…and this is a 
Tips for flourishing after a mass extinction. Ceratites nodosus (MCZ-7232) (A), from the Triassic of Germany, was similar to the ceratitid ammonoid species that thrived in the water column in the Early Triassic (1), while bottom-dwelling species languished. Key to the ceratitids' rapid success after the end-Permian mass extinction were their ecological tolerances, which may be inferred by reference to their closest living relatives, the coleoids (squids, octopuses, and cuttlefish), including the low-oxygen specialist Vampyroteuthis infernalis (B).
This picture has a little story behind it. Over 250 million years ago, our world experienced the most massive extinction event known, with over 99% of all individuals on the planet dying out abruptly, and diversity was greatly limited for a few million years after that. One possible explanation for the Permian extinction is a correlated series of massive volcanic eruptions that burned through thick coal deposits and drowned the earth in CO2 — global warming on a massive scale. Even cephalopods suffered. The ceratatid ammonoids had been in decline for a long time, but the extinction nearly wiped them out, reducing them to only a few struggling genera.
But then something interesting happened. After the great extinction, the ammonoids exploded in diversity, radiating rapidly. Something about them had made some of them capable of riding out the disaster, and then exploiting the changed world afterwards.
(Click for larger image)
Total generic richness [Sobs; black bold line, all ammonoids; gray lines, major ammonoid groups; Permian dotted line, alternate data from Ammon (16)] and mean Chao2 estimate of the overall generic richness with its 95% confidence interval (large circles with vertical bars) (table S1). PTB, Permian-Triassic boundary; 1, Kasimovian; 2, Gzhelian; 3, Asselian; 4, Sakmarian; 5, Artinskian; 6, Kungurian; 7, Roadian; 8, Wordian; 9, Capitanian; 10, Wuchiapingian; unlabeled successive intervals, Changhsingian, Griesbachian, Dienerian, Smithian; 15, Spathian; 16, Early Anisian; 17, Middle Anisian; 18, Late Anisian; 19, Ladinian; 20, Early Carnian; 21, Late Carnian; 22, Early Norian; 23, Middle Norian; 24, Late Norian; 25, Rhaetian.
One speculative explanation for the secret of their success is the ability of some members of the cephalopod clade to survive in cold, nearly anoxic conditions, like Vampyroteuthis infernalis. They were able to rebound quickly because of their dismal metabolism and the general fecundity of cephalopods. They restored some ecological webs faster than previously thought and provided an environment for further growth of more severely crippled clades.
It just goes to show you that our current episode of global warming is a relatively minor event. Life will go on. Fast-living organisms with high metabolic demands like, say, humans, might suffer and die from the environmental consequences of a high CO2 atmosphere, but don't worry — the cephalopods will live on. They might even get a happy surge in numbers from the changes.
Brayard A, Escarguel G, Bucher H, Monnet C, Brühwiler T, Goudemand N, Galfetti T, Guex J (2009) Good Genes and Good Luck: Ammonoid Diversity and the End-Permian Mass Extinction. Science 325(5944):1118-1121.
Marshall CR, Jacobs DK (2009) Flourishing After the End-Permian Mass Extinction. Science 325(5944):1079-1080.
Life Science
Comments
Posted by: Barklikeadog | August 28, 2009 3:16 PM
Somehow this leaves me with little comfort.
Posted by: Gryllus | August 28, 2009 3:17 PM
How do creationists explain this kind of data?
Posted by: David Lee | August 28, 2009 3:18 PM
I wonder if some squid will move into the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, maybe even move up river to MN. Make pontoon boating a little more exciting for the middle-class squires...
Posted by: bsk | August 28, 2009 3:28 PM
Pzwned.
Posted by: Cyrock | August 28, 2009 3:40 PM
Gryllus, this is perfectly explained by a massive flood 4000 years ago.
Posted by: Becky | August 28, 2009 3:40 PM
The cephalopods will treat the Earth better than we humans.
Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline.
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August 28, 2009 3:43 PM
Becky,
I'm sure the dinosaurs said the same thing about the tree shrews when the asteroid hit.
