Paper Topic:

Ishmael

ISHMAEL

Question 1

The story of a jellyfish in Quinn 's book represents quite an original psycho-philosophical approach to the problem of evolution . The story is made up in a form of a dialogue . A person , telling a story argues , that man is a highpoint of evolution , and the opponent applies something like a doctrine of relativity , explaining , that the world has not always been made for man and it can be ascertained , that once the world will be made for someone else again . For the speaker , evolution has finished as man

br appeared , because there is no more way to evolve , thusly , he advocates a theory of extremity of evolution . And while man is a final product of evolution , he can be mentioned as ultimate and supreme creature and the whole world is made for him

To contest such a conclusion the opponent turns to a relativistic approach , trying to concretize the concerned time . A jellyfish serves as example of such relativity , because in case a researcher appeared on the shore of an ocean 500 million years ago , he would find nothing more perfect , than a jellyfish on earth . Therefore , a jellyfish could reasonably believe , that it is a supreme creature , because man was just to appear and has not yet become factual . The evolution ended with jellyfish and the world was made for jellyfish

For Quinn , the core difference between jellyfish and man in the matter of evolution is that a jellyfish does not tell stories , and a man does Therefore , he invented a religious dogma to justify his superiority and to prove , that the evolution indeed ended with man . Nevertheless religions remain human inventions and can serve as justification only for other humans . The conclusion is quite pessimistic for humanity : once there can appear a creature , which overpasses man just as we overpass a jellyfish

Question 2

It should first be pointed , that Ishmael sees agriculture as violation of natural laws . Humans do not listen to the voice of mother-nature which tells take what you need and leave the rest . In spite of doing so , man starts producing surpluses , taking more , than he needs Production of surpluses leas to expansion of population in proportion to food supplies and is not limited by any cultural or technological barriers , finally resulting in environmental and natural phenomena which limit population growth . Quinn compares such processes to a system of checks and balances

Women 's fertility in the regions with high surpluses production lessens year after year , until it falls below reproduction rate . Quinn suggests that population still continues to grow globally , although population may fall locally , and this depends on the type of society . Industrial societies are much less reproductive , since people have less incentive for reproduction . Agrarian societies and their members need a lot of children , often just of economic reasons , because children are future working force

For Quinn there is one positive effect from present model of population growth . This is unsustainable pressure on nature and biosphere , leading to...

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