Life Is Short, And Potential Studies Infinite.

Evolution Is A Process Of Constant Branching And Expansion.

Science Can't Tell Us What Our Life Means Ethically. It Can't Tell Us What We Are Meant To Do As Moral Creatures. But, Insofar As Science Can Understand What We're Made Of, And What We're Related To, The Darwinian Revolution Completely Revised Our Ideas About Who We Are And What We're Related To And How Long We've Been Here And Why We're On This Earth.

The Legends Of Fieldwork Locate All Important Sites Deep In Inaccessible Jungles Inhabited By Fierce Beasts And Restless Natives, And Surrounded By Miasmas Of Putrefaction And Swarms Of Tsetse Flies.

Siphonophores Do Not Convey The Message A Favorite Theme Of Unthinking Romanticism That Nature Is But One Gigantic Whole, All Its Parts Intimately Connected And Interacting In Some Higher, Ineffable Harmony. Nature Revels In Boundaries And Distinctions; We Inhabit A Universe Of Structure. But Since Our Universe Of Structure Has Evolved Historically, It Must Present Us With Fuzzy Boundaries, Where One Kind Of Thing Grades Into Another.

If We Make This Readjustment To View Homo Sapiens As An Ultimate In Oddball Rarity, And Life At Bacterial Grade As The Common Expression Of A Universal Phenomenon, Then We Could Finally Ask The Truly Fundamental Question Raised By The Prospect Of Martian Fossils. If Life Originates As A General Property Of The Material Universe Under Certain Conditions (probably Often Realized), Then How Much Can The Basic Structure And Constitution Of Life Vary From Place To Independent Place?