Everything about life is uncertain!
Life would be too easy with even the slightest degree of Certainty & Darwin’s whole hypothesis on his “Origin of Species” & its corresponding “Survival of the Fittest” epitomises everything about how the world ticks & the fragile balance of nature that exists at any point in time.
Charles Darwin (like myself) was a Shropshire lad born in Shrewsbury on 12th February 1809 150 years before my surfacing on this planet also in Shrewsbury back in 1959. Immortalised in Bronze and sitting high on a pedestal near the entrance to Shrewsbury Castle, I still remember clambering on his statue as child and have always remained a great supporter of all his evolutionary ideals and readily see how forward thinking he was and so far ahead of his time. Perhaps this magnetic attraction to the great man was already in my genes as one of my ancestors, George Maw (1832-1912) apart from co-founding the family tile business, had been an avid Botanist and frequently exchanged his own evolutionary views with Darwin on the Crocus Flower which had been one of his passions and on which he had written a number of important scientific papers.
Education during the 18th and 19th Centuries still followed the more classical route and had far stronger roots with traditional biblical beliefs. Latin & Greek were still compulsory subjects and not surprising, Latin remained the primary language adopted for science and medical terminology. Consequently, without gaining at least a basic knowledge of what was essentially a dead language, one was less likely to progress and gain access to the great Universities or further educational establishments of that era, to pursue advancement into these fast growing and exciting disciplines that still exuded a touch of taboo.
I can even recall being handed my first Latin Book at around the age of 10 called “Latine Legamus” and reading texts of Virgil’s Iliad out loud to class in this strange language wondering what purpose this would serve. Indeed, we students back in the 1960’s even used to utter a symbolic rhyme to resonate our bewilderment – “Latin is a language as dead as it can be, It killed the ancient Romans and now it’s killing me!”
It was perhaps not surprising therefor, why Darwin’s views were initially not so well received due to a clash in beliefs and certain reluctance of religious leaders in accepting that they may have a wrong interpretation of life and that their books and ancient texts were fundamentally being challenged by advancing scientific fact.
But what of Uncertainty of this marvellous blue planet that is so precariously positioned within our galaxy to give life to such an abundance of creatures that do nothing more than feast on nutrients that have evolved over 100’s of millions of years to provide every organism with a balanced ecosystem to sustain their precursor life cycle.
If we look at Life on Earth right from the beginning, one can easily see how the planet has evolved and re-jigged itself to provide new life from one mass extinction to another.
To date, we know that 5 great Extinction Events have occurred over time highlighted below and all driven by major Climatic Changes.
- End Ordovician (444 million years ago; mya) – Loss of life 86%
- Late Devonian (360 mya) – Loss of Life 75%
- End Permian (250 mya) – Loss of Life 96%
- End Triassic (200 mya) – Loss of Life 80%
- End Cretaceous (65 mya) – The event that killed off the dinosaurs – Loss of Life – 76%
- The Next Mass Extinction ?????
While there seems to be an average timeline of approx 95 Million years between each mass extinction, the next such event in my opinion, (and probably also by all like minded people) will most likely be fast forwarded and attributable to human interference. Unlike the previous 5, this could be accelerated very quickly through derailment and propulsion along either of two counterproductive directions!
- Our continued neglect in ensuring that all ecosystems are adequately protected and that we maintain a careful balance in nature with absolutely no further eradication of species, particularly deforestation, or
- Through catastrophic conflict and the horrific possibility of nuclear war, which we all know will most likely lead to a mass extinction event.
With the out of control conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine, it seems our “doomsday clock” remains at it’s most volatile point in history, namely 90 seconds to midnight and the tipping point couldn’t be that much closer.
As pointed out in my earlier January blog on failed leadership, there are unfortunately no leaders of any substance in this world that are able to pull humanity together and solve the crises that now dawn upon us, particularly when it comes to armed conflict. It seems only a matter of time that we will most likely learn our lesson the hard way, instead of taking head from past mistakes and instilling a measure of corrective action to steer us back on course to a balanced and harmonised planet.
Are we all so ignorant and unable to elect people who can get us on the right path?
Wake up World or we will soon be at 30 seconds or less to “D-Day”