Posted by: Marcus | August 28, 2009 3:46 PM
So what you are saying is, if the environment gets bad enough Cthulhu will re-awaken?
Posted by: daveau | August 28, 2009 3:47 PM
Global warming shouldn't necessarily be our biggest concern. We need to be reminded that it's really a symptom of human overpopulation. I ran across this depressing article the other day. Talk about uncomforting.
Whatever happens to the planet, and to humans, something should survive to perhaps do a little better.
OTOH, I adore Vampyroteuthis infernalis. Yay, Friday!
Posted by: Rolan le Gargéac | August 28, 2009 4:01 PM
The vampire squid is just so beautiful ! The eyes ! The eyes !
OT - On Jason Rosenhouses blog http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/ where he is reviewing Why There Almost Certainly is a God commenter mrcreosote just comes straight out with this
Oh, dear.
Sorry.
Posted by: MookieB-C | August 28, 2009 4:03 PM
I, for one, await our Vampire Squid Overlords.
Posted by: AlanWCan | August 28, 2009 4:05 PM
LALALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!! PRAISE JEBUS!!!
Posted by: JD | August 28, 2009 4:16 PM
Sorry, I am a bit clueless here... what is it with this blog and cephalopods?
Posted by: Masklinn | August 28, 2009 4:18 PM
Yay, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, best squid ever!
Especially in pineapple form, it looks way awesome.
Posted by: Scotlyn | August 28, 2009 4:22 PM
Was it 99% of individuals or 99% of species? Or are they the same thing?
Posted by: JiminKy | August 28, 2009 4:29 PM
So sluggish creatures that are desperate to reproduce are the most likely to survive global warming?
Ha ha! I shall live on to share the Earth with multi-armed sucker-creatures! Hooray! ... um, I guess.
Posted by: meh1963 | August 28, 2009 4:30 PM
So what you're saying is that the cephalopods will rise from the deep and take over, ultimately.
I think I've heard this story, but Lovecraft never quite got round to writing a scene where Cthulhu actually comes back....
Posted by: Qwerty | August 28, 2009 4:31 PM
JD, hang around for enough time and you may find out. Then, again, you still may have the same question.
For a different picture, tune in on Mondays for Mary's Metazoan.
Posted by: Dan Milton | August 28, 2009 4:32 PM
"...the most massive extinction event known, with over 99% of all individuals on the planet dying out abruptly."
Did you mean individuals and, if so, how do you know? Or did you mean species (or genera)?
Posted by: 'Tis Himself | August 28, 2009 4:41 PM
Don't be so modest. You're more than a bit clueless.
Posted by: MadScientist | August 28, 2009 4:50 PM
I've always wondered how 'rapid' the 'rapid extinction' was. Was it decades, centuries, or millenia?
There is no doubt that humans will survive the current warming; CO2 in the atmosphere is still almost 2 orders of magnitude below the point at which humans will really struggle. Just don't imagine that we'd still have our cities and parks or even the internet. Now there's something for a science fiction story - earth warms, many species become extinct, and a few tens of thousands of years later species migrate from Africa to the rest of the world - again.
Posted by: luna1580 | August 28, 2009 5:00 PM
why does seed have the banner ad "amazing facts about jesus!" from these people:
http://www.everystudent.com/index.html
stuck on your blog? can't you talk to them about that?
Posted by: TSFN | August 28, 2009 5:25 PM
And here we thought we were doing something good by trying to battle childhood obesity. Looks like we should be encouraging it in order to lower metabolisms and increase the human race's odds of surviving the rise in CO2 levels. I always suspected gym class would be the death of me. I just never thought it would destroy mankind.
Posted by: Knight of L-sama | August 28, 2009 5:27 PM
Scotlyn, Dan, if I'm remembering the research I did for a project on the topic last year, it was 99% of marine species, 75% of land species went extinct and those species that did survive are presumed to have suffered something like 90+% reduction in population.
So from a marine perspective at least, the answer is both. They don't call it The Great Dying for nothing.
Caveat: I did this project over a year ago and was more interested in the geological traces for probable causes than the details of the extinction rates.
