Evolution is the creation-myth of our age. By telling us our origin it shapes our views of what we are. It influences not just our thought, but our feelings and actions too, in a way which goes far beyond its official function as a biological theory.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the profound impact of evolutionary theory on our understanding of humanity and its influence on our thoughts and actions.
Mary Midgley highlights the significance of evolution not just as a biological concept, but as a narrative that shapes our identity and worldview. By providing a sense of origin, it profoundly affects how we perceive ourselves and our relationships with others, ultimately influencing our emotions and behaviors in ways that extend beyond mere scientific explanation.
In practice
During a lecture on life sciences, this quote could underscore the philosophical implications of evolution.
When some portion of the biosphere is rather unpopular with the human race-a crocodile, a dandelion, a stony valley, a snowstorm, an odd-shaped flint-there are three sorts of human being who are particularly likely still to see point in it and befriend it. They are poets, scientists and children. Inside each of us, I suggest, representatives of all these groups can be found.
Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started.
wherever you find the greatest good, you will find the greatest evil, because evil loves paradise as much as good.
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.
One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.
The popes have spoken of human ecology, closely linked to environmental ecology. We are living in a time of crisis: we see this in the environment, but above all we see this in mankind Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules. God our Father did not give the task of caring for the earth to money, but to us, to men and women: we have this task! Instead, men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the 'culture of waste.'
Science only answers the question, How does it work? Or at most, What's there? Science asks what and how, philosophy asks why, myth and religion ask who. Who's in charge here? Who's the author? That's what we really long to know.
Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.
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