The title of this bulletin pays homage to the title of a chapter in Richard Dawkins' book, The
Greatest Show on Earth. Very vivid description of evolution, quite striking in places, although still suffering from his normal vanity and name-dropping. But he describes the way in which evolution proceeds - first by a leap forward and then by fine-tuning and tinkering to make up for the flaws in the original jump. The flaws being retained, but the fine-tuning making up for them - as in the compensation for upside-down vision or the blind spot in the eye, or eyeless fish in caves.
Which makes me very worried.
If that's how things work - giant change, then bodge and fiddle afterwards to iron out the glitches - I can only conclude that God is a computer programmer. How scary is that? So when it's time for the next big evolutionary leap forward - let's hope he's not set for a late night and sending out for pizza. I can imagine him making all those design decisions, patching them up - and then coming in late next morning thinking "well it's not perfect, but it's live now."
Interesting concept - God AKA Microsoft.
ReplyDeleteWhen you consider Windows Vista - your allegory sounds pretty much like the production and implementation of Vista.
Perhaps Professor Dawkins is a Bill Gate's clone - explaining how things work. I would not be surprised.
So far Dawkins has managed to avoid one major 'Gates' error... that paperclip that pops up and states the obvious before offering unnecessary help.
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