The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories: Exploring the Significance of Diversity

"What do you think of this new chapter so far?"
Well, I think it's not so new...Mars has long been interesting as the most likely other place where life might have existed, and it might have existed in a carbon-based form that might be linked to Earth life. About 8 years ago, Bill Clinton 'fessed up to such research when someone leaked NASA findings about a Mars meteorite that landed on Earth. Reportedly, years of exploration had preceded the leak. The scientists involved found carbonate patterns, but carbon is present in materials that have never been alive; they found hydrocarbons created by bacteria, but these could have been earth-based contaminants; they found "magnetite" globules in a shape that seemed to indicate they were created by bacteria, but not everyone is convinced; they found what looked like fossils but could just as easily have been mineral formations. So the research has continued and there has long been the need for more samples. So, the newest chapter, including Bush's latest proclamation of a Man on Mars program, brings a bunch of fascinating questions to the front bunner once again.

Say we do verify that carbon-based life form(s) did exist on Mars... does that lead to a revision in the evolution story that embraces the possibility of Earthlings and Martians as related? Is the rest of the evolutionary food chain then seen as separate from us? Does this then conveniently allow religion and science to call a truce and co-exist, i.e., evolution for all life-forms but not for man? Or does it mean that life is no big deal...that life can occur most anywhere, given the right (and relatively easy to implement) conditions plus time. That would really throw cold water on the notion of one or more supreme beings as our creators.

If Mars life existed, how did it die? Was it intelligent, advanced? Did they burn off their atmosphere and disintegrate any evidence of a civilization? Say man convinces himself that Mars life did itself in...do we take any lessons to heart from that new belief? Do these lessons help us save ourselves from ourselves or do we become fatalistic? It's not even necessary for Mars life to have been intelligent. It could have inadvertently "traveled" to Earth as a simple life form and found a friendly climate and conditions in which to evolve. YIKES, things could even have gone the other way!

How do I think it will come out? Gosh. I think that we will eventually learn the facts regarding life or no life on Mars. I think that we will continue to hold hope about and maybe try to make Mars a second home for Earthlings in a bind—down the road. I don't think that the religion versus evolution (or versus science) debates will be resolved. They will evolve, but not complete. I do believe that Mars as an alternative eco-system would give us unimaginable clues and insights about our own. How we would use them is a anyone's guess.

I have two wishes of my own for this space venture. I wish that humans would mature beyond their need to be physically territorial (and aggressive), beyond their need to set physical foot on new ground in the process of answering the Mars questions. I have a strong hunch that much of the venture's work could be done by unmanned exploration, with technology acting as a virtual extention of man, by man. We would save so much money that's needed elsewhere—rather than have to pay for porting heavy stations through space. Seems the lion's share of cost is in how to deal with moving weight through space. More importantly, we might grow up a bit in the process.

My other wish is that the program's promoters would talk about the goals of this program as trying to find out whether there is/was life on Mars or not, with the understanding that it's just as interesting and important to know that Mars never had life as it is to find evidence of living organisms. I think we're denying the potential for valuable knowledge and fascinating implications (scientific and religious) if we don't acknowledge that it's equally OK to not find evidence of life there.

See you all next week!

but, i'm not sure if that's completely accurate: that we are 'giving up hope.' i don't think that's what it is...i think it's that we're scared shitless ... and when we hear that the ozone is being depleated because of the SUVs that we're driving, when we hear that people are starving while we are padding our soft cusioned sofas with couchpotato crums, when we hear that in fifty years a HUGE number of species on our planet will be extinct because the way WE live ... What do you do when you hear that you are slowly, but most definatly, killing yourself? we freeze up and we don't know how to process this information. and instead of givig up our present lifestyles we say that we would rather move to Mars. But i don't think we know what we're talking about.
last semester i read a wonderful book called "the salt eaters"
in this book a woman has just tried to kill herself, her life is painful, and the way she deals with it is she leaves herself, she leaves her body, and floats over her own life ...
and i think that is what we're doing. things hurt down here and so we drink ourselves into a gadamn stuppor, we fill our glasses with our paychecks and our high falutent education and fancy degrees and long long resumes and we leave our world, our body, behind. and each one of us needs to be smacked in the face and told, 'get back down here, get the godamn hell out of the stars, get off of mars and look at yourself, look here!' we have enough problems right here and we don't need to be looking stary-eyes out into space. fix the here and now and if we fail i don't think we want to be living anywhere else anyways.
but again i am not accurate... it's not that we drink ourselves stupid, it's that we think that if we don't FEEL our own death then we aren't expereincing it. if we can float above ourselves and not feel our own death then it doesn't matter. we don't cherish life enough to realize that pain is such a minor part of life no matter how great. when it really gets down to it, when we are dying to most painful, ugly death we cling onto life so tightly. even in the greatest pain, the pain that is exclusive, WE STILL CHOSE LIFE.