Posted by: flyingbuttressman | August 28, 2009 5:33 PM
Did anyone else notice the ad banner for cosmic fingerprints? Looks like they're getting creative with their ad buys.
Posted by: Islander | August 28, 2009 5:40 PM
"It just goes to show you that our current episode of global warming is a relatively minor event. Life will go on."
I can feel the quote miners coming...
Posted by: Wicked Lad | August 28, 2009 5:42 PM
Should I assume you've seen Bruce's Friday Squid Blogging today? I gotta say, his is funnier than yours this time. Just sayin'.
Posted by: mothra | August 28, 2009 5:43 PM
I presume PZ meant individuals rather than species as the usual figure for species extinction is more like 94%- still devastating. An alternative theory of Permian mass extinction is release of undersea trapped methane gas which also would reduce oxygen levels. This theory is mentioned in the books 'Oxygen' and 'Gorgon' In any case, present oxygen levels are at least one third below Permian maxima and so we have no giant insects today. :(
Posted by: Darren Garrison | August 28, 2009 5:57 PM
Sorry to go so OT on this, but I just saw on my local news what is officially the Worst Miracle Ever.
http://www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=10998150
http://blog.al.com/live/2009/08/standing_broom_in_prattville_s.html
Posted by: Jeff S | August 28, 2009 6:00 PM
@16
We shall inherit the earth!
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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August 28, 2009 6:14 PM
I wonder why anti-conservationists never cite the end-Permian extinction as evidence that we shouldn't expend any resources protecting animals from extinction "until all the science is in" à la the climate change denialists: "we've seen all sorts of extinctions in the past, and humans weren't even around", "populations fluctuate all the time", "there are more cows today than ever before, so extinctions are a hoax", and "fuck you, Yangtze River Dolphin."
Posted by: recovering catholic | August 28, 2009 6:32 PM
I can no longer resist. I'm going down to the courthouse tomorrow to change my legal name to Vampyroteuthis infernalis.
Posted by: Cuttlefishpoet@gmail.com | August 28, 2009 6:46 PM
JD @#13--Science is a cephalopod.
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2009/08/science-is-cephalopod.html
Posted by: recovering catholic | August 28, 2009 6:53 PM
Oops, cuttlefish--wonder if you meant to give out your email address?? BTW, I've got a wonderful new t-shirt with calico cuttlefish on it--I'll send you a photo...
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | August 28, 2009 6:56 PM
Didn't think I had done that... bummer. but it is posted on my site, so unless PZ fixes it, so it goes, and I can live with that. Thanks, rc!
Posted by: llewelly | August 28, 2009 6:58 PM
A wonderful book about this same extinction event, is Under A Green Sky, by Peter Ward.
Posted by: llewelly | August 28, 2009 7:04 PM
Cephalopods, with their numerous, strong, sexy, tentacles, give the mostest bestest hugs in the whole wide world. And every sucker on a cephalopod's tentacles can give a great kiss.Posted by: Jody | August 28, 2009 7:06 PM
PZ: I actually persuaded my Reagan-loving father over to our side based on a similar line of arguing.
I pointed out that yes, life would almost certainly go on, just not for US. And even if he wasn't around to see it, his grand-daughters might be, or even their kids. That really opened his eyes.
Posted by: amphiox | August 28, 2009 7:08 PM
Is Vampyroteuthis officially a squid? I was under the impression that it was more closely related to the stem group that gave rise to both octopi and squid. (It doesn't have the two long tentacles that squid do, or does it?)
Posted by: frenchy | August 28, 2009 7:10 PM
PZ my friend, I love this stuff! Please have more postings like this.Reality is so much more interesting and fascinating than empty superstition!
Posted by: Shenda | August 28, 2009 7:12 PM
I did some quick searching for the Permian extinction rates. The rates and units of measure (species, families, etc.) vary slightly in almost all of the sources I could quickly find.
According to Britannica.com, the extinction occurred over a period of 15 million years and caused the extinction of “over 95 percent of marine and 70 percent of terrestrial species. In addition, over half of all taxonomic families present at the time disappeared.”
