Lost in the Cosmos

little or no evidence of intermediate forms. (Concealed dogma: as a fundamentalist Christian, I believe literally in the Genesis account of creation and require that scientific theory be harmonized accordingly.)
    Neo-Darwinian: the overwhelming evidence is that evolution occurred through the natural selection of those organisms which through the accumulation of random mutations are best adapted to a changed environment. (Concealed dogma: I, the scientist, a triadic creature possessed of a transcending objective consciousness and a desire to write papers which will be confirmed or disconfirmed by my colleagues, also require that my data conform to the dyadic principles of interaction which obtain in physics, chemistry, and the biology of lower organisms.)
    As unsatisfactory as the battle lines, as presently drawn, may be, one must nevertheless throw in with the modern evolutionist, if only for the reason that his position, if wrong, is in the end self-correcting, whereas that of the scientific creationist is not.
    The battle is, in fact, a marvelous waste of energy.
    The Christians need not have got in such a sweat. The evolutionary facts about the emergence of man, e.g., the sudden appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens (Cro-Magnon man) no more than 35 thousand years ago, are as spectacular as the account in Genesis and allow hardly less room for theology.
    Scientists should be less worried about overt intrusions by religion upon science, which never succeed, and more worried about covert scientific dogma, e.g., that we triadic scientists require that only dyadic events be admissible to scientific theory. For example, scientists have never seriously addressed themselves to the phenomenon of language, considered as a natural phenomenon and not as a formal structure, that salient triadic property of man. It is only when science is willing to focus on what Sebeok calls “the intersection of nature and culture” that the full import of man’s emergence in the evolutionary scheme can be calculated.
    Question: Why does it make scientists uneasy that it appears to be the case that Homo sapiens sapiens, a conscious languaged creature, appeared suddenly and lately—when scientists profess to be interested in what is the case, that is, the evidence?
    (a) Because scientists are understandably repelled by the theory of the special creation of man by God, in Biblical time, say 6004 B.C. at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday morning.
    (b) Because scientists find it natural to deal with matter in interaction and with energy exchanges and don’t know what to make of such things as consciousness, self, and symbols and even sometimes deny that there are such things, even though they, the scientists, act for all the world as if they were conscious selves and spend their lives transacting with symbols.
    (c) Because scientists are uneasy with discontinuities, even when there is evidence of such discontinuity in the appearance of man in all his contrarieties. Revealed religion has its dogmas, e.g., thou shalt not kill. But so does science: thou shalt not tolerate discontinuities. The question is which is the more entitled.
    (d) Because scientists in the practice of the scientific method, a non-radical knowledge of matter in interaction, often are not content with the non-radicalness of the scientific method and hence find themselves located in a posture of covert transcendence of their data, which is by the same motion assigned to the sphere of immanence. Hence, scientists operate in the very sphere of transcendence which is not provided for in their science. Given such a posture, it is not merely an offense if a discontinuity turns up in the sphere of immanence, the data, but especially if the discontinuity seems to allow for the intervention of God. A god is already present. A scientist is a god to his data. And if there is anything more offensive to him than the suggestion of the existence of God, it is the existence of two gods.
    ( CHECK ONE )

    How can an immanent theory of evolution mounted from the transcending posture of science account for the appearance in the Cosmos of a triumphant, godlike, murderous alien, the only alien in the Cosmos, Homo sapiens sapiens, e.g., the scientist himself?
    Which is to say only that Darwin was a very great scientist, that Wallace was a little nutty, sometimes obnoxiously occult, but in the end may have been closer to the truth about man.
    Thought Experiment: You are a high-school student. In school, you