Sam Kneller's Blog, page 50
May 23, 2017
Mankind’s Mind, the key to Final Notions, and Ideas for Thought
Mystery of the Mind, Masterpiece of the entire Universe: Why does it exist? What’s its purpose? How does it work?
Mankind’s mind is the focus of this section of Inventory of the Universe. We started with Big Bang and point particles, we have surveyed the entire Universe and come down to the fundamental factor of what makes and breaks life of earth.
(chapter 10.11)
Why is it that a blind piglet can find its way to its mother’s nipples and begin suckling for its livelihood seconds after birth, while a newborn human baby would die if it did not have the nipple placed in its mouth?
Why is it that colts and fillies can get to their feet, wobble, and walk around within minutes after their birth, while a baby lies on its back for months before even starting the process of turning over, getting up on all fours, crawling on all fours, standing, and finally taking its first steps around ten months after birth? Why is it that animals with smaller brains and lesser intelligence become independent quickly, while babies with a huge potential of intelligence take about eighteen years before we declare them adults?
Why is it that animals are operational within seconds, minutes, or days and are able to eat, hunt, swim, fly, navigate, hibernate, and adapt to their environment, while children have to go through a lengthy process of years of education to learn the fundamentals of how to live and how to earn a living among many, many other things?
Why do these capacities originate and manifest themselves in these ways?
Galacti indicates that, if we are going to give The Explanation, we are entitled to ask such fundamental questions, even though answers are not forthcoming at this point and even if we can’t imagine how it is possible to answer such questions.
However, there are a lot of unimaginable things that we’ve discussed and found to be reality, as we’ve seen. This difference between animals and man is definitely one of them.
Animals and man both have bodies, brains, and capacities. Animals’ bodies are more specialized and better equipped to handle their environment than those of man, especially as that environment becomes more and more extreme in altitude and temperature.
Animals’ bodies are more specialized and better equipped to handle their #environment than…
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On the other hand, as Galacti points out, man’s brain is far superior to that of any animal, and this definitely gives man the edge in being able to control his environment.
Man’s mind is far superior to that of any animal, and this gives man the ability to control his…
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Mankind’s mind allows him to discover, analyze, synthesize, and conceive solutions, to the point that he can control his environs to a certain extent. In summary, man doesn’t have to submit to his environment; he can subdue and tame it to suit his needs instead.
As we saw in chapter 9, mankind’s mind is a marvelous machine that can fantasize, imagine, and visualize the most astonishing and implausible scenarios.
In fact, mankind’s mind itself stands out as the highlight of man’s achievements: the key component, the essential constituent that sets man apart, not only from animals, but also from the rest of the inanimate and animate world.
Mankind's mind itself stands out as the highlight, the key component that sets man apart, from…
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It sets man apart so much that he is above them and is able to control them using his mind. He is able to extract coal and minerals from the earth, shape wood into furniture, and produce works of art like the koa wood bowl from Hawaii that Galacti shows us (the koa tree is indigenous to Hawaii), tame horses, raise cattle, use utensils for cooking and eating.
Mankind’s mind allows him to divert water by building a dam, produce pulses of laser light, craft silicon into computer chips, create the paper or e-reader on which you are following our journey, make rubber into tires, turn the breath of his lungs into music by playing an instrument, use his mind to diagnose and treat the sick as we saw in chapter 8, and share his knowledge by teaching others on a field trip.
Galacti brings in our doctors and patients from the medical setting in chapter 8. We are moved to see the doctors caring for the patients using medical tools made of minerals and materials from the earth. We see the contrast between the doctors caring for strangers and animals caring for each other.
Animals care for the members of their flock, pride, or colony, but not for intruder animals. We see a dog and an African cat becoming friends, but only because they were raised together and are familiar with each other.
By contrast, people from our tour have voluntarily and consciously formed friendships with others who are from completely different backgrounds.
We even see a nurse who has a background in working with animals help one of the Adelie penguins. Fantastical?
Perhaps.
However, mankind’s mind can conceive of helping creatures that will never understand what motivates him to do so. He is also capable of helping people who can never repay him. He does it because his mind tells him to, just as it helps him imagine, devise, and invent ways to achieve his goal.
Galacti is satisfied that our tour group has understood that mankind’s mind is the key point of this comparison of man versus animals, and he thinks that after Inventory of the Universe we are ready for the next stage in our journey: Audit of the Universe.
This post is an excerpt from chapter 10.11 of Inventory of the Universe.
The Explanation Blog Bonus
This video is … non-existent this week. Because there isn’t one. Oh yes, there are plenty about the brain, and some about the mind, but they give partial answers or give aspects of the mind. But, they don’t tell you WHY there’s a mind, why each human being that has ever lived on earth has one and why they are all so different. These videos don’t tell you WHAT the mind is, again, they touch on aspects and can give you interesting tidbits but they don’t go anywhere near a complete description.
When it comes to HOW the mind works, yes, through experience and technology we come to realize how certain aspects of the mind function… Each scientist, philosopher etc in his or her field has got answers. But we’re not just looking for ‘answers’, we’re looking for coherent completeness–answers that fit together and give us the real picture of all the puzzle pieces assembled together … perfectly.
That is the vocation of The Explanation. The MIND is the focal point of the entire Universe. It is still a mystery as to why the MIND can soar to the heights of imagination and greatness and at the same time sink to the depths of depravation.
The mind is the front-and-center masterpiece of the Universe–the most important piece of the puzzle and the goal of The Explanation is to cover this subject and many more in the upcoming weeks. I’ll be starting to blog Volume 3 of The Explanation Series–Origin of the Universe–in just a few weeks now. The answers will begin to flow very shortly.
Dig Deeper into The Explanation
Join The Explanation Newsletter to stay informed of updates. and future events. No obligations, total privacy, unsubscribe if you want. Your gift is a free pdf of The Explanation and a free pdf of Answering the Big Questions in Life
TheExplanation.com
Email address:
Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.
See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.
Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version
Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes
Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now
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May 16, 2017
What Is Animal Intelligence? What Is Human Intelligence? Do they Compare?
Intelligence is common to both animals and mankind. But, do they possess intelligence to the same degree? And what about the level of their minds and instincts?
“Sam,” says Galacti, “I see where you’re going with this. You appreciate animals but you are explaining the vast difference between what they and mankind have accomplished on Earth.” Intelligence is a factor.
“Indeed,” I say. “In chapter six I covered animal ability—an ode to their capabilities, as well as pointing out their incredible intelligence, talents, and emotions.
I’m aware of ethological studies of animal behavior in their natural habitat as compared with laboratory studies. These studies are revealing that we have underestimated the capacities and behaviors of animals.”
