Chronology | Current Month | Current Thread | Current Date |
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] | [Date Index] [Thread Index] | [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] | [Date Prev] [Date Next] |
Leigh,
The insects are unique for their sheer survival; spiders for their
instinctive structural engineering; bees and ants for their social
engineering; etc. But, if I may abuse the language for emphasis, I would
argue that homo sapiens is unique in a unique way (as evidenced by what
we are now doing)!
Just one aspect of this uniqueness (apropos to our field) is man's
invention of science to satisfy his unique intellectual curiosity. Other
species search for food, shelter, reproduction, etc; as far as we know
none of them would have chosen to go to the moon out of sheer
intellectual curiosity. (As many of us would have, even though the
historical event was surely driven by more mundane pressures.)
At the root of man's unique uniqueness is his conscious awareness of his
own existence and his mental states, which itself is inexplicable through
"already explained phenomena"; it is knowable by personal experience or
not at all.
As part of evolving nature, we are (as far as we know) unique in "knowing
what is going on" and even (though it may be a cruel illusion) in
feeling that we can have a hand in determining the course of reality both
on a personal scale and on the scale of evolution itself.