challenge involves the sheer numbers of us and our impact on
> the environment of this planet. We are now advanced enough to make
> choices and to drastically alter the heretofor "natural" processes of
> evolution. We need to make some rational-spiritual choices very soon.
> If you want a good example of what we may be facing otherwise, come to my
> lab and I will show you a mammalian tissue culture flask that is
> outgrowing its space and its resources and is contaminated by an
> opportunistic bug that can't resist all that biological mass. Enough said.
>
> Maureen Ellis
> Dept of Environmental Health
> Toxicology Group at Roos 1
> University of Washington
> Seattle, WA
> me at u.washington.edu
>