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1481207/Permian-extinction
I saw no clear estimation of individual death rates on any of the websites.
Posted by: Katkinkate | August 28, 2009 7:17 PM
I've heard that cephalopods (esp. squid) are already benefiting from the human-driven collapse of fisheries. Calamari could be the only seafood we have left if we don't take more care of the fish.
Posted by: R Hampton | August 28, 2009 7:39 PM
It seems to me that one explanation for an explosion in evolutionary diversity comes as a consequence from a lack of competition in newly opened-up new niches.
For example, a competitor(s) with a more efficient body plan(s) for exploiting a given niche may have forced out ammonoids in the past, but extinction removed that barrier. "Normal" ammonoids would have benefited as well as their aberant or mutant offspring that otherwise would have fallen victim to predation or some other negative pressure. As a result, ammonoid populations would quickly expand to fill as much ecological space as the limitations of their bodies permit. Competition would then arise between all the "normal" ammonoids and the growing varieties of mutants.
Naturally a few of the mutants would possess alterations that conferred an advantage when used in these new niches. And because more than one type of mutation would have been beneficial, several different groups of mutants would have congregated in the same newly opened niche. Inevitably they mingle, reproduce, and pass on multiple beneficial mutations to their offspring, leading to higher rates of success, higher numbers of offspring, and over time a dominance over non-specialized ammonoids -- in other words, the beginnings of new species.
Posted by: R Hampton | August 28, 2009 7:46 PM
I meant to conclude by saying that the implications for ammonoids is that, as a species compared to the other survivors, they had naturally higher rates of mutation-per-birth and/or a wider range of variation in their morphology. In short, they were better adapted to be generalists than specialists.
Posted by: amphiox | August 28, 2009 7:50 PM
In any mass extinction scenario, we should expect the death rate among individuals to be several orders of magnitude greater than the extinction rate of species, because a species can survive even if only a tiny population makes it through the bottleneck - in theory a single pregnant female could be all it takes to re-establish the population.
One could posit that some surviving species were in fact completely unscathed, losing none of their population beyond normal turnover rates during the crisis, but for a global crisis like any mass extinction, to posit this for more than a few very rare exceptions smacks of special pleading. Most surviving species were likely reduced to a tiny population of shell-shocked survivors who just made it through by the skins of their teeth (or whatever equivalent there-of).
So with a species extinction rate of 90%, an individual death rate of 99% is reasonable - probably actually a gross underestimate. The actually individual death rate is probably higher than 99.99%.
Posted by: BobH | August 28, 2009 7:54 PM
250 million years??? Didn't you learn ANYTHING at the Creation Museum? ;)
Posted by: Ichthyic | August 28, 2009 8:11 PM
It seems to me that one explanation for an explosion in evolutionary diversity comes as a consequence from a lack of competition in newly opened-up new niches.
this is actually an old idea (goes back at least to Hutchison in the mid 50's, if not further), based on the "empty nice" hypothesis.
overview:
http://knol.google.com/k/klaus-rohde/vacant-niches-in-ecology/xk923bc3gp4/8#
Niche theory of course has become much more nuanced since then.
If you're curious, you might try searching on "nonequilibrium ecology"
There's a book with that title that reviews the relevant issues nicely.
or, just grab a standard college ecology text published within the last 5 years.
this one is a good general intro:
http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405111178.html
and should be available at most libraries.
Posted by: steveh | August 28, 2009 8:21 PM
Hmmm, not sure about this one... But I'm calling Homeland Security just to be on the safe side.
Posted by: Substance McGravitas | August 28, 2009 8:24 PM
Even cephalopods suffered.
WHY GOD WHY???
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | August 28, 2009 8:34 PM
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2009/08/selection-favors-prepared-cephalopod.html
I had hoped to beat Myers to press on this story, but that was not in the cards. I do, however, have an illustration he does not. (which I do not know how to post here, or I would simply post the whole verse and illo together. Sorry.
Posted by: F | August 28, 2009 10:36 PM
>i>but don't worry — the cephalopods will live on. They might even get a happy surge in numbers from the changes.
