hwaoh.blogg.se - A short history of nearly everything

Do you think life in the universe is inevitable or rare? Why? How about other complex (multi-cellular) life? How about intelligent life?ġ0.

Do a little research into Drake’s equation for the possibility of life on other worlds. How has this book affected your thinking about evolution? Do you agree that evolution may be "a lottery" or that, as human beings, "we are not the culmination of anything”?ĩ. We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even to make it better.Ĩ.It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and it’s worst nightmare simultaneously.The people who were most intensely interested in the world’s living things were the ones most likely to extinguish them.Over the last 50,000 years or so, wherever we have gone, animals have tended to vanish, in often astonishingly large numbers.What is the connection between human beings and extinction of other species? Consider, for instance, how the dodos and passenger pigeons became extinct? Bryson makes a number of statements on the subject. Follow-up to Question 5: Considering the Bryson's examples of powerful global forces beyond human control-including hurricanes, plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and ice ages-do you think differently about human ability to control what happens on earth? To what extent are we "masters" of the earth?ħ. How does this relate to the current consideration of global warming?Ħ. Bryson often cites examples of global crises that may have influenced the Earth in the past-meteor strikes, salinity crisis, volcanoes, changes in solar output.

What current widely held idea do you think might be disproven in the future?ĥ.

Are scientists any different from lay people in their resistance to change?.

Why do you think scientists are resistant to change?.

Follow-up to Question 3: At the same time, Bryson addresses the idea of scientists clinging to widely accepted but disproven ideas-a young earth and Ether are two that come to mind. What other theories faced initial rejection?Ĥ. Bryson gives a number of examples-the Big Bang and plate tectonics are two. A major theme of the book is resistance to new scientific ideas despite solid evidence for them. Still others wonder if we might soon reach the limits of our intellectual ability to understand the strangeness of atomic particles or explore multiple universes. Some even believe we have reached that point today. Bryson mentions that, several times in the past, scientists thought that all the big questions were answered. Is this surprising to you? How was science presented to you when you were in school?Ģ. This book presents science as a series of questions-mostly unanswered.