However, when we look at the world today, who is transforming it? Who is at the heart of all, and I mean all the changes, modifications, and revolutions that have historically taken place and are reordering society at a seemingly speedier pace today? I believe the answer is man, and I believe readers would agree with this.
From that point of view, animals, with all their intelligence, emotions, and behavior have not had any impact on this planet’s forward march into the twenty-first century.
Animals, with all their #intelligence, emotions, and behavior have had no impact on this…
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Animals are in the same nonparticipative state as they were in the nineteenth, fifteenth, and any other century. They have made no progress whatsoever other than adapting to adjustments man has caused to their environment.
Animal Existence
Man’s Life Project
Animal behavior is instinctive when it is not the direct result of initial parental tuition.
Man must learn to govern himself, even beyond his younger years. A life project is one of lifelong learning.
Animals imitate.
Man creates.
Animals can communicate, but whatever their mode of interconnectivity and the nature of the information exchanged, it is limited to their immediate existence.
Animal communication does not have to do with new ideas and concepts that impact their future lifestyle.
Man’s complex vocal cords and larynx allow him to have a voice to express everyday needs and cognitive concepts.
He has thousands of languages as well as untold creativity in expressing himself orally and in writing.
Animals sleep, eat, play, reproduce, and survive. That’s their life.
Man can choose according to his talent and skills. He has the free will to plan and guide his existence.
Animals survive day to day. They may store food or prepare for hibernation, but this unchanging cycle repeats itself year in and year out.
Man can plan ahead and try to accumulate supplies for the future. He can develop a career to manage people and projects. He can make a household, a department, or a farm according to his feelings.
Animals have no legacy other than their place in the balance of nature.
Man has a legacy, be it material, cultural, or traditional. It can be enhanced, changed or abandoned.
Animals have no need or motivation for personal development once they’ve attained their basic purpose. This purpose is identical to that of their genitor.
Man can follow in the footsteps of his parents. He can also develop and surpass them or completely change his life goal and pursue a very different path.
Animals have no educational requirements.
Man must go through an educational process involving his parents, schooling, experience and/or self-education. In fact, education is a lifelong endeavor.
Animals have no skills or talents beyond the innate skills for which their bodies are already developed.
Discovery is an ongoing process that takes effort. Culture, knowledge, wisdom, and experience develop over time and are never-ending.
The idea in this chapter is not to denigrate animals and laud man. It is simply to state some of the clearer differences.
I think it is fair to say that under normal circumstances, the most intelligent animal doesn’t come close to the dumbest human. There’s not just a gulf between animals and humans, there’s a huge chasm.
There’s not just a gulf between animals and humans, there’s a huge chasm.
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On the physical side, animals surpass humans with flying colors. On the brain/mind side, humans surpass animals with flying colors.
“We’re taking Inventory of the Universe and the animate, living, brainy, walking, swimming, flying portion of that universe,” Galacti reminds us. “This is certainly the crux of what it’s all about. This is where the highest living organisms are.”
Although the animals run off with all the Olympic medals on this animate scale, man wins all the Nobel prizes, hands down. It’s certainly worth contemplating that animals are more physically oriented while man is more intellectual.
Animals run off with all the #Olympic medals while man wins all the #Nobel prizes, hands down.
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This post is an excerpt from chapter 10.10 of Inventory of the Universe.
The Explanation Blog Bonus
This incredible video illustrates why the octopus is one of the ocean’s most complex and enigmatic creatures which should be studied, not served in restaurants.
The octopus uses cognitive reasoning to make deductions and understand its environment. It can shape shift, change color and texture on the fly to blend in with its surroundings to become either predator or defend itself from becoming prey.
Truly amazing what they can do … but could they produce a video about man like this video of octopuses? The answer to that question is very important to understand relative intelligence and the role of animals and humans.
Dig Deeper into The Explanation
Join The Explanation Newsletter to stay informed of updates. and future events. No obligations, total privacy, unsubscribe if you want. Your gift is a free pdf of The Explanation and a free pdf of Answering the Big Questions in Life
TheExplanation.com
Email address:
Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.
See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.
Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version
Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes
Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now
Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, What Is Animal Intelligence? What Is Human Intelligence? Do they Compare?
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May 9, 2017
Animal Instinct and Human Intelligence, the Insurmountable Gulf
Animal instinct versus human intelligence. Who comes out ahead? There’s no doubt animals have a ‘certain intelligence’ beyond their instinct … but does that give them an edge?
Animal instinct is powerful but the areas where man excels are his brain and his mind, although sometimes we wonder about this! We associate thought, reason, emotion, and creativity with these aptitudes. Along with this, man has manipulative dexterity. He uses his hands to essentially formulate and fabricate whatever he imagines.
(chapter 10.9)
Man has a mind to formulate and hands with manipulative dexterity to fabricate whatever he…
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Finally, his vocal cords and the written word give him the capacity to communicate knowledge, exchange ideas, interact on a social level within his institutions (such as families and communities), and transmit his know-how to future generations.
Man has vocal cords and the written word to #communicate, exchange ideas and interact on a…
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Today, there are studies showing that animal intelligence is close to man’s intelligence. Well, the fact that animals have intelligence and emotions is undeniable, but it is not realistic to think that it is anything equivalent to a man’s intelligence when coupled with his hands to flesh out his ideas.
The magnitude of this combination of man’s brain and body is unimaginable. Who would have ever thought a 3-D printer was possible? Yet man invented it. In this area, man surpasses animals.
Animal
Brain and Instinct
Human
Brain and Mind
Animal decisions and motivations are instinctive. Animals are not decision makers; they are executors of an innate path that is laid out for them from birth.
Man doesn’t operate based on instinct, though he does have “gut feelings” that can direct his mind. Man is a decision-making being.
Animals have left and right sides to their brains as well as asymmetry for survival like humans have.
It allows dolphins to sleep and swim or chicks to peck and detect predators at the same time.
Man goes much further by combining information from both sides of his brain to imagine, reason, understand, and execute his thoughts through creativity.
Man has invented and conquered many of the animal skills and talents that we saw in chapter 6. He has better methods of mimicry, speed, adherence, and so on.
Animals can predict tsunamis, the sinking of a vessel, and the occurrence of earthquakes because of their inherent physical capacities.
Man predicts based on education, insight, and science. This allows him to project into the future. At worst, it’s magic and guesses. At best, it’s based on scientific evidence.
Animals can be cute and cuddly, but they are not intelligent for the most part. They don’t think, they react. When they are not in their environment, man has to take care of them, train them, and lead them.
