Thursday, February 10, 2011

What I've been Reading

Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin by Steven J. Gould. Reading Gould for the first time, it was obvious how much he would have influenced the science blogger's and journalists like Carl Zimmer and Ed Young  (and may be Malcolm Gladwell as well). World not only lost a great paleontologist but a greater writer, thinker and indigenous teacher. Wish he was alive to continue his teachings...

Anthropocentric human parochialism puts us at the top of the Darwinian evolution tree while the fact is microbes (bacterias and co.) are more diverse, complex, ubiquitous, adaptive and has always been the roots of life on this planet. Gould elegantly decimates that human arrogance.


"Full ten percent of our own dry body weight consists of bacteria, some of which, although they are not a congenital part of our bacteria, some of which although they are not a congenital part of our bodies, we cannot live without them."

 

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