Darwin even goes out of his way to warn against meddling. The danger, as he sees it, is the fallibility of the human eye, our inability to comprehend complexity. Traits that might seem “abhorrent to our ideas of fitness” could actually be beneficial to a species or ecosystem, or could, in time, become beneficial as conditions change. It was that ungainly neck that gave the giraffe an edge over its competitors, the seeming deadweight of blubber that allowed the seal to thrive in the advancing cold, the divergent human brain that might hold the key to inventions, discoveries, and revolutions
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