Man can discover, understand, solve problems, learn, invent, do exciting things, experience pleasure, program, prepare, and give.
Animals make tools. Chimpanzees and crows can copy from others, including humans. Animals learn from man. They can do extraordinary things.
For example, parrots can learn a few hundred words and even participate in a very limited conversation.
Some primates are able to count and do very simple math exercises. This is often after long periods of painstaking training and many morsels of sugar.
I saw a billboard by the Emerson Electric Company at the Hong Kong airport. Their slogan captures the spirit of man’s ingenuity in answer to the challenges to his progress: “It’s never been done before. Consider it solved.”
Another example is IBM’s “Think Different” campaign.
The list of discoveries made by people who thought “outside the box” is unending: antibiotics, the polio vaccine, the fact that light is both a wave and a particle, the theory of relativity, Fermat’s Last Theorem, and so on.
We’re almost at the end of Inventory of the Universe. But this end is really just the beginning. The beginning of the story of mankind. This inventory culminates with mankind’s intelligence compared to animal instincts. You need to be thinking about whether animals and mankind are on the same level.
Is mankind just a more advanced animal? Is intelligence just a more advanced animal instinct and intelligence? Are mankind’s emotions and feeling just more advanced animal emotions and feelings?
This post is an excerpt from chapter 10.9 of Inventory of the Universe.
The Explanation Blog Bonus
There just aren’t a lot of decent videos referring to this subject of animal instinct and human intelligence. In fact I couldn’t find one. This video reveals just how incredible the human brain and mind is and works. As you watch this try and think about: Could an animal do this, of and by itself? The answer is a triple no! There is now way. Human minds are without comparison. At 17.30 minutes watch the portion about rehearsing by visualization … the power of what the human mind can accomplish.
Dig Deeper into The Explanation
Join The Explanation Newsletter to stay informed of updates. and future events. No obligations, total privacy, unsubscribe if you want. Your gift is a free pdf of The Explanation and a free pdf of Answering the Big Questions in Life
TheExplanation.com
Email address:
Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.
See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.
Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version
Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes
Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now
Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, Animal Instinct and Human Intelligence, the Insurmountable Gulf
The post Animal Instinct and Human Intelligence, the Insurmountable Gulf appeared first on The Explanation with Sam Kneller.
May 2, 2017
Animal Accomplishments are ‘Zero’ compared to Human Accomplishments
Animal accomplishments compared to human accomplishments don’t even make it onto the graph chart. Animals take no initiative and only accomplish what their instincts allow them.
In spite of parrots, which can have a limited vocabulary; monkeys, which can be taught to do tricks; tigers and dolphins, which can jump through hoops; certain chimpanzees that can use tools, have the ability to count, and can even calculate; and ants, which live in a society, animals are very limited in comparison to any baby or toddler.
(chapter 10.8)
Animals take no initiative and only accomplish what their instincts allow them.
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Researchers have spent years trying to teach animals new concepts, and all they have managed to do is instill a few tricks. They have barely touched the surface of intelligence. They can harness the instincts of certain animals. For example, they can use an elephant’s strength to physically remove tree trunks from the forest, or they can use a guide dog’s sense of attachment to assist its master.
Granted, such intelligence and emotion, in animal accomplishments, can go pretty far, but there’s a distinct limit, and very few animals are used in these more specialized cases. In fact, if humans didn’t make the effort to teach animals, none of them would take the initiative to make any improvement to their lifestyles whatsoever.
No animals take initiative to make any improvement to their lifestyles whatsoever.
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Baby animals follow in the same footsteps as their genitors, whether they are inducted into life by them or not. They never leave the birthplace with the intent of improving on what their parents had, thinking “I’m glad to get out of that hole; I need to make a future for myself.” Animals accomplishments include no new concepts; they are immune to imagination.
Animals accomplishments include no new concepts; they are immune to imagination.
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In their own particular environments, each animal has innate capacities that allow it to use tools, communicate, build, organize, work, harvest, gather, store food, etc. In this way, it lives its life in harmony with other animals of its own breed as well as with its fellow animals.
When I say “in harmony,” I mean insofar as the balance of nature incorporates the concept of predator and prey. All animals are prey to other fauna. In their natural environment, they don’t have contact with man, so they don’t need or crave contact with him.
They are quite happy to continue their existence by eating, sleeping, surviving, and mating as they’ve done for hundreds and thousands of years. They do this to keep their species alive in this “eat one another” balance of nature.
Animals are quite happy to continue their existence as they’ve done for thousands of years.
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Animal Accomplishments
Human Accomplishments
Leadership
Animals can form groups with a number of females, with males fighting for supremacy. Leadership in lion prides changes as both females and males go in and out of groups.
A man is generally head of both the family and extended family, but women can also be in this position. Men and women can head all sorts of associations. They can govern animals, groups, and everything else.
Society
Animals form prides, flocks, and herds, but not nations, even though they can form huge groups of myriad thousands and migrate in a very orderly fashion without leadership.
Humans form families, clans, tribes, nations, and continents. They are now spread worldwide. I’ll be expanding on this special capacity of man in book two, entitled Audit of the Universe.
Cooperation and Commerce
Symbiotic exchanges occur between sharks and pilot fish. You will never see an animal running a business for profit or trading services altruistically beyond what their instinct dictates.
Animals don’t have an equivalent of human welfare organizations.
Although within small groups there can be mutual assistance, it’s basically each animal for itself. Animals can be of great assistance to man.
Guide dogs for the blind, dolphins swimming with people, and horse riding are of immense service and benefit to kids and adults with certain physical and mental deficiencies.
Let’s remember that man organizes these judicious encounters. Man often has to prepare and painstakingly train these animals, who would not take these initiatives by themselves.
Humans learn to exchange services and work together. Man has developed a monetary system and a gold standard. He builds businesses and provides services.
There are voluntary community services. Humans give a helping hand as well as recruiting and training novices.
Educators, doctors, nurses, and others work for humanity and humanity and add to the pool of beneficial knowledge. Man has animal welfare organizations.
Ethics
Animals have no morals. Animals just “do their thing” instinctively or naturally. Man studies this as Ethology or Social Biology. Animals are predictable.
Man can watch over man, but it doesn’t always work that way because of the presence or absence of justice, truth, vanity, and lies. Man is unpredictable.
Animals can be darling or dangerous, they can be fun or furious. They are equipped to do the most incredible things as we saw in the last posts. But, compared to human accomplishments, animal accomplishments, based on their own initiative, apart from their instinct are literally non-existent.
Human accomplishments are like a skyscraper while animal accomplishments remain at the bottom of a bottomless pit.
