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Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
( thanks to Daniel Dennett for both the title and the
education)
I think about the salted broth beginning
of this world, trying to calculate the force of night
that first pumped up the bellows we call life,
And it seems to me that God is a silver knife,
the mathematic truth dividing at the heart
all that grows and pulses bright, then dark.
Praise now the simple algorithm, that
mindless and mechanical sorts us all.
Select, survive, refine: a or b?
Choose one, refuse the other:
size, brain, speed, color,
pawprint, orchid, wing and roar. Your call.
In the teeming stew of a blue-green algae sea,
silvery math explodes in fractal chaos,
building the replicate virus, the flea and its mouse.
Chained equations accrete, create, advance,
Even the surfline is a pattern of chance,
breaking left or right to make the dance:
A or b?
A or b?
A or b?
—Sandra M. Jensen
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