but, silly me, i digress.

one more thing: i just saw the movie 'minority report' with tom cruise. in this movie there is an institution called 'precrime' that is able to see into the future and faultlessly predict a murder before it is about to happen. so, the precrime police go to the scene of the murder seconds before it happens and arrest the perspective (but sure) murderer. and the question is: can we change our desitny? is it moral to arrest someone who has not yet commited the crime, but whose destiny dictates what he is to do? do we have the choice in those last seconds NOT to kill? do we, NOW, have the choice NOT to destroy this world?

and i think our destiny is destruction, but can we change that????????? the only thing stopping us is that we already beleive that are destruction is imminent. we beleive that we have already died. and we are hopelessly bleeding to death. BUT WE AREN'T. This beleif is what's going to cut us. BUT WE AREN'T CUT YET.

I think it is very important to explore WHY we are doing this just as much as what we are doing. It seems to me that "looking to the stars" is often what humans do to make sense of their own existence when things get particularly difficult on earth. The world situation right now seems somewhat similar to the situation that existed when we landed on the moon. It all boils down to a humans trying to create understanding- because I'm not quite sure if understanding is something the can quite exist organically. That's why writing and art are particularly valuable- they give structure and help to create an illusion of understanding- Maybe that's why we are doing this exploration- to create understanding. "How do you think this will come out?" I think it will inevitably make us think that we have succeeded in creating a "better" understanding. And better because the expedition is based in "reality" and confirmed by "technology". This is one of the reasons why this course seems interesting to me. I want to obtain a more expansive understanding of a relationship between science and literature- rather than seeing them as two distinct entities- one heavily based in reality and truth and the other rooted in the imaginative world. I can see already that it's much more expansive than that.

I think an interesting piece of fiction- something we "make up completely" could provide similar discoveries (just like the discovery of whether or not life can be sustained on mars, was there life etc...)if people had mindsets which were "inversely creative". I just made up that term- it's not the best :) By this I mean that people are creative enough to make up any story, to dream anything- but not "inversely creative" that is, creative enough to believe all stories to be valid and to believe stories as much as truth. We could just say that there was life on mars. We could say anything. Does there need to be proof? I think that 99 percent of people would say ABSOLUTELY! But I also know that the value of fiction is greater than people want to admit or perhaps want to explore- At any rate, the value of truth in the creation of and continuance of the story of evolution is something that deserves to be explored further.

However, there is a certain kind of excitement at the prospect of it all. I find the new discoveries and our relative success on Mars to be comforting. What we are doing there vaguely resembles an escape, like one of the undeniable functions that writing and reading can serve. I do think that there is a connection between the arts, the mind and space exploration which I'll think about more. I don't know why this in particular keeps coming into my mind. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with turning elsewhere- inventing an alternate future for ourselves, looking for an alternate reality. If nothing else it is an interesting mental exercise- the exploration itself and the technology that must be created in order to explore. The fact that we can do this does call to the forefront the power of the human mind. Just as one of the articles indicated that understanding mars would help us to better understand earth, I think that exercising the human mind in this vein could indeed help us learn to figure out various problems here. But that statement does frustrate me slightly because I'm not exactly sure how this would work.

The article about the clocks and Mars time being different from earth time was particularly fascinating to me because time is a human construct to begin with. Or at least I think it is. Is it? The fact that it would be important for us to measure Mars time seems to transcend technological significance. It makes me wonder what time is to begin with. And why humans made time. And why it is so important. Is it another instance of needing structure and understanding?