This post is an excerpt from chapter 10.8 of Inventory of the Universe.
The Explanation Blog Bonus
Here’s a relationship with a parrot that can say a few words and its mentor says it can ‘think’ … but that’s relative.
This video is about human accomplishments, compared to the above you can readily see that there’s no comparison. The real question is why can humanity accomplish what it does? That’s what The Explanation is all about.
Dig Deeper into The Explanation
Join The Explanation Newsletter to stay informed of updates. and future events. No obligations, total privacy, unsubscribe if you want. Your gift is a free pdf of The Explanation and a free pdf of Answering the Big Questions in Life
TheExplanation.com
Email address:
Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.
See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.
Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version
Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes
Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now
Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, Animal Accomplishments are ‘Zero’ compared to Human Accomplishments
The post Animal Accomplishments are ‘Zero’ compared to Human Accomplishments appeared first on The Explanation with Sam Kneller.
April 25, 2017
Animal and Human Stages of Life and Sociability. What do They Tell Us?
Animal and Human Stages of Life and Sociability reveal that although animals and man live on the same planet, they are worlds apart. The Tiger Salamander breathes and lives in and out of water and is a no-parent species that is autonomous from the instant of its birth.
All animals, with their stages of life, have an uncanny talent to live and survive using their bodily functions and “ways of life.” These ways of life characterize the millions of species. Even within the same family, each animal has its own lifestyle. Female snakes have various ways of reproducing.
(chapter 10.7)
Seventy percent of snakes lay eggs generally in warmer climates, where the heat helps the incubation. However, when natural heat is insufficient, certain females have a mechanical way of heating their bodies. They shiver in order to keep the eggs warm.
This is unusual for coldblooded reptiles. The rest produce live young. The anaconda actually nourishes its young through a placenta.
This is also unusual for reptiles. Other snakes combine both methods by incubating their eggs internally until they hatch. The babies are then born live. Stages of life vary greatly not only within the animal kingdom but also within particular species.
“Unintelligent” animals have a myriad of differing social habits that help them mate, reproduce, raise their young (though in most cases the young take care of themselves from the word go), and live in a balance of nature with each other, with the flora, and with the inanimate world.
“Unintelligent” #animals have a myriad of differing social habits that help them mate,…
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As we know, there is violence and confrontation (we watch videos of lions confronting buffalos and hyenas scavenging food). What this means is that animals kill to eat or in self-defense.
They do not perform wanton, wholesale destruction, nor do they kill for fun. Somehow, this vast arena has established a living equilibrium. Can we say the same for man?
Animals do not perform wanton, wholesale #destruction, nor do they kill for fun.
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Animal Stages and Sociability
Human Stages and Sociability
Sex Cycles
Animals mate and produce offspring. Female and male wolves are fertile generally once a year in the winter. There
are chronobiological
periods during which animals are sexually active and there is a wide variety in these periods.
There is no birth control in the animal kingdom per se.
Although they can become less fertile with age, not many species undergo menopause.
A couple of species of killer whales form the exception to this rule. The offspring development period is short. It can last a few weeks to a few months in a very small number of animals.
Men and women understand reproductive cycles and can use birth control methods such as abstinence, natural family planning, and contraception to control the size of their family.
Humans have sexual stages, including puberty, (signaled by the first menses, and first male developments), fertility, and menopause.
About one-third of a woman’s life takes place after her childbearing years. The child-raising process is extended for multiple years.
Sex Act
Foreplay is instinctive, and there is basically no afterplay. Animals generally have sex only for reproductive purposes.
Examples of sex for “bonding” purposes are few and far between.
Humans perform and invent a vast variety of sexual behaviors. Man has the capacity to “make love” and take love-making to a higher social level.
Reproduction
Animals have many different, hyperspecialized ways to produce offspring. This is only a brief summary of these reproductive methods:
• Once in a lifetime
• Intermittently
• Annually
• Sexually
• Asexually
• Both sexually and asexually
• Oviparously (via eggs)
• Viviparously (via live births)
Monotremes (a type of mammal) lay eggs. Placentals and marsupials reproduce with a pouch.
Sexual intercourse, or the insertion of a penis into a vagina, is the only natural way to reproduce. Although there is only one way, the positions a couple may take to perform this act are numerous.
Marriage
Very few animals live in couples for any length of time. Wolves, penguins, swans, and gibbons mate for life.
Long-term marriage is the common standard for society, including the establishment of a family and close family relationships.
Offspring
Mother dogs and other animals rarely recognize their offspring when they are fully grown.
Most animals, including fish, birds, and insects, have no relationship or short contact between generations.
Parents bond with their children, develop a relationship with them, and recognize them even after spending time apart.
This is a deeply accepted part of family culture among humans.
Next Generation
The young imitate their progenitors. Crows watch their parents at work. Birds push their young out of the nest and teach them to fly.
Some young stay with their parents or parent for weeks or even months before they go their own ways.
Generally speaking, they definitively cut ties with their progenitors. Animals never relate to their grandparents.
Most young are abandoned to fend for themselves right from birth, or even while the eggs are being laid.
Children can be more intelligent than their parents, and they can go much further than them both professionally and culturally.
They don’t only imitate, they innovate. They have incredible potential that can be developed over their formative years and indeed, their entire lives.
They know, recognize, and love their grandparents as well as their aunts, uncles, cousins, and the other members of their extended families.
Stages of Life
Most animals, insects, and fish are “operational” from the instant they are born. There are exceptions. Birds, bears and lions care for their young.
In these cases, either both parents, or the mother (but oftentimes just the mother) takes care of the young.
This is most often for a very short period, and often the parents only supply food before the young somehow know how to fend for themselves.
Many predators decimate colonies of young. In these cases, only a relative few survive to grow to adulthood.
As children grow their senses and capacities can be developed. We discussed hands in chapter 8. Dexterity is used to write and in the application of creativity.
This and other skills take years to develop. Human children take twenty years to mature. The hand can finally write, make, and do whatever a grown child or adult imagines.
They can sculpt, saw, smelt, blow glass, plant corn, weave cloth, cook, create microchips, weld steel, and engage in intellectual pursuits.
These ‘growth’ stages of life of children are a key element that I will be expanding.
Galacti interrogates me quizzically. “Why all these blurbs of information?” What is their relationship to stages of life? he asks. “I can see some readers being upset and disagreeing with such generalizations.”
“I see your point,” I say. “Well, we dealt with some of this in the fauna chapter, and I remind you that we are not dealing with zoology or the social attributes of animals. For more details, I refer you to the references section.
