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migration, altricial and precocial contexts, DNA, mitosis, that whole perceived
spectrum of molecular biology, requires no special recourse to our perception.
It circumvents 330,000 years of this hominin’s debacles. It declares that, yes, we,
the newcomers, have no claim on any fact. Our mirrors are dizzying, the scripts and
transcripts they reflect a blurred surrealism which need not dictate our next steps.
If we assume the aforementioned, freeing ourselves, somehow, in every due
course, then we can carefully proceed toward reconciliation and ecological redemption. If we can but liberate current and forward ethics, wherein we come to grasp—
individuals and communities—the preconditions and prospects for rapid transition.
To know that there is a world out there of parallel vagueness, wherein some promise
Fig. 74.3 Pythagoras (ca. 570-495 BC), as Portrayed in The History of Philosophy, by Thomas
Stanley, Printer Thomas Bassett, London 1687, p. 491. (Private Collection). (Photo © M.C. Tobias)
74 Ecological Epistemology