Many in the life sciences attack human exceptionalism as necessarily predicated on religion–it can be but it’s also not–and as reflecting an unwarranted hubris.
To many of these, we are just another animal in the forest, while other see us as the vermin species destroying Gaia.
That’s why it was refreshing to see a physicist remark on our exceptional natures in a column otherwise about the importance of the discovery of gravity waves. From, “Finding Beauty in the Darkness,” by Lawrence M. Krauss:
Every child has wondered at some time where we came from and how we got here. That we can try and answer such questions by building devises like LIGO to peer out into the cosmos stands as a testament to the persistent curiosity and ingenuity of humankind–the qualities that we should most celebrate about being human.
So rare to hear a call for “celebrating” being human these days, and in the chronically anti-human exceptionalist New York Times.