“The broad question is how each of these subjects, or pieces of the puzzle, relates to bringing peace and prosperity to Earth. The fundamental question is this: Do animals have a role to play in this? Can they participate in the discussion via clues and input? Maybe they can contribute through their way of life, but it would only be based on man’s observations and conclusions.
Do #animals have a role to play in bringing peace and prosperity to Earth? Or is this solely a…
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“Can man answer the question of how to attain peace and prosperity? We’ll see more about that in Audit of the Universe, which is book two of this series. The point is that only man can ask that question. He alone can debate it and eventually lay out steps to attain it.
“There’s a huge, insurmountable gulf between animals and man. As much as we love animals, they can in no way participate in bringing peace and prosperity to Earth. They are as far removed from the process as Betelgeuse, a star situated 640 light-years away from our planet.
“This chapter and the blurbs are here in order to help us comprehend that although animals and man live on the same planet, they are worlds apart.” And the unique cycle of stages of life of humans plays an important role in this differentiation.
Although animals and #humans live on the same planet, they are worlds apart.
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This post is an excerpt from chapter 10.7 of Inventory of the Universe.
The Explanation Blog Bonus
This video is more about development to birth. But it is instructive and revealing in discussing Lamarck’s scientific or rather unscientific contribution, his way of analyzing such development, which has erroneously become part of the biological thinking process.
In this next video from Illustra Media’s documentary FLIGHT: THE GENIUS OF BIRDS we’ll enter a fertilized egg to follow a bird’s embryonic development. Spectacular animation and live action footage document the extraordinary 21-day process of organization and growth from a few cells into a chicken. Again, more ‘development’ but spectacular.
This one is about animal life cycles … I promise. Various types of animals and their stages of life including their metamorphosis from one stage to a totally different one. Think about this in comparison to human stages of life.
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Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.
See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.
Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version
Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes
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April 18, 2017
Animal Survival and Movement Capabilites far outshine those of Mankind
Animal survival in all types of extremes, heat, cold, depths, altitudes and movement speed and endurance are far superior to Mankind. Humans, without their ingenuity, don’t stand a chance.
Animal Movement
If animals participated in the Olympic games, practically all the medals would go to them. Both their streamlined bodies and power-produced movements confer formidable athletic prowess on them. Bats can’t walk because their legs are too thin, but they are the only mammals that use their legs for sustained flight.
If animals participated in the #Olympic games, practically all the medals would go to them.
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They support the wing structure when flying, so unlike birds, which flap their wings, a bat only flaps its extended webbed digits. It can also migrate hundreds of kilometers to reach its warm destination.
Animal Movement
Human Movement
Jumping
Fleas can jump fifty to one hundred times their body length using their feet.
Man has an underdeveloped body when it comes to his capacity to move, run, jump, swim, and fly, but man has conquered all these areas with his inventions. Using them, he can far outdo the animals.
Flying
Flying squirrels can glide/leap up to thirty meters, or one hundred feet.
Bar-tailed godwits were tagged and tracked as they moved from New Zealand to the Yellow Sea in China, covering 11,000 kilometers in nine days of nonstop travel.
Running
Cheetahs can run up to seventy kilometers per hour and are the world’s fastest land animal.Considering the speed of an ant, weight for weight, man would be able to run as fast as a racehorse.
Diving
The Northern Gannet, also known as the fou de Bassan, can dive from a height of forty meters at treacherous speeds of sixty to one hundred kilometers per hour, then continue swimming to depths of twenty meters to catch and swallow a fish before it resurfaces. It is aided by its subcutaneous air bags.
Swimming
Dolphins can swim circles around Michael Phelps at thirty kilometers per hour, while the taupe shark can hit fifty kilometers per hour.
Shooting
The archer fish in Thailand catches its meal by shooting droplets of water. It can aim at and drown a cockroach from 1.5 meters.
Animals’ Survival in Extreme Conditions
We examine the animals in the menagerie, such as the Adelie
penguins that can withstand cold, the black scarab beetle that
can avoid freezing in harsh Alaskan winters, and the trench
beetle that withstands the extreme Sahara heat.
Their lifestyle allows them to do things man cannot do: burrow,
hibernate, go without sleep, migrate, and live without food or
water for days and months.
Animal #lifestyle allows them to do things man cannot do: burrow, hibernate, go without sleep,…
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Animal Survival
Human Survival
The kangaroo rat lives in the desert, withstanding torrid temperatures of fifty degrees Celsius. It also endures cold nights and windstorms
The springtail, an insect in Antarctica, can live at a freezing -50 degrees Celsius without oxygen for up to a month.
Arctic squirrels, which are mammals like man, hibernate for seven months of the year. Their body temperature falls to -3 degrees Celsius, but their blood remains liquid.
However, their neurons
shrink, their connections shrivel, and their dendrites disappear. But imagine: Upon emerging from hibernation, they have more synaptic links than active squirrels. That’s brain rejuvenation.
You can’t sneak up on an ant. Ants don’t sleep.
Various species of ants and wasps sting their prey in order to paralyze them. The poison used can be composed of fifty different chemicals.
The impact of a Mantis shrimp’s claw, used to stun its prey, is as powerful as a bullet fired from a gun.
Spider saliva paralyzes bitten prey. Black widow spider bites are fifteen times more toxic than a rattlesnake’s.
A few animals such as squirrels can store food by burying nuts. Others can build up their food reserves by storing internal fat consumed during hibernation, like bears.
Hummingbirds’ beaks and the act of hovering help them gather nectar from flowers.
A seagull can drink seawater because it has special glands that filter out the salt.
Desert kangaroo rats survive their entire life (about four to five years) without drinking water. Their metabolism recovers water from the seeds they eat.
Man is limited to living in temperate zones with temperatures between ten and twenty degrees Celsius, but it can go as high as the mid-forties.
For survival, he needs a minimum of clothing, food, and shelter. For this, man needs to manufacture tools and gather and treat raw materials.
Man needs to produce food by growing tomatoes, grain, rice, and wheat as well as raising cattle or sheep. Fishermen in Cambodia and elsewhere have created an industry by developing fish farms.
Man in the wild, especially in a somewhat hostile environment, does not stand much of a chance of survival beyond a few days armed with just his bare hands. If he does survive, it is certainly not a comfortable existence.
Animal Survival is truly amazing. The multiple different methods, even within varieties of the same species, often defy human imagination. The complexities coupled with the intricacies and interconnectivity of the various parts of the body that each plays a specific orchestrated role in the animal survival process, in the harshest of conditions. It should make us stand up and ask a few questions about the why and how.
