The "insignificance" of homo sapiens.

Would you think otherwise?

Francis,

Global warming merchants and many religionists obviously think homo sapiens is perhaps a "quantum leap".

Well, it seems everyone is entitled to have his own self-delusions.

I think the perception of our significance is just that. Our perception. But even though we've only been around for such a relatively short time, we may well have millions of years yet.
Or humans may go extinct. Or evolve into something else. A creature that will no longer call itself human.

Either way, homo sapiens is a step on the ladder, and is significant in the sense that the step is needed to get from the former to the next. But I seriously doubt that humans are the culmination of evolution. Not that I believe there's any grand design, but evolution is still active in the world, both outside us and within us.

The problem with these "rolls of time" teaching tools is that they miss the point that shear accident plays. At each "significant nodal point" the toilet paper should be torn and offset , and another seqence, along side should be placed to show how the many lifeforms overlap into the times that we call "ages of something or other". (for example the evidences of mammals equals that of dinosaurs and "proto mammals" occur earlier than the first true dinosaurs. Of course time itself is simply rolled out like a shade but consequent life forms should follow more like a closing fan. The problem with simplifying deep time is that we must be alert to the facts that there were many simultaneous things going on in the physical/chemical arenas, biogeography, and planetary positioning.

farmerman,

Are you implying that the appearance of homo sapiens was one such "significant nodal point" ?

Certainly, to us its "the defining moment in time". We are everything that the rolls of paper had in mind. (Until something more sentient shows up)

I like that! I may use it in the classroom. I agree that the toilet paper roll (or minutes/seconds in a 24 hour period) is simplistic.

As the the thread's question..... I do think we are that insignificant. I see us as another animal. One that is voracious and selfish and powerful. But, we are just another animal.

We are sitting comfortably in our homes connected to other homes in vast paved over sections of land we like to call cities and towns. Weve pretty muched raped the land and rendered chunks of the environment barren or sterile. We communicate but not in a real sense of cooperative action, all the while sitting on a way to render the planet one huge parking lot and we ask "are we insignificant". If I was any other creature Id be pissing myself about this species that periodically just blows "cities " to smithereens.

My definition of Insignificant is more measurable in the Richter scale rather than some scale of temporal duration .

farmerman,

Just to play devils advocate a little...isn't it true that other species have anti-social and destructive characteristics ? Some ants enslave others. Locusts devastate vegetation. Bacteria and viruses wipe out millions of other life forms.

Some would argue that any "significance" we have is not in terms of our "negative" attributes which are certainly "large scale" but perhaps our "positive" ones. For example we are the first species (as far as we know :wink: ) to travel to another celestial object. Yet even this some might say is trivial given the vastness of space.

Our impact v our duration. That was what my original point about "we are the culminating creature of the toilet paper roll" was meant to convey. (This is true at least to us). I dont think that even porpoises give a rats ass about their place in line of "isignificance"

Anyway,I was more critical about these rolls of paper (or seconds in an hour) timelines that we simplistically teach our kids.
Id rather we teach the concept of time and its events as a chart with multiple events on the absissa and time in the ordinate. Wed have planetary events, parallel to biogeographic events, next to tectonic events. Soon the whole thing makes absolute sense when we see the origin of life in the seas as H2 and CO2 is abundant , and later we see the rise of life on land as free oxygen appaears in the atmosphere. Then all hell breaks loose and everything seems to parallel tectonics, atmospherics or cosmic smackdowns and vulacnism. (Not to mention continents rafting here and there)

The kids will then see something that makes a world of sense.

Of course were significant in all ways that we choose to measure. However, permanent? who knows, the book isnt completed yet.

I have it on good authority that the highest concentration of irrelevant homo sapiens is to be found in Pennsylvania . . .

farmerman,

Removing my "devils advocate hat" I would concede that a linear representation distorts concepts of "significance" and that logarithmic or other models (including those of catastrophe theory) might be more appropriate. However I feel that there is sufficient "pedagogical" utility in the toilet roll model to allow children to seriously question anthropocentrism and some of the religious myths which sustain it.

I disagree . I feel that kids are quite able to absorb the key points of a timeline that is events driven. It IS kind of anthropocentric to develop thee "Age of------" timelines because they dont stress how dumb luck plays a driving role in the results of our biological diversity.
Was man inevitable?
If ------- did not happen, would we be here?

These are some of the questions Id like to see kids debate while their imaginations arent all boxed in by some discipline or another.

Set, Pennsylvania is a Quaker constructed word that means "I dont give a **** whose woods these are"

heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .

That was a good one, Boss . . .