So I took my first anthropology course this semester (for a science credit) and am supposed to be writing an essay for it right now. It’s on human origins.

But anyway, what astounds me is how much that we really don’t know and yet we pretend as if we knew….only to have it blown out of the water or at least, highly questioned later. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t learn theories that we don’t know. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to think about things that we don’t know.

We used to do that. It was called religion. Sorry, but that didn’t work out so well and it was way too easy to avoid questions.  (“God did it” as answer to everything is just too easy).

But it’s the self-righteous attitude that kind of annoys me. Especially if it’s wrong afterwards – then it just looks silly. We are not inherently greater than the researchers than came before us. At their time, some of the now seemingly stupid theories seemed valid and reasonable to them. Just as our theories are (mostly) valid and reasonable to at least some of us. (Then there are probably stupid theories that don’t make it out of peer review…actually, that will be kind of interesting…in some sort of weird way).

Also annoying: all those popular science magazine articles that are mixed in with scientific journals when I tick off that “Limit to articles from scholarly publications, including peer-review” box. I want scholarly science, not popular science!  I never have that problem with arts. Never.

Anyway, I should go back to writing my 10 page paper on climate and human physiological changes. Yay. Oh and by the way I think human ears are crappy – they are ugly and the don’t even work that well!

Only 1 more essay to go….and 3 more exams.