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    In Prof. Grobstein's section on Thursday, one of the questions that came up was whether or not Darwin was a foundationalist. That is, did he believe that evolution and natural selection were headed towards an ideal...the human? After reflecting on this topic some more, I am starting to lean towards Darwin as being NONfoundationalist. Based on what I have read so far in "On the Origin of Species," my opinion has been that Darwin is not at all arrogant (about himself or about humans as a species); he demonstrates a profound respect for Nature and 'her' works, he constantly credits his fellow scientists/naturalists, and he demonstrates logical thinking, not imposing his own opinion without having at least stated what others think or have previously thought (even if he does ultimately mention they're wrong!). But I think he means well, he gives constructive criticism to others' thoughts.

   I also believe part of the problem with evolution as a concept today is that Darwin, as we have mentioned in class, was addressing fellow naturalists when he wrote this work. I looked on Wikipedia and this is what I found on naturalists: "Subsets of the naturalist view include the materialist and physicalist positions, which hold that humans are entirely physical....Naturalism, combined with the natural and social sciences, views humans as the unplanned product of evolution, which is operated in part by natural selection on random mutations."

This definition seems to fit how I have come to think of Darwin quite well. He really doesn't delve much into the human as a creature that is more special than the others, and he makes it especially clear that we are not magnificent in comparison to Nature. In fact, he uses the human as the example of what is undeniably inferior to Nature. He directs our attention to the marvels of nature, but almost just as often to the lesser magnificence of our man-made immitations (under domestication). He certainly values the knowledge and insight that man's domestication practices have provided him (and his colleagues) with, but other than that, the focus on humans as unique entities in the greater realm of life is, in my opinion, greatly downplayed in this work.

     I think that in many ways, it is this de-emphasis on human importance and distinction that bothers many people in some form or another. I also think that this idea is way more complicated than I could ever imagine. A quick search of 'Human Nature' on Wikipedia immediately revealed this to me http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature ; being human seems to mean a lot of things on a lot of levels. I think our tendency is to emphasize how we are different from everything else that lives (or has ever lived) over the ways in which we are the similar when we try to define ourselves...and this makes sense. However, Darwin seems less fascinated by humans themselves, and more fascinated with what they can find in nature when they look around a bit