 Excerpt: BOFAW, Chap. 10, Matthew I.
 In the early ’80s, I was eager to show my students the video series
of Carl Sagan’s book titled Cosmos. The series was going fine until we
got to the segment on evolution, which was outside Sagan’s field. At
one point he stated, “Evolution is a fact.â€
Mark Twain concluded that, based on some very bizarre plants and animals, God must have a sense of humor. Scientists (and science teachers) are not normally known for their sense of humor. It seems that they are often so obsessed with “finding the answer†that they can not be distracted with laughter or felicity.
They seem to forget that Isaac Newton, arguably the world’s greatest scientist:
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.â€
 Scientists often seem to forget that, compared to universal knowledge, we are still in the “scientific†Stone Age.
Loren Eiseley warned about scientists creating their own “mythology†to explain mysteries, marvels and miracles that their test-tubes and balances can not quantify or explain.
In Carl Sagan’s, “Cosmos†he offered his explanation of the evolution of the Heike crab. He presented his theories as factual and not unproven fabrications of fantasy and imagination. He might as well have proposed that a group of crabs got together and decided to pay homage to the drowned Samurai Warriors by self-directing the evolution of the Warrior face on their carapace.
It would be interesting to see what kind of mythology Sagan would conjure up to explain the evolution of the Sino-Korean Owl Moth Caterpillar.
 Perhaps Asian children, out collecting caterpillars, saw some that looked slightly like a Ninja Warrior. Out of respect, they did not collect them and so the caterpillars evolved into a very Ninja-like larva.;-)
I wonder if Charles Darwin ever saw one of these truly amazing animals.
Thanks “Epic Animals†for sharing this photo.
Celebrate the Mystery!