We ‘superior’ humans could also do well to ask why human survival seems so fragile and limited in comparison. Yes, populations are more adapted to cold and heat, arctic and desert conditions, than other, there’s no doubt about it … but still, with ‘no equipment’ -70°C (and -1°C) and +50°C (and +35°C) are outside the human range and we wouldn’t stand a chance.
This post is an excerpt from chapter 10.5-6 of Inventory of the Universe.
The Explanation Blog Bonus
This video reveals how animals survive in severe conditions of heat and cold.
This video shows various methods to withstand the harshness of winter.
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Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.
See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.
Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version
Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes
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April 11, 2017
Animal Bodies all shapes, sizes, forms and characteristics
Animal Bodies all shapes, sizes, forms and characteristics. They can come with or without every single organ. No heart, blood, or a brain. And even with no other ‘vital’ organs at all.
Both our human bodies and the animal bodies that we saw in chapter 8 are an amazing result of chemical processes that lead to the makeup of some 7.8 million species in the animal kingdom. Most of these are insects. Animal bodies come in all shapes, sizes, and forms.
(chapter 10.4)
Incredibly, they can also come with or without every single organ. Jellyfish don’t have a heart, blood, or a brain, and they don’t have any other organs, either. We talk about a frog, a worm, and a human heart. All three function in a different way, even though the end result is always to pump blood.
Animals exist with or without every single organ. Jellyfish don’t have a heart, blood, or a…
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On the other hand, certain worms don’t have a heart. Their body movement is sufficient to circulate their blood. Even though man’s body is a masterpiece, it generally comes up short in comparison with the animals’.
Animal Bodies
Human Bodies
Brains
Elephants have a bigger brain than humans, weighing in at 4.662 grams. That’s 0.22 percent of their total body weight. A dolphin’s brain weight is similar to man’s at 1,500 grams, or about 2.5 percent of its total body weight.
No Brains
If we consider the brain to be a central system for controlling the functions of the body and mind, we can count the groups of neurons (ganglia) present in oysters as brains, each performing separate functions such as eating and moving.
Man has a smaller brain than the biggest animals at only 1,500 grams, and it represents 2.2 percent of his total body weight.
Eyes
Eyes are not essential for certain blind ants and worms. Some fish, seafood, and beetles have no eyes.
Pupils don’t always have the same round shape within the eye. Cats have vertically slanted pupils and goats’ are slanted horizontally.
Cats have a reflective layer behind the retina, which sends part of the light back into the eye and gives them far superior night vision than man has.
Bats have eyes for another specialized purpose. They are poorly developed for sight, but they use sonar and echolocation to find their way about.
However, when there’s nothing to bounce the guiding waves back to the bats’ oversize ear antennas (which can happen during long distance migration), their eyes have the ability to take over the task of navigation.
Humans have a blind spot where the optic nerve passes through the retina. In octopus eyes the optic nerve routes around and behind the retina.
Lungs
The Bar-headed goose migrates across the Himalayas. These birds have reached altitudes of 7,200 meters. Mount Everest is 8,850 meters high, and aircraft fly at an altitude of 9,100 meters.
Considering the added oxygen supply needed for flight and the one-day crossing time, this is one of nature’s grandest feats.
The hadal snailfish swims and breathes at a depth of eight kilometers (five miles) in the Japan Trench of the Pacific Ocean.
Tuna swim at a steady rate of fourteen kilometers per hour. They never stop moving until they die. The water has to be moving so that they can breathe.
Other breathing organisms don’t even use oxygen. Bacteria located 400 meters beneath a glacier can “breathe” iron.
Shewanella bacteria found in the soil around nuclear disposal sites can “breathe in” toxic waste and “breathe out” hematite. They can exist with or without oxygen.
Man is best suited for living at sea level, where oxygen binds best with his red blood cells to fuel the body.
Stomach
In the wild, food has basically no preparation. It’s hunt, catch, and down the hatch. “Eat and go, go and eat.”
Cows have four stomachs and can digest fiber, which man cannot do. Many animals gobble down the whole bodies of their prey, including bones, organs, tough skin, etc.
Man generally must prepare his food by cleaning and cooking. He needs fire and time.
Man can and does eat raw foods, but his diet generally involves cooked food. Fiber is needed as roughage to cleanse the colon, but it is not digested.
Muscles
A caterpillar has 4,000 muscles total, with 248 muscles in its head alone. An elephant’s trunk has 40,000 muscles. Ants can lift twenty times their body weight.
Man has 650 to 800 muscles in his body. He has forty-two facial muscles.
Animal Bodies versus Human Bodies. Who’s the winner? Well, really, no one is. When you get down to it each creature has the best body needed to perform in whatever environment it is, doing what it does best.
This post is an excerpt from chapter 10.4 of Inventory of the Universe.
The Explanation Blog Bonus
This video is about animal eyes … and the various types of visions … split eyes, compound eyes, rock eyes … yes, eyes made of rock that can see images, marvel at the fascinating eyes in animal bodies.
And now we take a closer look at animal noses. Think about how specialized and unique these noses are. They are not in any way, shape or form like yours and mine.
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Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.
See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.
Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version
Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes
Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, Animal Bodies all shapes, sizes, forms and characteristics
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April 4, 2017
Animal Senses – Light-years Beyond what Mankind is Capable of … Why?
Animal senses are superior to man in every instance. Sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch animals beat mankind hands down. Cat whiskers are kitty radar.
With their animal senses they can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel much better than man can. We have several examples of animal abilities before us.
(chapter 10.3)
Sight:
A Human’s peripheral vision is rather limited compared to that of a donkey and many other animals.
A grown woman’s field of peripheral visions encompasses 200 degrees. With both eyes, she basically has very little peripheral vision: a sliver of twenty degrees.
In contrast, donkeys survey their world in a 285-degree scope. This is almost a full circle.
They can see all four of their legs when they are walking. Rabbits and horses, whose eyes are positioned on the sides of their heads, can see the entire sphere. Their world is seen in 360 degrees. They use this total peripheral vision to guard against danger and predators.
Hearing:
Human hearing is limited to a minimum frequency of twenty hertz and a maximum frequency of twenty kilohertz. Dogs can hear higher frequencies than you and I can: up to sixty sixty kilohertz. This is shrill enough to detect a dog whistle.
Cats can hear their prey’s ultrasonic calls up to a frequency of about eighty kilohertz, and their pivotable ears hone in on a sound’s direction. Bats and dolphins can hear up to 160 kilohertz. On the lower end of the scale, elephants and moles can hear “infrasounds,” or pitches below the range of human hearing. This allows them to detect the vibrations of earthquakes.
