Current Utility And Historical Origin Are Different

When Scientists Need To Explain Difficult Points Of Theory, Illustration By Hypothetical Example - Rather Than By Total Abstraction - Works Well (perhaps Indispensably) As A Rhetorical Device. Such Cases Do Not Function As Speculations In The Pejorative Sense - As Silly Stories That Provide Insight Into Complex Mechanisms - But Rather As Idealized Illustrations To Exemplify A Difficult Point Of Theory. (other Fields, Like Philosophy And The Law, Use Such Conjectural Cases As A Standard Device.

When We Look To Presumed Sources Of Origin For Competing Evolutionary Explanations Of The Giraffe's Long Neck, We Find Either Nothing At All, Or Only The Shortest Of Speculative Conjectures. Length, Of Course, Need Not Correspond With Importance. Garrulous Old Polonius , In A Rare Moment Of Clarity, Reminded Us That "brevity Is The Soul Of Wit" (and Then Immediately Vitiated His Wise Observation With A Flood Of Woolly Words About Hamlet 's Madness.

Einstein's Theory Of Gravitation Replaced Newton's, But Apples Did Not Suspend Themselves In Mid-air, Pending The Outcome. And Humans Evolved From Apelike Ancestors Whether They Did So By Darwin's Proposed Mechanism Or By Some Other Yet To Be Discovered.

Without A Commitment To Science And Rationality In Its Proper Domain, There Can Be No Solution To The Problems That Engulf Us. Still, The Yahoos Never Rest.

Few Tragedies Can Be More Extensive Than The Stunting Of Life, Few Injustices Deeper Than The Denial Of An Opportunity To Strive Or Even To Hope, By A Limit Imposed From Without, But Falsely Identified As Lying Within.