Absolutely!
While the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus may or may not survive, that nice will eventually be filled by the far more adapted Squibbon. Critters like the Megasquid and the Swampus will also roam the Earth. Cthulhu wills it.
Posted by: Hypatia's Daughter | August 28, 2009 10:36 PM
#31 Brownian
Ah, but they have! Not the end-Permian, specifically, but any report about previous warm periods, cold periods, etc and out comes "See, cars didn't make it happen back then!" and "The world survived, so why get all het up about it happening now?"
My favorite was one politician who said "What's so bad about global warming? Maybe we will be able to grow pineapples in Florida!"
Yes, fuckwit, and what if the US can no longer grow wheat on the plains? What happens to the US if it loses its 'breadbasket' and cannot feed its own population?
Probably, the temperate grain belt would move farther north in Canada; and I'm sure the Canucks will be happy to export it to their American cousins - for the right price.
Posted by: F | August 28, 2009 10:37 PM
but don't worry — the cephalopods will live on. They might even get a happy surge in numbers from the changes.
Absolutely!
While the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus may or may not survive, that nice will eventually be filled by the far more adapted Squibbon. Critters like the Megasquid and the Swampus will also roam the Earth. Cthulhu wills it.
Posted by: luna1580 | August 29, 2009 1:30 AM
OT, but very interesting:
http://www.citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090827/GJNEWS02/708279645/-1/CITNEWS
judge orders 10 year-old new hampshire girl to attend public school (at her father's request) as her home-schooling has left her with a "too vigorous" defense of the particular strict fundamentalist christian indoctrination her mother has home-schooled into her. but she is meeting or exceeding all state educational testing standards for her age. her father has been legally pursuing this for at least 3 years. the "too vigorous" quote came from a worldnutdaily version of the story, but is indeed a quote.
what will happen to amanda in new hampshire? this will be an ongoing court battle.
Posted by: Ichthyic | August 29, 2009 1:52 AM
in #47:
"empty nice"->"empty niche"
in case it wasn't obvious that it was a typo.
Posted by: rath | August 29, 2009 4:31 AM
I have a poll to crash:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/08/20/hot-seat-should-fox-fire-glenn-beck
"Should NewsCorp fire Glenn Beck?"
The wingnuts have already decided to vent their fury on it.
Posted by: ian | August 29, 2009 5:21 AM
The nature of Cthulhu's grand design becomes clear. Exterminate the humans and leave the cephalopods to thrive and offer up worship.
Posted by: Ploon | August 29, 2009 7:07 AM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8228098.stm
I already thought the guy who got Aung San Suu Kyi another 18 months was a complete moron, but now it turns out he's also a devout Mormon. Why do those two so often go together?
Posted by: Rob W | August 29, 2009 7:19 AM
I just read this to my 6 month old daughter. She enjoyed the tale, but would still like us to fix the current problems.
Posted by: Paul Bell | August 29, 2009 7:27 AM
For a slightly exaggerated (but in principle correct) and entertaining take on evolution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DajTbUhRykU
from the same album - fu$$ing in heaven
Posted by: Devonian | August 29, 2009 7:35 AM
I wonder if Lystrosaurus might have lucked out this way, and THAT'S what allowed it to utterly dominate the world for a while...Posted by: MadScientist | August 29, 2009 8:02 AM
[OT]: I thought I'd dredge up the dead and animate them again. Yes, "Unscientific America" is back. I just finished Ben Goldacre's book "Bad Science" and a line in his epilogue caught my attention:
"The indulgent and well-financed 'public engagement with science' community has been worse than useless, because it is too obsessed with taking the message to everyone, rarely offering stimulating content to the people who are already interested."
