Speciation does not necessarily promote evolutionary change; rather, speciation 'gathers in' and guards evolutionary change by locking and stabilization for sufficient geological time within a Darwinian individual of the appropriate scale. If a change in a local population does not gain such protection, it becomes-to borrow Dawkins's metaphor at a macroevolutionary scale-a transient duststorm in the desert of time, a passing cloud without borders, integrity, or even the capacity to act as a unit of selection, in the panorama of life's phylogeny.

'Creation science' has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false.

At a minimum, in explaining evolutionary pathways through time, the constraints imposed by history rise to equal prominence with the immediate advantages of adaptation.

We live in a profoundly nonintellectual culture, made all the worse by a passive hedonism abetted by the spread of wealth and its dissipation into countless electronic devices that impart the latest in entertainment and supposed information - all in short (and loud) doses of "easy listening".

Facts do not 'speak for themselves'; they are read in the light of theory.

We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.

World views are social constructions and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully.