The Moon is New

Here's a segment from John Dobson's book "The Moon is New." It's a vision of how he saw human life evolve here on Earth.

"For hundreds of millions of years you have been bullied and pushed around," she said, "driven from the ocean to the rivers, from the rivers to the shallows, from the shallows to the swamps, and out on land. Always the species that were better adapted to the older environment stayed in the older environment. The faster fishes stayed in the sea. You are not descended from them. You are descended from a long line of misfits who were bullied and driven out. Always it was 'shape up or get out' and you got out.

"You were driven ashore on stumpy fins in the Devonian swamps, and you were driven underground in the Paleocene grass, and you were driven from the grass into the trees, by other descendants of those stumpy fins. And every change entailed millions of years of discomfort while you painfully built in your new genetic adjustments, not so much by the survival of those who succeeded as by the early demise of those who failed.

"The dinosaurs, with scaly feet, drove some of you underground. Those who couldn't adjust are gone. There in their burrows, in the sunny grass, the rodents, furry mammals much like you, but better adapted to the grass than you, drove you into the trees. Those who couldn't adjust went down.

"There in the trees, through long and painful genetic readjustments, you learned to swing from branch to branch. Those who failed were eaten by cats. Then, after many more millions of years, just when your arms could reach side to side, came the dwindling of the forests by drought. Those who were better at swinging than you drove you to the ground, and you fled to the sea. You had four hands and no feet, and the grass was now no place for you. There were pack hunting dogs and great stalking cats. Those who didn't make it to the beach are gone.

"In the safety of the terrifying breakers you were cradled in the sea with hands instead of paddles, and hands instead of feet. And there were millions of cold, wet, salty years before you even had the tears to cry. You were small and you were timid when you came from the green roofed jungle with eyes accustomed to the dark, and there were millions of years of blinding brightness on the sunlit waves and beaches before you had the frown of your bewilderment, the furrowed brow of the thinker, and you wondered what it's all about.

"The long pursuit has made you thoughtful. Every new adjustment entailed a genetic enlargement of the brain. It is the brain of a misfit, driven hither and yon to the refuge of new environments by those better adapted to the old. It's the brain of a shiftless outcast living always in the discomfort of genetic maladjustment. It's the product of hundreds of millions of years of distress, the product of vicissitudes of countless misfortunes encountered along the seemingly endless reaches of the immense journey, as Loren Eiseley calls it. And your present form is not the end. The journey lies as far ahead as behind. No, not so far, for now, for the first time, you can look behind to see how you have come. And now, for the first time, you can guess ahead to see how you should go.

"In all that three hundred million years no creature descended from the Snout thought of himself descended from the Snout, that lumbering Devonian fish with simple lungs and bubbles in its brain. In all that length of time no creature thought that any creature would ever think to figure it out, to unscramble and decipher the account. You are the first species to investigate its genetic past. You are the only creatures who are not fish who ever knew that they are not fish but that their ancestors were. You are the first creatures who ever lived on land but who knew that their ancestors lived in the sea.

"And you are the first creatures who can look ahead to see where you are going. You are the first creatures who can understand that you got into this mess by an uncertainty and cannot possibly get out by transformation. Uncertainty is overcome by knowledge, not transformation. You alone can understand that the journey has an end which cannot possibly be reached by journeying."