So others' criticisms that providing "media" (whatever the hell that is) training to scientists will not have any great effect on science and the public is not mere armchair rhetoric; this has been done elsewhere so there must be some data. I would agree with Goldacre though; it is very important to communicate with the people who are interested. For the people who aren't interested, it would be nice if they were taught how to think but I certainly don't expect them all to become Nobel laureates. What's on the television and the news does influence people (unfortunately) - just think of the 'CSI' graduates - but do we really want people flocking to the natural sciences? (Aren't there enough low-paid scientists?) I think it's important that people are aware of the possibilities and can choose something which they are genuinely interested in, but all the same I don't expect them all to be highly conversational with science.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | August 29, 2009 11:35 AM
Rohde (2005)?
Posted by: harold | August 29, 2009 11:53 AM
Fast-living organisms with high metabolic demands like, say, humans, might suffer and die from the environmental consequences of a high CO2 atmosphere, but don't worry — the cephalopods will live on. They might even get a happy surge in numbers from the changes.
This was written in a humorous vein, but still...
The subjective idea that human life is of little value, which is a possible misunderstanding of the above quote, even in context, is not characteristic of atheist, agnosticism, or apatheism overall, as far as I know.
The reason I bother to bring this up is that actual sincere disregard for the value of human life is characteristic of many unpleasant, disturbed elements who frequently express themselves on the internet. Many or most of whom tend to claim to be religious.
Cephalopods are beautiful and fascinating, as is all of life on earth in my subjective opinion, but I for one prefer that we humans try not to destroy ourselves.
Posted by: astrounit | August 29, 2009 6:34 PM
harold #64 says, "Cephalopods are beautiful and fascinating, as is all of life on earth in my subjective opinion, but I for one prefer that we humans try not to destroy ourselves."
I'll ditto that sentiment. But the cephalopod-celebration (if I may call it that, while ducking) is just a convenient and charming device that properly views Homo sapiens as just another species indubitably exposed to exactly same set of environmental conditions and natural laws that any other species is, and nothing MORE than just that - even given our considerable wherewithal in intellect and technology, which are ALSO governed by those conditions. In other words, we aren't automatically imbued with any supernatural advantage. Such a conceit is deeply rooted in vanity, not on evidence.
But unless we reduce our numbers to at least a tenth of its current level within the next century or two in a sane and controlled fashion, we are inevitably going to crash that population of ours in the most horrific way, and likely take every specialized animal above 10 kilograms with us.
If cephalopds or anything else inherits the Earth, any potentially intelligent descendants of theirs will have very little to work with after we're through with it.
Let's not forget, either, that the Sun is gradually getting hotter as it ages on the Main Sequence. Anyone who thinks that life will continue to thrive within another short several hundred million years hasn't looked hard at Venus yet. Any tipping of the precarious balance comparable to what we're now seeing, if it occurred just a few hundred million years from now, could conceivably mean that significant parts of the equatorial regions would exceed the boiling point of water. After that things would go south very quickly, and rather permanently. A runaway greenhouse that takes place after temperatures rise frequently above the boiling point of water, inevitably leading to a thick water-vapor atmosphere (imagine the oceans boiled off) will not sustain anything more complex than microbes. Earth isn't as near to the Sun as Venus is, but a global temp of 450K doesn't feel a heck of a lot cooler than Venus' 750K (compare those temps to our current ~280K, and appreciate that life seems to thrive best between the feezing and boiling points of water).
It seems to me that the only long-range solution to preserving whatever life is extant indefinitely into the future critically depends on the presence and competent stewardship of an intelligent civilization (no, it doesn't have to be human, and no, life doesn't necessarily need to be restricted to the planet of origin) to make it so. If the emergence of intelligence ANYWHERE has any "ultimate purpose" it can only be as conservationist and bioculturist. (Of course, such a "purpose" can only emerge as a motivation within intelligent beings: the rest of the universe doesn't bestow it or even care, and nothing purported to "exist" outside of nature does either, as all the evidence abundantly shows).
Does anybody seriously think that another several hundred million years is more than enough time to ensure that surviving species evolve into an intelligent form with a technical facility to help preserve life beyond the natural lifetime of the capacity of the planet, before wrecking themselves as thoroughly as we seem to be doing? How many trials does it take to get a permanent hit on an emerging intelligent species that isn't nearly as burdened as we are by stupidity, both learned and inherited - and before anybody jumps down my throat for that (and I could understand why!) I hasten to add that I'm talking about is the brain structure we've inherited from our remote ancestors, even pre-vertebrate. Okay?
