Gould's piece got me thinking about a proposed culling of thousands of elephants in South Africa. The country has about 20,000 elephants; the population is growing at a rate of 5% each year and is expected to double by 2020. The cull may be necessary because the elephants pose a serious threat to the environment with their breeding and large appetites. A single grown elephant can eat several hundred pounds of grass and leaves each day.
Last year South Africa postponed resuming a cull at Kruger after opposition by
conservationists who said the practice, which involves rounding up and shooting
entire family groups, was cruel.
Something interesting to note is that elephants possess abilities that even some primates do not. For example, in 2001, scientists discovered that elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror, something only humans, great apes, and dolphins are able to do. It has also been shown that elephants grieve the death of a family member. They go to the bones of their dead and gently touch the skulls and tusks with their trunks and feet. In fact, some scientists believe that elephants are more advanced than chimpanzees when it comes to mourning death. Elephants are highly likely to visit the bones of relatives who die within their own home range and they are able to recognize the ivory and skulls of their own species. Taking all of this into consideration makes the decision in South Africa even more difficult.
The piece also got me thinking about mixing science with religion. Gould seems to advocate keeping the two separate and distinct, but as I wrote in another post, there are many scientists balancing religion and science. Here is one good example. The paleontologist in the article is a young earth creationist. He believes in the Bible and that the earth is somewhere around 10,000 years old. He caused quite an uproar within the scientific community after he submitted his thesis because some scientists want him to practice what he preaches. Or the other way around. But to Dr. Marcus Ross, it doesn't seem like much of a problem.
For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one
''paradigm'' for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the
paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely
appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view
just means, he said, ''that I am separating the different paradigms.''
Is this a big deal? Should the contradiction not bother us if it does not bother the individual? It seems like a touchy subject to me but I enjoy hearing stories like this one mainly because scientists like Dr. Marcus Ross are breaking new ground and pursuing scientific research while still maintaining their spiritual belief systems.
1 comment:
When it comes to the proposed culling of elephants due to their population boom, I have to wonder what natural check to the elephant population is missing. Usually nature should take care of this issue and keep the elephant population from getting too large. There must be some natural predator who is missing from the environment. I think a better solution would be the reintroduction of this predator rather than taking it into our hands to fix this problem. However, it may be a result of our hunting that has caused the natural predator to be in low or nonexistent numbers. Without a natural predator, nature should also still correct this problem because when there is not enough food for all the elephants; then the weaker ones will die from starvation, and therefore naturally lower the elephant population. We always run into more and more problems with humans decide to take natural selection and regulation into our own hands.
In respect to mixing science and religion, I thought the article was quite interesting. The idea of not granting degrees if the recipient may not use it in a way that the science community approves of is ridiculous. I think that it is necessary for scientists to be able to separate their personal beliefs separate from their research and work. When scientists try to use science to justify their religion, there is the same problem as using religion to try to explain scientific phenomena. Religion and science do not mix, except in the case of keeping science “moral.” This science v. religion debate has been ongoing for hundreds of years, and I fear that it will not go away anytime soon. The first step though is scientists separating to two in order to teach the general public that the science and religion can peacefully coexist. We don’t have to pick sides.
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