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 Richard Frisbie Author, advertising and publishing consultant, former editor of Chicago and other magazines, former creative director of Campbell-Ewald and other advertising agencies. For more information, click here. Or see Who's Who in America or www.midlandauthors.com, Margery Frisbie Consulting editor, historian, poet and author of several books. For more information, click here or see www.midlandauthors.com. The Uncommentator BLOGS and GLOBS: I have been writing a blog since 1966, only I didn't know it. In those days, it came out in the form of a newsletter on paper. Remember paper? It never got lost in cyberspace, although if it got wet enough blog turned into glob. I called it The Uncommentator, and tried to make it amusing. To read some of my favorites, see contents. Recent Books by the Frisbies. |
Big Bang or Big Bounce? June 20, 2011--During a recent radio interview, Lord Martin Rees mentioned in passing his expectation that in time a new human species will supplant homo sapiens. As master of Trinity College and professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, his life work is to think about such things. This seems plausible. The history of evolution reveals one new species after another arising to replace older species less able to adapt to changing circumstances. Mastodons give way to wooly mammoths, then to modern elephants. Homo sapiens is a lot smarter than homo erectus, long since gone (although the people who text while driving are a possible exception). I was reminded of the theory of the late Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who thought all life could be gradually evolving toward an Omega Point, at which the goals of the Creator would finally be achieved. Another scientist, Martin Bojoward, author of Once Before Time: a Whole Story of the Universe, is looking for evidence that our universe could conceivably have emerged from the collapse of a previous one. If this theory can be verified, "the big bang will give way to the big bounce." Instead of a universe that emerged just once from a point of infinite density, we will have one that recycles, possibly through an eternal series of expansions and contractions, with no beginning and no end Maybe, like the theme of the movie Groundhog Day, we get to keep starting over until we get it right. Meanwhile, if a new species develops, what will the new people be called, homo paragonius? They will have outgrown the hunter-gatherer impulse, upon finding fat or sweets, to eat it all up while it’s there. They’ll be less aggressive, less prone to road rage and fomenting wars. So they’ll live longer in better health than homo sapiens. If in a few thousand years they also develop immunity to nuclear radiation, they’ll replace homo sapiens for sure. Richard Frisbie |
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