We operate now on a slap-dash structure that cumulatively evolved to process stimulus information in a fundamentally new way (the abstract thinking made possible by the frontal cortex) but saddled with the other necessities of function and regulation that keeps us alive individually and as a species, which naturally impinges (or even interferes) with the output of the frontal lobes.
Information processing in the abstract modeling mode (as opposed to simple reflex or pre-programmed/"instinctual" behavioral response) has ALWAYS been associated with an attention to evidence and the application of logic (or, "pattern-recognition", if you like), and in that sense we've ALWAYS done "science" as long as we've been human (as PZ has recently beautifully expounded upon in his talk for the fine people of the Secular Student Alliance, if I am not mistaken). It's pretty clear to me that many other species employ the same basic plan: abstract processing of information in order to build a mental model of the world - the list is too gigantic.
Imagination is without a doubt a major (if not critical) player in intelligence, but it is a spontaneous generator almost certainly supplied by the conflicts and detours posed by "basement brain" parts, from the brainstem to the limbic system. Then there are all those other queer accoutrements - from funny little glands, to the assymetric specialization of the two hemispheres (which I've always suspected to foster the opportunity for the internal "dialog" that we identify as "thinking").
One question is, how smart do we think we are? Do we allow imagination, undisciplined and ungoverned by the orderly sector of our brains to run amok and completely dictate the content of our conceptual models? Can we recognize that our very civilization cultivates a very cozy environment within which is preserved a majority of the basic human units who are disconnected from natural reality in favor of fantasies of the imagination? Because it doesn't hurt to "believe"???
The more pressing question posed to us at the moment is whether we behave like a brick-dumb run-away bacterial culture in a finite dish or the intelligent and emminently adaptable species we allege ourselves to be. If the latter, one must assume we actually recognize the choice and will actually act on appropriate measures to secure our future as well as that of our fellow passengers. We're all in the same boat (or is it a petri dish?) and critically rely on each other to survive.
Besides, I like lions and tigers and whales. Bears too.
That makes ridding ourselves of the tyranny of supernaturiast hogwash/religious thinking critically imperitive.
Posted by: Everbleed | August 29, 2009 6:36 PM
harold @64
You make an obvious observation and point.
With just six billion of us in a Universe of a billion billion stars, I have thought that we humans may be the rarest and subsequently the most valuable life form in the Universe. Merely the contemplation of that fact verifies our rarity and value. Yet people say the Universe would be better off without us. And by the way, let's start with our neighbors...
There is more and more a cynicism about human kind by human kind that pains me every time I encounter it. And religious people most of all, who claim to worship a deity in our image, seem the most disposed through history to kill humans off regardless of their rarity and value.
A dear friend, well read, intelligent and insightful, came to the conclusion we humans have no value because we "destroy everything we touch". I asked him if he thought the humans that made the band Pink Floyd had value. (His favorite band.) "OK" He said, "The Floyd do but the rest of them can burn."
We had to part ways over precisely this issue and our opposing frames of reference.
And now I see it everywhere. Billions waiting for an apocalypse because "we deserve it".
Posted by: jak hdfk | August 29, 2009 6:55 PM
#21 you not heard the rule? last ones in, first ones out.
not fair, i know. but dems de rulez.
and no. art, poetry and music don't count for sh*t.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | September 1, 2009 7:57 AM
Oh no. They tried to count genera. Genera are not countable; even on average, they contain exactly as many species as the taxonomist who classified them wants – and no single person has ever classified all ceratites, let alone all ammonoids in general.
Even species aren't easy to count in any consistent way.
YECs simply don't, because they simply don't know this kind of data even exists.
I don't know what it is, but something is keeping the cephalopods from evolving the ability to live in freshwater. Otherwise they'd have invaded it long before the Permian.
Way outdated, as usual. The extinction keeps getting looking shorter the longer people look at it.
No. Florida? What Florida?
We simply want the science budget to increase first. :-| Worldwide, that is.