I came across this story from a friend on Facebook.
As someone who has extensively studied the history and ideas and ideals of evolutionary theory, I find this fellows column and what he writes about rather hilarious. To imagine Darwin, or any theorist embracing natural selection to say,” Let’s save WhoVille.” is preposterous. The whole idea of evolution is some stay, some go. That’s how you grow. If you leave room for emotion, you get in the way of the process that would otherwise occur.
Geisel’s stories were doused in sentimental jib-jab. I love his stories as the stories they are. But in the context of heralding natural selection, Geisel wrote to thwart it. He was pretty persistent in the idea of all must be saved. That is neither natural nor evolutionary.
Folks like Darwin, Linnaeus, Buffon, Lamarck, plus so many others invested much time and effort over long periods of time to lead to theories still tested today. The more they learned the more their ideas had semblance of sense. It was time and effort. Trial and error. That is what produced volumes of material. All far more extensive and involved than a Geisel short children’s book.
I believe to be creative it takes that time and effort. That trial and error. The more you learn and try to know the more creative you can be. It’s much like in Scrabble. You get a random series of letters and are supposed to assemble a word out of it. You can only piece together words, if you know the words beforehand. The article rambled more about making up the words. Points aren’t earned with made up words. You have to work to know those possibilities. Reading and learning.
Creativity comes from the more knowledge gained the more you can play in your head to then pick up pencil, paintbrush, trumpet, dance shoes and explore the possibilities with the knowledge gained. Painting a building takes knowledge of building and some sense of architecture. Most artists use reference for such. The more they know beforehand , the less the reference is needed. Someone lacking that information is flat out of luck. They’ll just make it up and the final piece will show that lack of knowledge. Thus the informed trumps the ill informed. Move the weaker away as the stronger survives.
Evolutionary theory is hardly understood today. The media and special interest groups have watered it down to be about humans coming from monkeys. Something Darwin himself only touched on in his volumes written. Or you have those on the left trying to fit their bleeding heart square peg in the evolutionary hypothesis round hole. More and more Darwin’s brutal theories are being fluffed for a more cry baby audience. It is sad that these anniversaries are being recognized as the bastardization of Darwin’s work is continued. My theory is that better left alone or have it destroyed.
