EVOLUTION
In college I took a science class titled, I think, Evolution. Why I took this class I have no idea. I think I met the science requriment by taking Physics simply out of curiosity because I didn‘t know anything about Physics. It was a curiosity that almost did me in. By mistake and very poor advising, if any, I took Introductory Physics for Science majors rather than the non science major version. My lab partner was a Korean whose dream was to win the Nobel Prize in physics. He had a world map chart on his wall which showed that the Nobel prize for Physics was moving east in the direction of Korea. The course was too easy for him, also poor advising, and he was later excused from a number of science courses. When we would do one of the physics experiments in the lab, our hands-on experience, he would set up the experiment, complete it, before anyone else was even started. I never knew what we had just done. I think, due to a desire to not have me be forced to repeat the class with him, the professor, whom I have no memory of, gave me a D, which I think completed my science requirement.
But somehow I took a biology course in evolution. I do remember the professor of this course and was fascinated. I have no idea what grade I got but I was fascinated for life by evolution.
Recently I bought an ebook on Kindle, The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusat and I realize how little I know about evolution. But ignorant as I am I am still fascinated. Part of the reason I know so little is that the understanding of evolution has changed enormously in the 65 years since I was in college as has all scientific knowledge. Many of the major discoveries that Brusat writes about have happened since 2000 and a good number in the last ten years.
I can barely follow the twists and turns of the rise and reign of the mammals except for one overwhelming realization, the enormity of time it took for mammals as we know them to develop. Mammals developed slowly 300 million years ago and thrived before and during the reign of the dinosaurs by being tiny, by being small mouse and rat sized creatures. The reign of the large dinosaurs ended 66 million years ago. A meteorite that first torched the earth and then left it in darkness for thousands of years killed off almost all plant life and all the large dinosaurs who depended on grazing for their survival. Only the tiny dinosaurs survived. I saw them walking across my lawn this morning, three black crows.
But in the 300 million years since the mammals and dinosaurs separated from each other over millions and millions of years one set of species would flourish and vanish, and then another would take their place and flourish and vanish and finally mammals as we know them dogs, rats, elephants, whales very, very slowly mutated away from each other. And finally, at the very end humans appeared and in the last flicker of an eye what seems to us to be the long stretch of human history happened.
I could barely understand what Brusat was describing. Until the arrival of DNA sequencing all he had was bones and teeth to identify the various species that came and went. But it wasn‘t the individual species or even how they evolved that got my attention, it was the overwhelming amount of time that this process took. We humans have been here such a brief time, species that have vanished were here millions and millions of years and there were a number of times when mass extinctions happened and the whole process of evolution almost has to start over from scratch. It is the enormous weight of time that I am knocked out by and the impermaence of almost all forms of life at every stage. This completely undercuts any sense I have of the importance of humans and especially this particular human, me. In the long process of evolution humans are just a blip and if we cause another mass extinction the process will go on without out us until the earth becomes a cinder, the vanishing of so many forms of life tells us that.
That is what I am getting out of the book and it makes me very uncomfortable.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 