Page 91 - The Restless Earth Fossils

0 Fossils

humans became capable of imagination—a trait that even Einstein
recognized was more important than knowledge. We cannot plan
for and shape a future that we cannot first imagine.

What’s next For us, the “Future Fossils”?
We human beings have reached the point in our understand-
ing of our environment that we are capable of shaping at least
some of our own evolution. Whether we will, or even whether we
should, tinker with such powers are questions that we, as a spe-
cies, should ask ourselves, using all the tools of reason, philoso-
phy, and spiritual insight that we can bring to bear.
The fossils tell us that life somehow arose from humble
chemical interactions to evolve into a highly complex network of
living things all intertwined and interdependent. Genes combine,
recombine, duplicate, and mutate, to manifest themselves, tem-
porarily, as creatures, some of which leave traces behind that we,
the “imagining ones,” read with imperfection. But as imperfect as
the fossil story is, paleontologists pore over its pages with a sense
of wonder and amazement born of a 4-billion-year journey that
is far from completed.

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