717
predation. Such pure thought is rarified, spiritual, and so deeply ethical as to defy
gravity. In seeking some level of “explanations,” Historian Alfred W. Crosby, in
his defining work, Ecological Imperialism—The Biological Expansion of Europe,
900–1900, described the fact that “there are about 10,000 grass species, but a mere
forty account for 99 percent of the sown grass pastures of the world. Few, if any,
of the forty are native to the great grasslands outside the Old World”.
9
Indeed, so
concentrated and single-minded were the origins of human colonization that those
native grasses of the Old World were concentrated largely within the limited confines
of the Roman Empire.
10
Naturalists seeking “physico-theological implications” and
“believing in final causes, devoted to a study of nature which was likened to following in the Creator’s footsteps, in Sir Thomas Browne’s words” were engaged in an
effort “to suck Divinity from the flowers of Nature”.
11
79.4 Unimagined Bias
The study of the origins of life has been swathed in mineralized murkiness, as
viewed through the lenses of a species at the tail end of its durability. Darwin had
forced our hand, albeit with stunning scientific instincts, to gravitate with great persuasion toward a bonfire of incantations and antiphony. Such that a misanthropic
rant feverishly obeys some visceral cry, part confession, here a gymnastic. A rallying from the bowels of destruction whereby biological orthography wrestles with
self-indictment. It struggles to be humane, this heavy toil of logical succession in
Nature, but is weak with the grave malady of itself. And it knows all about it, from
the deepest within. How can it escape its own brief history of longing and lethal
doses? It can try to fall back on every vulnerable argument of humanism, of some
Renaissance argument. But cannot resolve even its most mundane contradictions at
the heart of Zen emptiness.
Such that it cannot imagine the unimagined bias that has been built into the
cognition apparatus appertaining to extinction studies in the twenty-first century.
Our obsession is becoming quite rampant in sync with the realities of our presence
and its death tolls. The distance between research and reality is closing fast. Billionyear- old records of stromatolites and living dinosaurs, to take one well-known set
of examples, like that of the macaw or platypus, hail similitude and kinship that has
never been a stranger on earth. No other creature has seen fit to lie unrelentingly
to itself, on behalf of itself, with absolute disdain for commonality with Others.
Our arrogation at every juncture of behavioral infrastructure—neurons, cells,
DNA—vies in combinations far beyond our ken to combat ideals. Yet languages,
9 A. W. Crosby, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1986, p. 288.
10 ibid., p. 288.
11 From Traces on the Rhodian Shore - Nature And Culture In Western Thought From Ancient Times
To The End Of The Eighteenth Century, by Clarence J. Glacken, University of California Press,
Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1967, p. 426.
79.4 Unimagined Bias
predation. Such pure thought is rarified, spiritual, and so deeply ethical as to defy
gravity. In seeking some level of “explanations,” Historian Alfred W. Crosby, in
his defining work, Ecological Imperialism—The Biological Expansion of Europe,
900–1900, described the fact that “there are about 10,000 grass species, but a mere
forty account for 99 percent of the sown grass pastures of the world. Few, if any,
of the forty are native to the great grasslands outside the Old World”.
9
Indeed, so
concentrated and single-minded were the origins of human colonization that those
native grasses of the Old World were concentrated largely within the limited confines
of the Roman Empire.
10
Naturalists seeking “physico-theological implications” and
“believing in final causes, devoted to a study of nature which was likened to following in the Creator’s footsteps, in Sir Thomas Browne’s words” were engaged in an
effort “to suck Divinity from the flowers of Nature”.
11
79.4 Unimagined Bias
The study of the origins of life has been swathed in mineralized murkiness, as
viewed through the lenses of a species at the tail end of its durability. Darwin had
forced our hand, albeit with stunning scientific instincts, to gravitate with great persuasion toward a bonfire of incantations and antiphony. Such that a misanthropic
rant feverishly obeys some visceral cry, part confession, here a gymnastic. A rallying from the bowels of destruction whereby biological orthography wrestles with
self-indictment. It struggles to be humane, this heavy toil of logical succession in
Nature, but is weak with the grave malady of itself. And it knows all about it, from
the deepest within. How can it escape its own brief history of longing and lethal
doses? It can try to fall back on every vulnerable argument of humanism, of some
Renaissance argument. But cannot resolve even its most mundane contradictions at
the heart of Zen emptiness.
Such that it cannot imagine the unimagined bias that has been built into the
cognition apparatus appertaining to extinction studies in the twenty-first century.
Our obsession is becoming quite rampant in sync with the realities of our presence
and its death tolls. The distance between research and reality is closing fast. Billionyear- old records of stromatolites and living dinosaurs, to take one well-known set
of examples, like that of the macaw or platypus, hail similitude and kinship that has
never been a stranger on earth. No other creature has seen fit to lie unrelentingly
to itself, on behalf of itself, with absolute disdain for commonality with Others.
Our arrogation at every juncture of behavioral infrastructure—neurons, cells,
DNA—vies in combinations far beyond our ken to combat ideals. Yet languages,
9 A. W. Crosby, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1986, p. 288.
10 ibid., p. 288.
11 From Traces on the Rhodian Shore - Nature And Culture In Western Thought From Ancient Times
To The End Of The Eighteenth Century, by Clarence J. Glacken, University of California Press,
Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1967, p. 426.
79.4 Unimagined Bias