Sean B. Carroll at Big Think:
When you think about the long history of life on Earth, you might think, “well, it’s been this progression.” Almost as though it had a direction, almost had a purpose, and that some things are predictable. Not at all. When you really unpack the geological history of the planet and the biological history of the planet, it’s been a random walk through all sorts of events.
The Earth is evolving, the physical entity of the Earth is evolving, and life has to evolve right along with it. So we need to have this understanding of this relationship, this coupling between the physical planet that life exists on and what’s going on with life itself. Intersect those two, and it’s an incredible series of accidents that’s given us the world we know today.
This is really a deep philosophical rub for humanity. For millennia, philosophers and theologians have asked the question: Does everything happen for a reason, or do some things happen by chance? And I would really say it’s only about the last 60 years or so that scientists would be saying, “oh, my goodness, it’s a remarkable series of events that were required for us to be here.” And that so many things could have happened in a different way that we wouldn’t be here at all, both individually, for sure, and certainly as a species.
More here.
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