I think that the pictures of Mars are quite beautiful- because it seems so empty. I would love to do an art project with some of that imagery joined with the concepts of time and loss. It all seems like a very rich source for creative writing or artwork-

I loved reading the forum entries! Very interesting ideas- See you all soon!

your post made me think that, when I wrote about Mars as a possible alternative for "Earthlings in a bind down the road," (can one quote one's self?) I was actually thinking about that bind being caused by something out of our control, like the demise of our sun......but something that we might be clever enough to literally side-step, having started with "one giant step for mankind." It's interesting that those who've commented about the (good or bad) idea of Mars as a refuge have done so from the standpoint of man having ruined Earth and needing a fresh planet. What if it's just the next necessary step in the survival of our species? What if we were to clean up our act, take care of our planet, but still ultimately need to explore and develop Mars as a contingency plan?
Ro

But I wasn't thinking when I wrote the last post... if our sun becomes a brown dwarf or dies out, then Mars will be toast, as will the rest of this solar system. What we need to find--if we're serious about the notion of a "world without end" (in either a religious or secular sense) is another solar system with accommodations and the means to get to it. In the meantime, we are all bound by the same fate. It's a matter of when, not if. Even if we take really good care of Earth, we still need to get out of Dodge, not just to the next way station. So, going to Mars could buy us time, teach how to better take care of this planet, maybe prepare Mars as a spare, but it's really got to be about learning soooo much more in time to make a much bigger move. Or should we go for quality of life and focus on the immediate stuff around us...for as long as we have?

What's really beginning to tug at me is the notion of a virtual world...a definition of "world" as "where we are."

I also enjoyed comparing the European web site to the United States site. I thought that it showed the European scientists to be far more objective and scientific and less hopefull(?)...fictional. They presented the facts, on the geography of the planet, the environment, the purpose for the mars exploration mission. The United States web site, however, constantly wanted to make Mars a fun little game. There was a disappointing small amount of solid factual information on the planet. Instead all energy seemed to be turned to making Mars appealing to children. And what a good job they did in their Mars related storytelling: "The danger of Mars still lurks in our conscience, for Mars today is a hostile world, blanketed in toxic soil and zapped with radiation... We begin to brave the hardships because Mars is the only planet on which humans could one day settle, making it a place of hope as well as trepidation."

To end my rambling, and on another note.....In answer to Ro's question on whether we should put efforts into finding a habitat for a future when Earth's sun dies...I think not. I think we should concentrate on what we have, both on changing what we can and enjoying the Earth as we know it. Who knows if, even after much time and energy and resources, if there will be another place we can live in. This agian relates to religion, in a weird way.

Su Lyn's idea of an Arab state on Mars channels my own idealism. If, in fact, Mars is to become a habitable environment, what a wonderful chance for the world to redeem itself... For Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Kurds in Germany, decades or centuries of conflict over land rights may finally see a means to an end. Yet in the same breath, SuLyn deflates the peace bubble. We ARE the 'ones' with the power, the money and the need for trappings to prove ourselves to one another. Mars life will become the new status symbol, in the way that the cell phone was once rarely seen and oft envied. Which begs the question, at least in my mind, of how great a discovery this will be if it is only a means to take the disparity between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' to interplanetary status.

It confuses me, this human quest for tangible conquests. This is probably because I spend my time in college in search of some sort of momentary truth that is the least tangible and most fleeting, but what I consider the most desirable. Mars is not the solution for our overcrowding problems, our resource gluttony, our pollution creation. The red planet may risk becoming the next stage for the ongoing tragedy of the human nature of excess.

Unfortunately, I don't see any reason to believe that we will treat territory any differently because of its distance from the earth. All of the aforementioned groups of people have important things in common; they believe that their form of government is best and (crucially) that their God is THE God. These religious beliefs often require the belief that "the other guy's beliefs" are somehow satanic or in great disrespect or dishonor to their God. Not all nations are governed so strictly by their religion, but there are many that are. The cohabitation of these nations under one government may be so hard that we may either be forced to socially and emotionally catch up with technology, or technology may just have to wait for us. Inhabiting Mars may be an ability that we may technologically sense as quite close, but I don't know if each separate nation would want their nuclear weapons protected by the "other guy'" government. We're just not there yet. Mars will have to wait. Until then, we could put the money into schools, international education, and other types of international relations efforts in order to make this "exploration of the stars" worth considering as a venture for new habitation

On a different note, I'm really curious about how people in the non-Western world feel about the whole thing. I mean, do all "Earthlings" have a stake in the Mars exploration or is it just the people of America and the EU? If my government wasn't a huge proponent of the mission, I doubt that I would feel I was part of this story at all.

