From tolerance, the human future...

A fascinating article based on experiments in social collaboration among animals may suggest new clues to the differences between human beings and their closest evolutionary cousins, which may help explain the basis of human intelligence -- and our common (and future) achievement: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/woods_hare09/woods_hare09_index.html

Roughly stated, researchers Vanessa Woods and Brian Hare note that humans have evolved the capacity to have a "theory of mind" which gives each of us the desire to know what others are thinking and the determination to find that out -- a capacity that no other species possesses, though some domesticated animals seem to have developed the reading of social cues on which this theory of mind may be based, even faster than physical evolution can explain.

But unlike animals, we don't have to rely on interpreting body language to collaborate with each other. We've developed language based directly on thought, expressed in words. Unlike our evolutionary cousins, we've also learned to set aside the aversion to cooperating with others who are outside our immediate family group and build collaborative networks (and cooperation is inconceivable without exchanging words). Stated another way, we've done things together on the basis of communicating with and tolerating those who are different from us. Thus it might be said that we've built civilization, not on zero-sum material competition, but on enlarging our sense of affinity for one another.

All this may give new meaning to the insight of the inventor of the scientific method, Sir Francis Bacon, who said in the 17th century that science would one day enable all people to escape from "animal time". From civilization has come science, and now science (and other disciplines of thought and work) may be helping us to understand ourselves and our underlying talents better, in order to help us drive our own further development. Carl Sagan predicted that the next stage in human evolution would be self-guided. And now we may know how: If we can leave our residual hatreds and antagonisms behind, there may be an extraordinary new evolutionary leap forward for humanity in the next centuries. And that may give new meaning to the famous statement of St. Paul: "Love is the fulfilling of the law."