Smell:
Pigs have twenty-eight olfactory nerves in their noses, while a goat has twenty one. This is in contrast to our human two. Dogs have noses millions of times more sensitive than us, which allows them to follow day-old trails, find missing persons, and sniff out drugs and explosives. Their keen smell can even detect termites and bed bugs.
Taste:
Compared to humans with our 10,000 taste buds, the catfish’s body is covered with tens of thousands of taste buds. Catfish live and feed in murky, muddy waters. Although they have eyes, their taste buds allow them to locate a morsel in an Olympic-size swimming pool. Butterflies have taste sensors on their feet, which permit them to know both what is good for food and where to lay their eggs.
Touch:
Cats can use their whiskers to “touch” a space and sense whether it is too small. Similarly, a seal’s whiskers have many more nerve fibers and can feel fish 180 meters away. This distance is equal to about four lengths of an Olympic swimming pool.
Cats can sense earthquakes because the fine touch receptors in their paws detect tremors in the ground. Similarly, catfish, which have smooth skin, can feel earthquakes using their finely developed sense of touch as can the star-nosed mole which has six times more touch receptors in its nose than humans have in their hands.
A manatee senses fish many miles away thanks to the many tactile hairs that cover its body. We talk about things that make the hair on our arms stand up, but the manatee’s hairs are far more sensitive.
Eyesight
Animals
Humans
Buzzards can see small rodents from a height of 15,000 ft. They have one million photoreceptors per square millimeter. Jumping spiders have regular and ultraviolet vision.
They see both night and day. Camouflaged prey glow a bright blue-green and don’t stand a chance.
Man takes a beating in each of these areas separately, but in a pentathlon including all these senses, man would fare better in comparison to the animals with their animal senses.
Man is beaten by animals in each sense, but in a pentathlon of the 5 senses, man would fare…
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Hearing
Animals
Humans
Dogs can hear a can of their food being opened and make good watch dogs because they can hear a pin drop.
This pales into insignificance compared to the ultrasound hearing of the Eurasian Greater Wax Moth at 300 kilohertz.
Remember, human hearing is limited to a maximum frequency of twenty kilohertz.
Smell
Animals
Humans
Sharks can detect one drop of blood in 10,000 liters of water. Bears can smell food twenty-nine kilometers (eighteen miles) away.
The grizzly bear can smell a carcass some twenty-five kilometers away, and they know what eau de cologne you’re wearing long before you ever see them.
With six million olfactory receptors, man is feeble compared to a dog’s 220 million. Nonetheless, man can distinguish thousands of various odors.
Using his smell and taste together, mankind can differentiate the infinite variety of aromas of wines from around the world.
Man has 6 million olfactory nerves, a dog 220 million. But man can differentiate the infinite…
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Taste
Animals
Humans
Flies know what to expect when landing on food because they have taste buds in both their feet and proboscis.
Cows and herbivores in general, with their animal senses including taste, have more taste buds than humans. As they munch away, they can easily detect dangerous plants and move on to safer grazing.
Our taste buds are concentrated on the tongue and its immediate mouth area.
This allows us to detect five basic tastes: salty, sour, bitter, sweet and umami, which is associated with glutamates.
Touch
Animals
Humans
Crickets have hairs under their abdomen that are so sensitive that the slightest change of movement in the air warns them that an unwelcome guest is approaching.
Certain people can “sense” someone in their presence. Otherwise, our maximum reach is our arm’s breadth.
Individual animal senses are generally characteristic to a specific animal. It is that advantage that is their major asset for hunting and protection.
This post is an excerpt from chapter 10.3 of Inventory of the Universe.
The Explanation Blog Bonus
This video is about noses. Not all noses are equal, and not all animals have noses.
We don’t hear much about wolverines … here’s a short video about their sense of smell.
Dig Deeper into The Explanation
Join The Explanation Newsletter to stay informed of updates. and future events. No obligations, total privacy, unsubscribe if you want. Your gift is a free pdf of The Explanation and a free pdf of Answering the Big Questions in Life
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Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.
See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.
Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version
Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes
Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, Animal Senses – Light-years Beyond what Mankind is Capable of … Why?
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March 28, 2017
Amazing Animals and Less Amazing Humans – They are Separated by a Gulf
Amazing Animals and Less Amazing Humans. We love animals, at least most of them, but animals and humanity live in two separate worlds. Even if they co-habit, they’re miles and kilometers apart.
A strange assortment of animals from our chapter 6 menagerie has marched into the lab as we continue to study and compare them. The chuckwalla, for example, sneezes salt to lower the sodium content in its body.
(chapter 10.2)
This is a handy survival tool, since the chuckwalla receives enough salt in its diet of desert plants to kill an ordinary animal. This is yet another thing we humans may want to emulate, given the well-publicized effects of too much salt. Still, active adults do lose salt through perspiration.
From the baby rats born with a sense of direction to the chuckwalla with its sodium defense, animals seem to outperform man in many respects. As our tour group continues to interact with some of the animals while taking care to avoid inciting their wild instincts, we are struck by the cleverness of the chimpanzees and the grace of the hummingbirds.
Our tour group has probably heard of the tales of Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Tornado (Zorro’s horse), and Flipper the dolphin. If so, these people have been intrigued by the exploits of these creatures. Lassie’s rescues or Flipper’s friendship with humans suggest that animals have an emotional relationship with man.
We watch videos of a lion cub brought up by two human brothers who, when he becomes too big to keep in their home at eight months of age, release him into the wild. Years later, the brothers seek out the full-grown, “jungleized” lion.
Even after such a long time, the lion recognizes the men and comes playfully bounding up to them, placing his huge paws on their shoulders and licking them in joy. We have seen these videos on the Internet and TV, but we enjoy them once again here.
This example and others—such as dogs warning their owners of danger or cats alerting humans to a deadly gas leak—demonstrate that there is a relationship between certain animals and man. That said, this type of relationship is limited and there are one or two people or a family who share this type of bond with an animal.
Similarly, we could discuss at length the relationships animals have between themselves.
We view videos of a cat being raised by a horde of hyenas, a lioness that adopts an oryx calf, a cheetah and a dog raised together, and the social relationships of a clan of monkeys, five females and a male, that raise their young and live together for forty years. Among the animals that physically surround us in the lab, we see a dog rescuing puppies from drowning.
We also see members of a pride composed of several generations of lions. The pride is overseen by a “sage king” who watches over the other members as they hunt, breed, and protect their territory as a unit.
As we look at these examples, we wonder: Do animals demonstrate kinship as we understand it, or is it merely survival instinct? For example, baby ducks imprint on the first moving object or creature they see. In general, wild creatures bond with their parents for survival. As we’ve seen, however, ducklings can feed themselves and fly within about six weeks.