Lots to talk more about (and looking forward to a semester of doing it) but one issue from this afternoon sticks in my mind particularly: the idea that "science" is different from "story", and is in fact something that one can appeal to to test the "validity" or "correctness" of a story.

I think that's lots of peoples' story of the relation between science and story, but its not what I was trying to convey in my story this afternoon. What I wanted to convey is the idea that science IS story, in the sense that it is nothing more (and nothing less) than something one makes up to make sense of observations. And then tests/revises (inevitably) by making additional observations.

Am I SERIOUS about this? As a scientist? Yep. Moreover, I think the story that science is a story is itself a GOOD story ("good" in terms we need to talk more about; perhaps, for the moment, "has a long lifetime"?). If you're intrigued by that story, here are a few other places/ways I've tried to tell it ...

• A Vision of Science (and Science Education) in the 21st Century: Everybody "Getting It Less Wrong" Together
  
• Getting It Less Wrong, The Brain's Way: Science, Pragmatism, and Multiplism
  
• Making the Unconscious Conscious, and Vice Versa: A Bi-directional Bridge Between Neuroscience/Cognitive Science and Psychotherapy?
  
• "I Believe ..." Its Significance and Limitations for Individuals, Science, and Politics
  

Looking forward to talking more about this, among other things.

My grandfather (and primary mentor) was a scientist (chemist and metallurgist) who, before that, bailed out of theological studies in his final year of preparations to become a minister, having decided that agnosticism was a whole lot more comfortable. He talked about his scientific exploration as if it were always entwined with his agnosticism, and maybe it was even vice versa. His hobby was the history of science--some of which he helped make as a researcher at the newly formed General Electric Company in the early days of the last century. After listening to you yesterday and reading your post, I'm remembering his and my conversations and beginning to think that he was always coming at his questions (and mine) by testing and tinkering in the context of his long views of religion and science--in order to "get it less wrong." I'm remembering that, for him, nothing was ever cast in concrete. Whatever his latest findings were, they just set up the next iteration of questions and 'tests.'

Thanks for some new thoughts about science and religion as maybe creating and maintaining a necessary tension--even as they seem to asymtotically converge.

I think that Orah's sentence is wonderful.(beyond the sentence's implications, I really like the way the second half of the sentence flows) As for what the sentence made me think about...the idea that what really matters is the extent to which a story teller's voice can soothe people is fascinating to me. The only thing that I'd like to add to this is the idea that the PROCESS of finding a "less wrong" story through observation, imagination and story telling has been a process of tremendous anxiety and to a certain extent upheval. (causing in various "chapters of the story of evolution" the death of some scientists (story tellers), the creation of new technology, the re-thinking of the values of society etc.) As each new story is created, people must expand their minds to fit the new information which (as many people have indicated in the forum thus far) often does not conform to a person's "world view comfort zone." (religious or otherwise) In order to be ultimatley soothed by story (I wonder if this is possible- I think so because sometimes reading fiction gives me this sense) people need to be OPEN to the ongoing process of story telling in all of it's complexity. I do think that today people are more open to the implications of discovery and more willing to embrace a story which evolves rather than remains static. I guess the question is whether it is ever completely possible to find comfort in a story whose very basis is change... Evolution...to evolve...to change...the story of evolution is a story about change.

Is creationism, for instance, going to be around indefinitely because (drawing from Orah's comment) it satisfies the need for a story that works for us and is comfortable well? Or (drawing off of Elizabeth) will it die away because "in order to be ultimately soothed by story...people need to be open to the ongoing process of story telling in all of its complexity"? It sounds like Plato&Aristotle vs. Democritus&I-forget-the-rest again! (surprise?)

Here comes my cop out though; I think that the religion story- the story that God, or Gods, is/are behind the backdrop of the universe and running the show, not the story that God made the universe in seven days or any other given example of creationism, serves a different purpose than the science story. For this reason I do not believe that the two stories are mutually exclusive or that they are necessarily in competition with each other.

