[in Natural History,] Great Discovery Often Requires

Pictures Are Not Incidental Frills To A Text; They Are Essences Of Our Distinctive Way Of Knowing.

The Basic Formulation, Or Bare-bones Mechanics, Of Natural Selection Is A Disarmingly Simple Argument, Based On Three Undeniable Facts (overproduction Of Offspring, Variation, And Heritability) And One Syllogistic Inference (natural Selection, Or The Claim That Organisms Enjoying Differential Reproductive Success Will, On Average, Be Those Variants That Are Fortuitously Better Adapted To Changing Local Environments, And That These Variants Will Then Pass Their Favored Traits To Offspring By Inheritance).

The Human Mind Delights In Finding Pattern—so Much So That We Often Mistake Coincidence Or Forced Analogy For Profound Meaning. No Other Habit Of Thought Lies So Deeply Within The Soul Of A Small Creature Trying To Make Sense Of A Complex World Not Constructed For It.

The History Of Life Is A Tale Of Decimation And Later Stabilization Of Few Surviving Anatomies, Not A Story Of Steady Expansion And Progress.

We Are Glorious Accidents Of An Unpredictable Process With No Drive To Complexity, Not The Expected Results Of Evolutionary Principles That Yearn To Produce A Creature Capable Of Understanding The Mode Of Its Own Necessary Construction.