Back to the whole superiority issue one more time. The question, Stuart, is not one of "by whose definition" humans are superior or inferior, but rather "by whose standard." You can pick a set of standards that will result in selecting virtually any animals species as superior to any other. Please do not argue that humans are not an animal- what are we then, plants? Say that to any biologist and he wuld laugh at you. If your criterion is peacefulness and the ability to get along socially with each other, then the bonobo chimp would likely take the prize (a mostly bisexual animal by teh way.) If it''s the ability to take punishment and survive, then it's the tardigrade; if it';s speed, tehn it's teh Mongolian gazelle, etc. By arguing that humans are superior because of their 1) proliferation, 2) language capacity, 3) intelligence, 4) ability to adapt, and 5)written achieve,ments, you are implicitly stating that these achievements are more important than achievemets such as social harmony, hadriness, speed, etc. Thois is your arbitrary selection of a set of standards, and in many cases we can see how silly it realkly is. For example, it requires you to state that Hindu civilization is greater than westernEuropean civilization, because they happened to develop writing first...I strongly doubt that most cultures can be called, in a general sense, "superior" to most otehrs.
On top of that, your exa,mples are poorly chosen becaus ethey are all either inaccurate or highly debatale. Intelligenvce and the capacity for learning are no longer seen as restriucted to the human species. Whales learn every note of half-hour songs which they can repeat over and over again ande improvise upon- no human could ever attempt the same thing. Exoeru=imental leraning and conspecific learning ahs been observed over and over again in chimpanzees, macaques, and possibly birds. Sea turtles routinely navigate across the oceans using a combination of magnetic compasses, star navigation and taste sensations; they can find their way to a tiny rock in the ocean better than human medieval navigators. Language has been obnserved in a wide variety of species; afyter all,m a chimpanzee has learned human language (so has a parrot, by the way) while no human has yet been able to communicayte with chimpanzees. Who, then, shouldk be judged the superior intellect?
Your argument aboiut "where is the dolphin library"- well, frankly, it baffles me. pPerhaps it's under teh ocean, most of whos edepths we have never seen or penetrated. perhaps it consists of oral traditions, as do most human cultures' leraning today. Perhaps they have such an amazing capacity to remember (we've seen hints of this) that they don't need to write stuff down. Perhaps they never saw the need to create books, etc. Who are we to say that the path we chose is objectively vbbetter than tehir? To do that just makes the speaker sound petty and egoistic.
Your arguemnt that chimpanzees who try different edicines are dpoing it by insitnct whi;le we humans use the accumulated wisodm of ages won't hodl water. First of all, trial and error, just as teh chimpaznees use, is basically the way we find if medicines work- that's teh hallmark of teh experimentlal method., Secondly, even if we do it more consciously thamn say chimapnzees, it doesn't make a difference. They are using their biological capabilities to solve a given problem, so are we. I don't think that the tardigrades' adaptation to extreme desiccation is "inferior" to adapting by living in a galss bubble. If anything, teh tardigrade's natural adaptation is simpler and smoother. To argue that adapting through technology is "better" than adapting through biologoical capability seems grpoundless.
Humans, you say, are superior because they have the capacity to destroy otehr life forms. Well, lions, viruses, and bacteria all have the capability to destroy humans wquite easily, but aside from that, that's about teh worst definitionnof duperiority I've ever heard, By that logica 14-year-old vandal with a spray paint can is superior to teh artist whose work he defaces.
Finally, humans are not the most adaptable, nor the most proliferating species. Ants have a gretaer biomass than we do, and bacteria are more adaptable. Aspens and grass certainly have a greater individual fitness, in that their system of clonal reproduction allows for the orginal organism's genetic endowment to literally live indefinitely. If humans are so superior, then hwo come turtles and bristlecone pines routinely live for longer than us- isn't longevity, after all, one criterion of suepriority?
As you can see, your arguemnts for human superiority are all groundless. Give it up. Accept what galkileo showed 500 years ago,m and Darwin showed 150 years ago- that we humans aren't the center of teh universe, taht it was not all "made for us". It may hurt some people's ego for a while, but thsoe things heal.
- Nikhil