Back to a somewhat more relevant topic...I think that it's both a blessing and a curse for mankind to be inherently expansionist and curious in nature. We can never just be content with what we have, which forces us to search (however futilely or fruitfully) for better prospects while simultaneously rejecting at least a portion of our obligations for the Here and Now. For the time being, I am personally more concerned about the future of our species than that of some other extraterrestrial life form. Say we do stick either the Israelis or the Palestinians on Mars. Does that really solve anything or does it just add to more animosity and resentment? I guess that what I'm trying to say is that Mars is most definitely not our Messiah, although it is certainly awe-inspiring to know that the potential for the space program is endless, as are the possibilities for the discovery of extraterrestrial life.

Yes, science IS story and (this will sound predictable, but I'll say it anyway): storytelling (well done) IS science. That is to say: if we acknowledge that every account is temporary (as we are temporary), that every account is unfinished (as we are unfinished), then all storytelling (like all living) is an endless predicting and testing and revising, as we ask ourselves repeatedly how useful our current accounts are for making sense of what we (and others) are observing and experiencing. I'm convinced that this process--Quakers call it "continuing revelation"--can happen in religion as well as in science.

And yes, one measure of a "good story" is that it has "a long lifetime"; but a better story does something else: it generates further stories. I got this idea from Michael Tratner: that the better stories are those with enough familiarity to be understandable, enough novelty to be surprising, and enough of both to provide a pattern for repeated variants.

I'd spoken publically about these ideas before this course began--but am already ready (you guys are GOOD!) to revise what I said there/then. Following Su-Lyn: the best stories are those which enable us to ACT. In preparation for a graduate seminar later this week on Explorations of Teaching, I'm reading Paulo Friere's Pedagogy of Freedom. Freire, the great Brazilian educator, talks about science and storytelling in just the ways we've been using the terms: as a permanent process of searching that involves what he calls "critical consciousness." Freire recognizes that the risk of establishing a genuine public sphere (like this one?) is that the outcomes of our storytelling are NOT guaranteed--AND that the point of the whole process is that it facilitates both individual and social CHANGE—i.e.: that it enables us to MOVE.

Here's the rub, I think, to Lindsay's observation that she could be more supportive of the mission to Mars if there were something to gain by it. Problem is, we CAN'T know, ahead of time, where the gains will lie. (See tomorrow's reading--Schwartz's NYTimes article--on this: we can't get there except by going there.)

And, know what? I feel well on our way, and most excellently accompanied en route. Thanks to all, and looking forward to more....

Oops--not quite done. One more query, stepping off again from Lindsay's question about whether "all Earthlings have a stake in the Mars exploration." What would be required--do you think it desirable?--to make this a "collective human story from which no one feels estranged?"

I wonder if the notion that the best stories (the only good stories?) are those that provoke movement or action...change something in ourselves that causes us to change something outside of ourselves...and turn the story wheel in the process... I wonder if this notion feels good because our culture is pro-action. Reminds me of a twist on an old saying: "Don't just do something, stand there!" Stand there and think, be. This is not enough? Maybe we already suffer from a form of universal inferiority complex , keying off Lauren's post from yesterday. What does it mean to evolve? Can we actually get our own evolution more or less wrong? Does that depend upon the stories we make that move us along?
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According to Gregg Easterbrook, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, "Present systems for getting from Earth's surface to low-Earth orbit are so fantastically expensive that... it could only be accomplished by cutting heatlh care benefits, educations spending, or some other important programs. Or by raising taxes."

He continues "The drive to explore is part of what makes us human. Dreams must be tempered by realism, however. For the moment, going to Mars is hopelessly unrealistic."

The idea that the individuals desiring a manned exploration of Mars would attempt to make that dream a reality at the expense of large numbers of the less priveleged just re-enforces my fear that space exploration is the newest conquest for the elite.

This transfers into the discussion that has been going on about the purpose of stories. The notion that stories provoke action, and that action requires time, resources, and capital bother me a bit. The essence of a story lies in its intangibility, its availability, the fact that it is so utterly a characteristic of humanity that ties together, through shared human experience, the prince and the pauper. It seems a slippery slope towards elitism to assert that purpose of stories hinge upon allocation of resource and especially 'capital'. I dont like the idea of storytelling to be in any way exclusive. I\

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