October 6, 2016 - 12:32
- Difficult for the scientific community to accept new, incongruous ideas
- People in general tend to ignore/overlook ideas that don't fit neatly into worldview, example of early assumptions about fossils
- Cuvier - noticed fossils, hypothesized of relatively quick, dramatic extinction events
- Graptolites, "written rock", idea of writing history into rocks
- Eventually all our museums, factories, etc will all be crushed into a thin layer, even though it all seems so big and important to us now
- Most eras ended with change in climate, driven by (possibly caused by organisms) imbalances/major changes in environment, and other organisms couldn't adapt fast enough
- Idea of "anthropocene", humans are the ones driving the next extinction event by altering environment, through activity, mostly unintentional
- Difference because humans understand history and science of extinction, will that be relevant? Or is extinction event inevitable after a certain length of time?
- Humans see ourselves as seperate from nature, but we're still part of it and affected by it
- Changing name to Anthtropocene in recognition of human's effects on the Earth, positions humans as driving factor
- What's the function of seemingly trivial/personal interjections, about smirr, going to dinner, etc?
- Connection to coyotes from "Ravens at Play", think it's our responsibility to intervene and save these species, but is human intervention the only way to solve human-created problems?