Evolving theories among the mistakes

My, what sharp teeth you have

What I read 
According to "A new fossil find in Brazil rewrites the history of the dinosaurs", the recent discovery of dinosaur fossils dating back 230 million years in Brazil is forcing paleontologists to reconsider some of their theories about the evolution of dinosaurs, specifically, that they did not suddenly replace the earlier reptile species and whether they stopped eating meat then grew massive, or whether they started to grow massive which forced them to become vegetarians (2016).

_______________________________________ 

My response
When I was a child, I was fascinated by dinosaurs, and the bigger the better. The fearsomely carnivourour T. Rex never impressed me as much as the massive vegetarians like Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus, both of which I was pleased to see mentioned in The Economist's article. But to be fair, Tyrannosaurus Rex did add a lot to the Jurassic Park series of films, although I noticed that the last one thought that nature's efforts were not quite fearful enough, so the story added in a human boost to to the genes. Naturally, the mad scientists bring disaster by tampering with nature. But that is a lie.

Science has made our lives vastly better than those of any of our ancestors, who were largely forced to rely not on the healthy democratic ideals of science but the blind, blinkered and blinkering gloom and doom of religious belief protecting itself with ugly blasphemy laws, censorship, inquisitions, and other efforts against peaceful, honest truth seeking and speaking.

Of course, science is often wrong, which is a major point of this article in The Economist, but that's not a problem. It's a virtue. Science never pretends to have any perfectly infallible truths - that's the role of popes, imams, priests, sacred books and other tools of repressive political ideologies like communism and fascism, which seem to me much like any other state supported religion intent on protecting itself. I don't like being wrong, but I know I often am, recently about the electoral chances of Donald Trump, but about lots of other things, too. I agree with the paleontologists, those experts on ancient life on our planet, who, when the evidence is presented, admit that they were wrong and that they need to change their minds about some long held beliefs.

And this leads me to think about what truth is, or more importantly when and where we ever get it, or can get it. But that can wait for another blog post on another day. I still have work to prepare for tomorrow.

_______________________________________ 

Reference

• A new fossil find in Brazil rewrites the history of the dinosaurs. (2016, November 12). The Economist. Retrieved from  http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21709944-dinosaurs-coexisted-their-reptilian-forebears-rather-replacing-them