Instinct is a motivator for animal behavior. The lion cubs in the pride are born with the instinct to play rough with their brothers and sisters. Think of the warthog that enters its burrow backward, facing the entrance in a charging position that helps them confront potential predators. It’s simply learned by rote for the warthog.
We ponder the difference between instinct and intelligence. Instinct is a preprogrammed, inherent trait associated with automatism. Intelligence is the gathering of relevant (and hopefully correct and comprehensive) information followed by a deliberate decision that could be right or wrong.
Identical information could cause different and even opposite decisions in various human beings. We shall save this last discussion for a later moment.
Although certain animals have quasi-manlike traits, such as those we saw in some of the introductory examples, it is safe to say that the following qualities and characteristics characterize man and man alone among the animate beings on Earth: Love, hate, intelligence, creativity, pleasure, evil, good, altruism, egoism, jealousy, and anger. The ability to create new relationships (man’s “social side”) includes his social intelligence (or stupidity).
Humanity’s philanthropic endeavors on an individual and global level, such as Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam, help with every conceivable problem. This includes taking care of animals!
As our man-versus-animal guide, Galacti summarizes and points out the differences between animals and man.
This post is an excerpt from chapter 10.2 of Inventory of the Universe.
The Explanation Blog Bonus
This is a very controversial subject as this first video shows. Today many scientists and organizations are investigating this subject and promoting the sentient intelligence of animals… which, without a doubt, exists.
The bigger question though, is: Are we humans just ‘higher level’ animals or are we a totally different species? The Explanation takes a clear stand on this issue as you will see in reading this chapter. In book 3 Origin of the Universe I will clearly explain why I take this stance.
In the meantime here’s a video that puts animals and humans in the same category.
Here’s another viewpoint about the differences between animals and humans. Definitely food for thought… Hmmmmm, could that be an important difference?
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Join The Explanation Newsletter to stay informed of updates. and future events. No obligations, total privacy, unsubscribe if you want. Your gift is a free pdf of The Explanation and a free pdf of Answering the Big Questions in Life
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Email address:
Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.
See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.
Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version
Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes
Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, Amazing Animals and Less Amazing Humans – They are Separated by a Gulf
The post Amazing Animals and Less Amazing Humans – They are Separated by a Gulf appeared first on The Explanation with Sam Kneller.
March 21, 2017
Mankind sits at the Pinnacle of the Life Chain. Why?
Mankind sits at the pinnacle of the life chain with his imaginative mind and his fragility. What a paradox, yet he rules over his small part of the cosmos. Why?
In this first tome of The Explanation, we’ve quickly surveyed our entire universe including mankind. With Galacti’s help, we’ve visited and experienced scenes that are normally inaccessible.
(chapter 10.1)
We’ve traveled from fundamental particles to the formation of the elements that make up the vast universe, descending through our atmosphere to survey water and earth, the support systems of life itself. We’ve examined the role of plants as intermediaries between the inert mineral world and the organic world of animals and mankind, and we’ve ended with an analysis of man’s brain and mind.
It is necessary in our Inventory of the Universe to come down to man who, with his present knowledge, sits at the pinnacle of this incredulously complex and at the same time beautifully simple cosmos, at least as far as mankind can ascertain of himself.
#Mankind sits at the pinnacle of this incredulously complex and at the same time beautifully…
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Science and its incredible array of tools, from the Large Hadron Collider that confirmed the existence of the elusive boson particle to Voyager 1, the first vehicle after thirty-five years to travel into interstellar space, have put our universe on display, from the minute to the immense.
Each day we learn more about its wondrousness and how it works, and we are literally humbled by its magnitude. Written material, photos, and videos abound to expand on the marvels of which we’ve just scratched the surface.
However, in this opening volume I’ve given you an overall view of its splendiferous entirety. We cannot put the puzzle together if we don’t have all the pieces. They are now before us, turned right side up. We see them in sequential order as they’ve developed over 13.8 billion years.
During our amazing journey, we’ve discovered a number of conundrums summed up by that unanswerable question: which came first, the chicken or the egg? Did amino acids come first, or did the proteins that contain and produce amino acids?
We’ve discovered a number of conundrums like that unanswerable #question: which came first, the…
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Science and mankind still have much to discover, but can we answer such a question? Can we go beyond that? For instance, a common question is “What was ‘there’ before the Big Bang?” Another common question is “Where did that initial explosion come from?”
Let’s ask another: “We know that the expansion of our universe is accelerating, not decelerating. What implausible force is behind such a venture?” And another: “Since our universe is composed of space and time, and since it’s expanding, what is it expanding into?
The expansion of our #universe is accelerating, not decelerating, what is it expanding into?…
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What’s out there beyond the extremities of our universe that is becoming a part of it at a rate of billions and billions of square kilometers per second?”
Galacti has put on his kiddie cap and is asking his “why” questions: “Why does this universe exist? Why is mankind on Earth? Is there a point to life?” These are what we’d call philosophical questions. Some say “Who cares? Does it really matter?” but others either offer ideas or are looking for answers to such questions, whether the answers are scientific, philosophical, or spiritual.
And the ultimate satisfaction would be to have the answers satisfy the scientific, philosophical, and religious minds. Is this possible? That’s the challenge The Explanation has set for itself.
In the universe, on Earth, only mankind can set such a challenge for himself—puny man: so insignificant, yet so remarkably noteworthy.
Yes, man is at the pinnacle of the life chain, and at the same time he is fragile and lacking in so many areas. This is the paradox of man. The amazing saga of how man got to be where he is.
Mankind is at the pinnacle of the life chain, and at the same time is lacking in so many areas.…
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The incredible thing about the story of mankind compared to animals is that he comes up short in practically every single department, and yet he still ends up coming out ahead! Imagine the unimaginable.
This post is an excerpt from chapter 10.1 of Inventory of the Universe.
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This video is a TED Talk by Yuval Noah Harari author of a book entitled Sapiens – A Brief history of humankind. His book almost made my Top 10 list of Books to Take Inventory of the Universe
Very interesting concepts about why humankind rules Earth. In this talk he barely touches on the crux of the subject, although he does mention an important aspect: imagination. But he doesn’t go all the way stating where this imagination is in mankind and, of course, where this imagination came from.
If you read chapter 9 of Inventory of the Universe you’ll see that the imagination is associated with mankind’s mind. Where the mind comes from and why mankind alone and not chimpanzees have minds will be broached in book 3, Origin of the Universe. Stay tuned.
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