http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/17/mediocre-poison-eaters-and-the-imperfection-of-evolution/
This is what I wrote on Google Plus about the article inked to above:
"The author maintains in a fascinating article that evolution is successful if the results are good enough, not perfect. The nice argument may well be the case, but the example, an oak tree which has not evolved an immunity to a specific disease, ignores the wondrous fact that in death there is more creation (the animals that live on decayed oak trees) and in fact, faster new creation sometimes. "
I hesitated to point out more, considering the forum, but in fact the situation the article discusses, is a great example of people ignoring the obvious. First -- the oaks-- if they lived forever, they would push everything else off the planet. Death, an aspect of the destructive flow, in fact is crucial to life, to the greater good, and minimally, what Jan Cox called "D" flow, can be said to stabilize the machinery -- steady the Magnus Machina, as he titled one book.
The binary intellect must consider that things are isolated. In fact "cause and effect," takes a new meaning if you try to see beyond the rational, this or that. You could say that the way things interact laterally is as important to understand, as pulling out one thread, and understanding one sequence. The fact is everything interacts with everything, and specifying a single strand as embodying cause and effect, as necessary as this artificiality is, becomes misleading, if the abstraction is taken as more than a temporary tool.
Widening your vision beyond either/or not only reduces silly statements like oak trees are an imperfect evolution, it allows perhaps a thought about the way things fit together, and what that could mean. To expand your scope to include more "both / and" situations, allows more insight into reality,
You might even glimpse the way people think.
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